The Artificial Womb Is Born

[zorgon]

The Artificial Womb Is Born

''One by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution poured . . . and already the bottle had passed on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.'' Aldous Huxley, ''Brave New World''

The artificial womb exists. In Tokyo, researchers have developed a technique called EUFI -- extrauterine fetal incubation. They have taken goat fetuses, threaded catheters through the large vessels in the umbilical cord and supplied the fetuses with oxygenated blood while suspending them in incubators that contain artificial amniotic fluid heated to body temperature.

Yoshinori Kuwabara, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Juntendo University in Tokyo, has been working on artificial placentas for a decade. His interest grew out of his clinical experience with premature infants, and as he writes in a recent abstract, ''It goes without saying that the ideal situation for the immature fetus is growth within the normal environment of the maternal organism.''

New York Times

[deuem]

You should ask them to run you up a couple of ferrets next.

Here we go, people are next......

[burntheships]

But the lamb looks so peaceful.

Brave New World warns of the dangers of giving the state control over new and powerful technologies. One illustration of this theme is the rigid control of reproduction through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries, the Bokanovsky Process, and hypnopaedic conditioning.

Another is the creation of complicated entertainment machines that generate both harmless leisure and the high levels of consumption and production that are the basis of the World State's stability

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/themes.html