[HN Gopher] Scientists grow mice embryos in a mechanical womb
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Scientists grow mice embryos in a mechanical womb
Author : uptown
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-03-17 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| alacombe wrote:
| Brave New World, here we come !
| little33 wrote:
| To recover you stolen funds from binary options, or recover funds
| from any internet fraud or scam reach out to cyb3rdroid.com
| LockAndLol wrote:
| In the not so distant future, we'll neither need sperm nor eggs
| from humans. We'll need is at least one person and a lab. You
| could grow your own sperm and eggs from pluripotent stemcells
| (which can be made from any cell, even skin cells).
|
| Inseminate the egg, put it into an artificial womb, and voila, no
| need for sex or even a partner. You could make your own child,
| same sex partners could have their own kid, and it would even be
| possible to have kids with DNA 4 parents.
|
| Maybe the best news for women would be, that they wouldn't have
| to deal with any of the evil that comes with pregnancy since that
| could be externalized. It would render the menstrual cycle futile
| and push research into its elimination without side effects to
| the forefront.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| I think folks are missing the point of this technology - this is
| designed for the animal agriculture industry to compete against
| synthetic meat, by streamlining the genetic engineering feedback
| loop, and the administration of hormones and antibiotics. Animal
| milk and meat production would thus be mechanised from cradle to
| grave.
|
| We have been trying to engineer plant cells to be more like
| animals (eg Impossible Meats) but the solution might be to
| engineer cattle and swine to be more like plants (eg. minimise
| the growth of unnecessary biological components like bones,
| hoofs, brains, sensory organs).
|
| The end point could basically be a semi-conscious 'animal', with
| food administered by stomache tube, suspended inside a barn, with
| sufficient brain material only to operate the digestive,
| respiratory, and circulatory systems, and without eyes,
| reproductive organs, or ears. The lack of locomotion would also
| render the meat more tender.
|
| It would be horrific, but probably more humane and efficient than
| our current system of factory farming and feedlots.
| amelius wrote:
| > this is designed for the animal agriculture industry to
| compete against synthetic meat
|
| It can be used for disease models too, I suppose. Not sure what
| to think of it, though.
| [deleted]
| Apofis wrote:
| I would much prefer Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat to... vat
| grown meat goo. Just sounds gross, but that's just me.
|
| /s Next thing you know, Umbrella Corp will get involved.
| mmastrac wrote:
| More horrific than killing an animal on the same consciousness
| spectrum as us? Definitely not. It might be more the ick factor
| than anything. It's a good idea.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Life support is expensive and we're a ways away from creating
| cattle that aren't conscious, don't feel pain or suffer, but
| yet their bodies still function.
| riggsdk wrote:
| It also fuels the imagination for things like all-in-one lab
| grown clones of yourself (but without the brain) for
| replacement "parts".
| nitrogen wrote:
| There was a Michael Bay movie about this concept. I
| actually really like the movie, but it's way more
| entertaining if you don't know the premise ahead of time,
| so I'm not going to name it because it's a pretty major
| spoiler.
| m00x wrote:
| We're very far from that. The brain is extremely important
| for development and regular maintenance of the body.
|
| We could, however, remove consciousness (artificially
| induced coma).
| whatshisface wrote:
| Hey boss, the intern accidentally hooked a saline barrel
| to the anesthetic intake. We think it will take a few
| hours to purge the system.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Imagine if women would once be able to have children without
| getting pregnant.
|
| On the dark side, millions of mass manufactured soldiers without
| families to grieve for them will undo the last seal on
| unrestricted warfare. And those would probably be generically
| tweaked supersoldiers without pain, and remorse too.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| It's at least questionable if you want your super soldier to
| not be able to feel pain. I've read about genetic conditions
| that cause reduced pain sensitivity and the effects are odd.
| Pain makes learning possible, we see that everyday in things
| like don't touch a hot stove but it goes deeper. Think about
| learning how to walk. Or pick things up. And that's just
| physical. Imagine trying to teach something to a person who
| felt no remorse or guilt or shame - what would motivate such a
| person?
|
| I'd like my super soldier to be super sensitive. I'll get them
| to do the terrible things I want them to and then they can live
| with the consequences after the fact. It'll be harder on them
| (after the fact) but easier for me (getting them ready for the
| fact)
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Not all cases of pain insensitivity lead to these kinds of
| deficits: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-
| case-of-a-wom...
| jkinudsjknds wrote:
| The cost of manufacturing millions of soldiers would be
| incomprehensibly expensive, require decades of prep time, and
| have so many possible points of catastrophic failure that you'd
| have to wonder why you bothered in the first place.
|
| I'd bet heavily on the nation that chooses to build millions of
| explosive drones instead.
| maxwoj wrote:
| Imagine world, where a man would be free to start a family,
| without the need to be dependent on a woman to exercise his
| reproductive rights. Without the fear that a woman will use the
| so called "justice system" as a weapon to take his kids and
| possessions away anytime she find suitable
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > women would once be able to have children
|
| men too
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Artificial wombs are interesting to me for the colonization of
| space angle. It's an old trope-- the ship full of frozen
| embryos lumbering across space at a fraction of _c_ -- but the
| idea is really exciting to me. For all I dislike about humans
| and human nature I'd love for our species to spread beyond our
| single solar system.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| The ethics of that approach are as questionable as clone
| soldiers or slaves. Life is difficult enough when you are
| born into this world but at least you usually have one or two
| parents to care for you along with the company of the rest of
| human civilization. Being born on an empty world with only an
| AI or worse a dumb machine as your parent with only your
| equally orphaned siblings as companions would make fate seem
| cruel indeed.
| ArtDev wrote:
| They wouldn't be lonely though because they would have each
| other.
|
| It seems like an amazing way to grow up!
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I think you can go bigger than that for potential positives.
| Imagine growing clones (presumably without a
| [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for
| example.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Um... you mean a bigger dystopian horror, right? The idea of
| mass manufacturing humans simply to harvest their organs,
| even as meat sacks, is a bit of a moral and ethical... uh...
| dumpster fire.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Depends what you think makes someone human. It's just
| different first principles, same as the abortion issue.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Again, since you don't know the answer to this, and since
| I don't know, why don't we just avoid going down a path
| that we DO know creates pain and misery.
| trasz wrote:
| What makes someone human, or what makes them a person?
|
| It's the mental aspects of humans which matter, not the
| genome; we wouldn't deny human rights to a conscious
| space alien, while we commonly do deny them to non-
| conscious (and not capable of being conscious) beings
| with human DNA, such as zygotes or molar pregnancies.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Pretty sure the, "depends what you think makes us human"
| line was used by quite a few folks to justify enslaving
| and slaughtering various ethnic groups throughout
| history. Since they were lesser or sub human.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| 'Slippery slope' is a pretty poor argument.
|
| I could just as well say the same arguments were made
| against a ton of medical progress we take for granted
| today. People argue that stem cells are genocide, even.
| So what?
| NoOneNew wrote:
| And pure "logic" is a fallacy within itself. Mass
| starvation and pandemic deaths are extremely to justify
| the moment you believe human life is worth zero. Vaccines
| are the enemy because the planet will have a net positive
| with the death of millions of humans. Genocide solves
| climate change, diminishing land resources and
| unemployment.
|
| And dont excuse my language because it is appropriate,
| how in the fuck do people still not understand the
| dangers to slippery slope? How incredibly stupid are you?
| The events leading up to the Holocaust are the modern
| textbook example of philosophies and laws that ramp to
| mass evil action. Pick any murderous tyrant in history
| and every time, they take inch by inch to erode a society
| into a wasteland. No, it's not a poor argument. You're
| ignorant.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Slippery slope is considered a fallacy because not all
| things vaguely similar to previous paths to X result in
| X, obviously. Nobody looks at a well-run public rail
| schedule and thinks 'uh-oh, Fascism is just around the
| corner' [1]. You're conflating your personal strongly
| held beliefs about it with imagined inevitable
| consequences. We don't agree that they're inevitable at
| all.
|
| [1] Popular myth nature of this quip aside.
| hntrader wrote:
| No, it's not true that slippery slopes are automatically
| fallacious, that's a misunderstanding of the fallacy.
|
| The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal
| chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly
| implausible chain will play out with high probability.
|
| The fallacy does _not_ assert that slippery slopes don 't
| exist, and the mere act of arguing that a plausible
| slippery slope has a nontrivial chance of occurring is
| certainly not the Slippery Slope Fallacy as it's formally
| defined. Saying that slippery slopes are inherently
| fallacious may be aptly labelled the "Slippery Slope
| Fallacy Fallacy".
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > The fallacy pertains to people who argue that a causal
| chain will necessarily play out, or that a particularly
| implausible chain will play out with high probability.
|
| Isn't this exactly what I described in that comment? I'm
| confused. Or maybe I was just not clear in my writing.
| Re-emphasized:
|
| > not _all_ things vaguely similar to previous paths to X
| result in X, obviously [= > even though some things do]
|
| Also, I didn't really introduce slippery slope as a
| strict logical fallacy. I said they were making a poor
| argument and identified it as being of slippery slope
| form. They responded to that talking about logical
| fallacies so we went on that tangent, but really I just
| found their specific instance not credibly inevitable.
| hntrader wrote:
| I was just responding to the statement "Slippery slope is
| considered a fallacy", by saying that slippery slope
| arguments aren't necessarily fallacious, but it seems you
| largely agree with that already. I wasn't so much
| endorsing or commenting on the logic in the original
| comment.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| We are trying to be better not worse right? I mean if
| there was no gain at all we wouldn't do any of it but
| we're willing to do things that have plausible arguments
| against them because of the value they bring.
|
| I _think_ that's better then just saying we can't see any
| objections at all. Maybe.
| ericb wrote:
| Yes, and autopsy and anatomical study of cadavers was
| once considered immoral. Just because our lizard-brain
| has a "that's gross" reaction, it doesn't mean it's the
| _right_ reaction. Millions and millions of people are
| alive because of what we learned studying dead bodies.
|
| We are ok unplugging life support if someone is well and
| truly braindead because they aren't a sentient, thinking
| self-aware being at that point. How is this different?
| Show your work. :-)
| snicker7 wrote:
| "Those who look/think differently than me aren't human."
|
| Who does and doesn't count as a human/person are
| questions that we should avoid if at all possible. The
| moral costs of a false negative are tremendous.
|
| Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on
| abortion, the unborn are certainly "human".
| krastanov wrote:
| I am pretty comfortable calling a body without a head or
| brain "not human" (this was what the OP suggested).
|
| > ... the unborn are certainly "human".
|
| You would be surprised how many people would disagree
| with you about that. I personally definitely would not
| call a freshly-fertilized egg in a womb a human. I would
| agree that the fetus just before birth is human. I do not
| have an answer for how far back you have to rewind for
| the unborn fetus to not be human (no one has a universal
| answer to this).
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| More radically, you can also go in the opposite
| direction. Infants have no memories for the first year or
| two. They see upside-down at first. Brain development is
| clearly continuing after birth. So you might be able to
| justify infanticide for some time after birth. I don't
| recommend this, of course.
| hntrader wrote:
| Right, Peter Singer is good on this topic.
|
| There's no sense in assigning value to life as a step
| function, where one nanosecond before it it's
| categorically not human and therefore disposable, yet one
| nanosecond afterwards it's a human and therefore killing
| it is immoral.
|
| It may make practical sense to define laws that pretend
| that it's a step function, but it makes no moral
| reasoning sense.
|
| I lean more towards the "early fetus is valuable" side of
| things, since I view future human life that hasn't been
| experienced yet as valuable. This is, after all, the main
| reason we care about rather nebulous existential risks -
| it'd be a shame if future humans never got the chance to
| exist. We therefore recognize that future human life has
| some value. Also, I'm well aware of the reductio ad
| absurdum that can be levied against my position, but I
| believe that that runs both ways.
| krastanov wrote:
| Another point in support of this (rather horrific and
| terrifying) view is how babies were treated 200 years
| ago. Names were not given at birth, important religious
| events were postponed, etc. Until the parents had some
| reason to believe the baby will survive more than a year
| (which was not all that certain), they were not bestowing
| much humanity on the kid.
| implements wrote:
| Not "who", but "what" is a legitimate question.
|
| Is an egg fertilised by only one parent and genetically
| modified to lack any higher brain structures (and
| therefore any function of mind) still a "human being"?
|
| Can anyone who answers that question with "yes" justify
| it without reference to supernatural beliefs?
| staticman2 wrote:
| I think of my pet cat as a "person". Maybe you think
| that's crazy but I would suggest it's more person-like
| than a fetus, and that therefore I have a better
| definition of person than you are using.
|
| At any rate the real issue is not who is a "person" but
| who is worthy of moral consideration.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > "Those who look/think differently than me aren't
| human."
|
| Sure, if by "think differently" you mean "don't think at
| all". There's a big difference between "eh, Jewish brains
| are not developed like ours" and actual rigor. I'm
| comfortable with the latter.
|
| > Also, regardless of your political or moral beliefs on
| abortion, the unborn are certainly "human".
|
| Well, I think you're manoeuvring around the point here.
| Clearly some combination of life and humanity is what
| matters, depending on what definitions people are
| glossing over at the time. Most people aren't upset by
| autopsies or cadaver work.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| It is _literally_ the same thing as the abortion issue.
| You 'd merely be aborting a cerebrum, to bring about
| brain-death before brain-life can begin. If abortion
| isn't killing, then neither is this.
|
| If you want to support abortion but oppose this, then you
| need to say that a fetus is alive -- is a person with
| some rights -- but that those rights are superseded by a
| woman's absolute bodily autonomy. This would be a
| stronger position: Rather than saying that fetuses aren't
| alive, you'd be saying that women have a right to kill in
| certain circumstances.
|
| We don't even need mechanical wombs to bring these clones
| to term. A woman could gestate her own braindead clone to
| provide organs for herself later in life, or a man could
| work with a female partner or paid surrogate. The only
| missing technology is that needed to allow the braindead
| body to develop from a baby into an adult. We already
| have life support technologies that seem applicable, but
| they've never been applied in this way. Possibly certain
| hormone injections would also be needed, to transition
| through puberty.
|
| This is all so logically clear, and the stakes so high --
| immortality? -- that I'm a little surprised nobody has
| been ruthless enough to attempt it yet.
|
| There used to be Forbidden Cities with water-clocks to
| track the ovulation of concubines. The ancients could
| ruthlessly apply logic. Moderns seem not to. I guess it's
| about avoiding retaliation.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I'm not sure it's quite immortality but yes, the stakes
| are pretty high. It seems likely that you'd not go public
| if you did this, though, so it's possible someone has
| already tried.
|
| There are probably people ruthless enough and resourced
| enough that they might just grow a perfectly normal (i.e.
| full brain development) human and harvest them anyway. If
| you're rich through (say) organized crime already, what's
| the difference when it's your life at stake?
|
| Ostensibly the only issues for those people are lead time
| (they'd need to plan ahead of critical illness) and
| sustaining a minor conspiracy (paying off the medical
| team and surrogate, managing trust, or just cleaning up
| loose ends).
| recuter wrote:
| You could just bribe yourself unto an organ donors list
| in some country. This isn't anywhere close to immortality
| it just conceivably makes the line shorter for some
| surgeries.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| We're talking about growing a clone of yourself, so
| significantly better outcomes than a random donor.
| Tossitto wrote:
| I've got to wonder about the level of experimentation it
| takes to get to the point where you can actually
| effectively create a genuinely braindead, but otherwise
| wholly functional human unit. From a genetics standpoint,
| I believe it's a fractaline system, meaning recursive
| elements, which is (and quite probably wrongly) to say
| that removing one piece of DNA, or favorably altering it
| to fit the outcome, could result in unexpected outcomes
| in the development of other necessary components. Like,
| there's a good deal of the endocrine system that's tucked
| away in the brain, delete the PFC and what results? We
| don't understand consciousness to the degree this demands
| for a "truly ethical" criterion anyways; and that may be
| a moot point, as it may be beyond comprehension. And
| that's discounting a lot of other things. Are organs
| grown in vitro adapted to actual use? What about
| epigenetics and possible incompatibilities generated by
| them? For major endocrine organs, what kind of reaction
| will the whole have receiving a 1:1 transplant with a 20
| year old liver in an 80 year old? And so on...
| hpoe wrote:
| You mean like China is doing to the Uighers right now...
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Intentional attempt to court controversy aside, I'm not
| sure it matches up to this discussion thread.
|
| Even if you believe China is harvesting the organs of
| what they consider undesirables, the parallel accusation
| is that they are _reducing_ the Uyghur birth rate, not
| _breeding_ them for the purpose.
|
| Also, strictly speaking, the organ harvesting conspiracy
| theory is more about Falun Gong than the Uyghurs.
| krastanov wrote:
| I think you missed the "without a brain" part of that
| sentence. Growing a headless or brainless copy of myself
| for spare parts seems like a great idea without ethical
| issues.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| If replacement parts are the goal then the best course
| would be to learn how cells decide to develop into those
| specific organs and then apply that knowledge to produce
| the part needed without attaching a whole human to it. It
| would conceivably be faster, less wasteful, and perhaps
| easier than figuring out how to ethically produce a
| consciousness free human.
| dnautics wrote:
| how about we split the difference and grow headless
| clones and put an electrical brain inside of them as
| hordes of cyborg soldiers?
| krastanov wrote:
| Actually, if you get that electrical brain to run a
| simulation of my mortal biological brain, I would totally
| sign up for this at the age of 50 or 60 (coupled with
| euthanasia of the biological brain, and solving some
| legal questions about the humanity of the electrical
| simulation of my biological brain).
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think you can go bigger than that for potential
| positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a
| [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for
| example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Ah, I was aware it was vaguely about cloning but I haven't
| read it yet. Sounds like I'll enjoy it then.
| tener wrote:
| Brain is kind of critical though. Might be easier and more
| efficient to just grow single targeted organs.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Eh, not really.
|
| There was a very funny old sci-fi story about scientists on
| some kind of space colony who just ... wanted fresh milk.
| And the point of the story was just how much of the actual
| cow they had to replicate (in semi-isolated containers) to
| end up making that milk.
|
| So you want an organ, sure, but you're going to need
| something like blood flowing through it so it doesn't just
| flat up die. That means that it is going to need oxygen --
| so you're stuck replicating some kind of pulmonary system,
| and then you're going to need to put various nutrients in
| it, and then you're going to need to remove waste products,
| so you're definitely getting a liver and a kidney out of
| that ... and then just making the red blood cells requires
| bone marrow ...
|
| My guess is that anacephalacy would be studied and
| replicated to grow humans with only a minimal brainstem,
| with probably a nubbin of various hormonal systems tacked
| on. We could get to that a lot faster, I think, than single
| organs.
| tener wrote:
| Sounds difficult if you want to replicate organs 1-1, but
| what makes sense for human/animal bodies isn't
| necessarily the best way for labs. Maybe a single large
| biochemical reactor can solve half of those issues? There
| are already well established procedures for growing cell
| cultures and multiple startups that want to grow muscles
| (meat) or other organs. I don't know details - not my
| field - but pretty sure a large part of those seemingly
| hard problems are already solved/worked around.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Sure, but presumably only the lower functions? So below
| some threshold that makes us feel less 'icky'.
| hinkley wrote:
| That line moves all the time. Be careful what you start.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| The line of what's required to make organs grow seems way
| lower than the level of consciousness that people are
| happy factory farming when it comes to animals. I'm not
| sure that will change much.
|
| People find humans extra 'icky', I'll concede. But
| abstracted in the above terms, I don't find it really
| worrisome. Politically difficult, sure, but that's a
| different question.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > That line moves all the time. Be careful what you
| start.
|
| Yeah. It's probably easier and more efficient to just
| raise the clones with intact brains, and just
| indoctrinate them to believe that dying so their organs
| can be harvested is their purpose and is noble and right.
| Then the organs can take care of themselves while they
| grow, requiring less staff. Any moral qualms the rest of
| the world may have could be addressed with some lie about
| how the clones have had done to them to make them
| subhuman.
|
| Seriously considering the idea of cloning people for
| organs is just inviting a nightmarish crime against
| humanity.
| March172021 wrote:
| I would imagine the situation with divorces and forced child
| support would improve drastically.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| All time hilarity if the most accurate prediction of the future
| ends up being Star Wars Episode II.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| An army of super soldiers would still take somewhere around 20
| years to produce, and would cost a substantial amount of money.
| Said army would certainly not come as a surprise to anyone.
| martin-adams wrote:
| I genuinely think that we'll have robot soldiers trained with
| an advancement of machine learning.
| jkinudsjknds wrote:
| We will (already do) have robotic weapons. Building robotic
| soldiers would be pretty pointless. A prime example of trying
| to remake a process with new tech rather than redesigning the
| process.
| m00x wrote:
| Robotic advancements are much faster than this and humans have
| to be trained, fed, etc.
|
| It would be a fools gambit to try to achieve such a goal
| instead of just making a robotic army where they can easily be
| manufactured and immediately ready for combat.
| telotortium wrote:
| https://archive.is/42NR8
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/lht5x
| gfodor wrote:
| It's pretty cancellable to say because many people fail to agree
| moral questions are in-part grounded in technological
| capabilities of the current era, but in a world of artificial
| wombs and low-risk transfer from mother into them then it seems
| likely that those living in that society will illegalize the
| choice to kill vs transfer. Seems likely to be the case in ~100
| years since there is a medical need to develop and perfect such
| technologies to save lives in situations where a child will die
| in the womb if not rescued.
| schreiaj wrote:
| So, we're gonna make abortion illegal and expect women to
| undergo a substantially higher risk procedure?
|
| Still raises question of who is raising that child... and the
| societal implications of true orphans.
| gfodor wrote:
| No, the assumption in this scenario is the risk to the mother
| between the two procedures is the same.
| Stupulous wrote:
| It's a little presumptive to say substantially higher risk,
| there's no way to know what technology will look like in 100+
| years. I think it's a fairly reasonable guess to say that 100
| years from now, there will be negligible to no risk in
| undergoing any medical procedures that are common today. I
| think a technical solution to abortion is more likely in that
| time than a cultural one.
|
| I'm making that prediction based on current development.
| Factor in the likelihood of AGI, and you're potentially
| looking at an entirely alien reality.
|
| Alternately, we've peaked or nearly peaked and we'll stall
| out in a few decades. I think this is highly unlikely but not
| impossible.
|
| You can imagine a farmer in 1000AD hearing that we'll ban
| slavery in the future and thinking, "Awful, only the rich
| will be able to afford food."
| Stupulous wrote:
| Can't edit from here, but wanted to add:
|
| Birth control developments will probably be the dominant
| factor in this area going forward. Someone will develop a
| way to control your fertility on the fly, and the issue
| will nearly evaporate (deliberate but regretted pregnancies
| and whatever the failure rate of the tech is will remain).
| External wombs will have a place as a voluntary procedure
| for women who want children without going through pregnancy
| and for gay male couples.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Imagine a likely future of technological ease (but not post-
| scarcity) led by a gerontocracy imperiled by rapid
| depopulation and austerity. There will be immense pressure
| both from secular and religious sides to develop new
| childcare assistance and replacement systems if it means
| encouraging more souls to be born and to carry on
| society/progress. It will probably be a combination of plush
| parent/foster benefits, collectivization of care into
| academies, and robotics.
|
| They may even develop new embryos in vitro from random (or
| designed) combinations, completely besides the abortion
| question. The looming birth rate deficit is far larger than
| the amount of abortions.
| purjolok wrote:
| Whether it be by international adoption, IVF or surrogacy,
| couples are willing to _pay_ $10,000s to become parents.
|
| Finding families for those kids would not be an issue, rather
| the contrary.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Finding families for those kids would not be an issue
|
| Having known a few people who have tried to adopt children
| in the US, I can say that the process seems like its full
| of issues.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| The ethics concerns of this should be put right up there with
| genetic modification.
| hoseja wrote:
| Yeah, into a dumpster. These taboos will blindside us sooner or
| later.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| It's not like animals can feel suffering right.
| wcoenen wrote:
| I see some concerns with using humans to incubate babies as
| well.
|
| During her 2 pregnancies, my wife permanently lost most of her
| sense of smell, had a lower leg clot, and apparently a clot in
| her hip. That last one was only discovered a few years later
| when it turned out that the cartilage in her left hip joint was
| completely gone and she needed a hip replacement at a young
| age.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Artificial wombs would be great if they work well, but what
| are the odds that the initial designs will work well when
| actually tested on humans?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If it works well with other large mammals, what do you
| think would be the problem with humans? We aren't that
| different.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| That we aren't that different is why there's an ethical
| problem.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Unless the prenatal environment for a human is the same
| as say, for a gorilla, so that a gorilla could be a
| surrogate parent for a human, I wouldn't expect the
| animal testing to be an acceptable way to know how a
| human baby would turn out.
|
| I also imagine it's pretty difficult to do mental health
| screening on a gorilla, let alone extrapolate to whether
| a human baby would turn out physically okay but mentally
| not so great.
| konjin wrote:
| Who cares? We abort babies for no reason at all today if
| they are in a woman. We should be able to do the same if
| they are not in a woman.
| kaybe wrote:
| One of the best arguments for allowing abortion is that
| we do not force anyone to risk their integrity and life
| for another person, which is what pregnancy is. This
| argument won't work anymore.
| konjin wrote:
| Yes, it will be wonderful to have equality of the sexes
| again. If women don't want to pay child support they
| should just not have unprotected sex, like men.
|
| Or we do the sane thing and stop treating clumps of cells
| like people.
| rory wrote:
| What if the problems aren't clear until the child is
| born? Or a toddler, or a teen? There's still a lot we
| don't understand about prenatal environment and how it
| contributes to the attributes someone has as an adult.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Indeed, we should start warming up to both, because we see
| what's happening when every other technology is accelerating
| and creating a dangerously overconnected world while biotech
| has not caught up.
| tombert wrote:
| You're not wrong, but I do see a lot of positives. There are a
| lot of people who want to have kids, but for a variety of
| medical, personal, or social reasons cannot have one. It would
| be really cool to be able to open the door to parenthood to
| more people that want it.
| krastanov wrote:
| Technologically, I am excited. But the idea of using in-vitro
| fertilization or mechanical wombs when at the same time there
| are many orphans in need of a family is very unpleasant,
| borderline immoral to me. I know some people feel the need to
| have kids that share their own DNA, but I personally do not
| have much respect for people wanting kids but at the same
| time imposing such a constraint on themselves.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| The beauty of a free society is that people can live life
| according to their values. You can adopt instead of having
| kids since you care so much about orphans, and people who
| care about the DNA thing can have their own kids. Forcing
| people to adopt would be as bad as forcing you to have kids
| via copulation.
| krastanov wrote:
| I completely agree, please do not use phrasing suggesting
| otherwise. There are plenty of behaviors I am judgemental
| of, that does not mean I would try to infringe on
| people's ability to perform those behaviors. I was just
| trying to explain why people like me would be
| disappointed by certain development.
| konjin wrote:
| No one is stopping you from adopting if you have such a
| problem with it.
| krastanov wrote:
| I think you are reading too much in my message. Me
| disapproving of someone's life choices does not mean I do
| not think they have the right to make those choices.
| Neither have I shared anything about my parenting plans.
| A knee-jerk negative quip does not help in such a
| conversation.
| telotortium wrote:
| We're still quite a ways for using this process for anything much
| bigger than a mouse - right now the nutrients are being supplied
| entirely via diffusion, without a working blood supply:
|
| > At Day 11 of development -- more than halfway through a mouse
| pregnancy -- Dr. Hanna and his colleagues examined the embryos,
| only the size of apple seeds, and compared them to those
| developing in the uteruses of living mice. The lab embryos were
| identical, the scientists found.
|
| > By that time, though, the lab-grown embryos had become too
| large to survive without a blood supply. They had a placenta and
| a yolk sack, but the nutrient solution that fed them through
| diffusion was no longer sufficient.
|
| > Getting past that hurdle is the next goal, Dr. Hanna said in an
| interview. He is considering using an enriched nutrient solution
| or an artificial blood supply that connects to the embryos'
| placentas.
| rarefied_tomato wrote:
| To avoid reliance on a living output, perhaps synthetic red
| blood cells would be used in such a fluid.
|
| https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2020/...
| Jugglerofworlds wrote:
| Could this be used to help save endangered species?
| eye8one2 wrote:
| Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
| miguelmota wrote:
| Humans aren't going to stop consuming meat any time soon. It
| makes sense to try create more efficient 'farms' to minimize
| waste and engineer meat without a central nervous system.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| We do what we must because we can.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| There some less-ethically challenging reasons, explained well
| in their nature paper, namely that using controlled environment
| they learn a ton of things about how embryos grow
|
| > The ability to remove a mammalian embryo from the uterine
| environment and grow it normally in controlled conditions
| constitutes a powerful tool to characterize the effect of
| different perturbations on development during the period from
| gastrulation to organogenesis, that can be combined with
| genetic modification, chemical screens, tissue manipulation and
| microscopy methods
| boxed wrote:
| We really should though. If we can get this to work it would
| mean we could save lots of species that are endangered.
| Elephants and rhinos come to mind.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| unless those species are dying because of human activity, why
| would we want to save them?
| rory wrote:
| Because elephants and rhinos are cool and interesting, and
| their existence doesn't cause substantial harm to us or the
| planet. Do we really need another reason?
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I don't think there's an ecosystem left that is free from
| influence from human activity so you would have to include
| all of them for that reason alone. Preserving genetic
| diversity is probably a good enough reason, you never know
| when that next asteroid is due.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| genetic diversity for its own sake is hard to justify as
| a goal, or else indeed we wouldnt be fighting this virus
| to extinction
| bpodgursky wrote:
| This is so trite. How do you feel about artificial legs?
| Hearts?
|
| There are a lot of women who would love to have children, but
| have PCOS, hysterectomies, or other problems becoming pregnant
| naturally. Why is it totally OK for me to wear glasses, half
| the country to have an artificial hip, but totally 100%
| unnatural and terrible for women to use an artificial womb?
| Sporktacular wrote:
| It's not if it's developed ethically. The price of this
| research is often paid by the suffering of countless animals.
| Aa externality that may be slightly less odious if it is at
| least there to reduce our suffering, not simply cash in on
| making more humans.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't think you understand the human condition (or how to
| think outside your own life) if you think that infertility
| doesn't count as suffering.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Trying for a kid with my partner actually. It doesn't
| mean we're entitled to one or that my child will have
| more of a right to exist than 100s of some other mammals.
|
| And I think it's clear that I am considering more than
| just my own life.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I personally believe your child has more right to exist
| than 1 mouse, 1,000 mice, or 1,000,000 mice.
|
| People are people. It's a different bar, and I'm not
| going to equate people lives with animal lives.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| There's literally a part of the article that expounds on
| how this could reduce or eliminate the need to sacrifice
| mice when studying certain domains.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| And if its development requires the sacrifice of as many
| mice as it saves then it only breaks even. Ethically,
| that case hasn't been made. And what comes out shouldn't
| suffer.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Why not? I'd like to live as long as possible, and I'm not
| squeamish about life forms with consciousness at the level of
| what we eat every day.
|
| You're free not to use the outputs if you have personal
| objections.
| mrfinn wrote:
| Well, if media is making us aware that scientists are already
| doing this using mices, you can be pretty sure that by now,
| at some random place in the world, somebody is already trying
| it using human fetuses. Oh boy how quickly we are running
| into the dystopia.
| konjin wrote:
| The dystopia of gender equality, where a women don't have
| to spend 9 months being a life support system in their
| 20s/30s.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I'm not sure it really plays out like that. At least the
| 'monkeys and typewriters' scale setup is not there, I
| think.
|
| Maybe if you asked me five years ago, I'd have ventured
| that China will try some out-there genetic stuff with some
| successes, but we haven't really seen much. And (not to get
| into politics) but China is not too concerned about
| traditional Western ethical boundaries, it seems.
| staticman2 wrote:
| There's nothing unethical about artificial wombs if they
| work well, it's the whole "just because I can build it
| doesn't mean it will result in a healthy baby" aspect where
| the problem lies.
| mrfinn wrote:
| The whole issue is unethical as... For starters, to reach
| the "work well" status is going to require a ton of
| failures, at any level of the "pregnancy". Anyway, any
| possible concern we could express about it doesn't matter
| at all, somebody is going to do it. Of course it won't be
| shown in the news.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| And other people aren't squeamish about murder or genocide.
| Just because one person, or you, aren't squeamish about
| something doesn't make it right for society. That's why we
| look to history and anticipate possible future consequences
| and make decisions about current regulations based on the
| future we want to bring about.
|
| I prefer a future without harvesting humans for the members
| of dynasties that can afford it, while those with ethics are
| left behind or destroyed.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| 300 years ago: I'm not squeamish about life forms with
| consciousness at the level of what we enslave every day.
|
| The cases aren't the same, but the lazy callousness is.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| The difference is, we know that slaves have equally
| developed consciousness. So that wasn't based in fact.
|
| Animals don't have human-level consciousness. We're not
| going to discover some day that they do.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| We know animals are not as smart as us. That doesn't
| necessary tell us anything about consciousness. We have
| no way to measure consciousness so your claim about
| "human-level consciousness" (whatever that means) is just
| speculation.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Prove it - we do't understand consciousness enough to
| make such claims. Or at least have the wisdom to apply
| the precautionary principle when you don't know.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Proof is a Math thing. I'm comfortable with the weight of
| evidence from all the tests we devise for this purpose,
| combined with the fact we actively strive to show the
| consciousness of animals in a way we never did with
| slaves. You're free to disagree and consider it hubris,
| many animal rights activists do.
|
| N.B. I don't believe we fully understand consciousness.
| Just that factory farm animal consciousness is
| categorically not at a human level.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Proof is a Math _and Logic_ thing.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| If we're being pedantic, I just consider Logic a branch
| of Mathematics.
| pretendscholar wrote:
| Isn't it the other way around?
| Sporktacular wrote:
| If it's about reason and what we can know, it belongs to
| epistemology. Since you're being categorical.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| and I consider mathematics a branch of logic
| Sporktacular wrote:
| What are you talking about?? Only the conscious can feel
| pain now? Or the misery of being separated from its
| nursing offspring? Results of all of these things
| measurably correlate with human hormonal and
| physiological responses. Again what are you talking
| about???
|
| It's a science, not a 'math thing'. Yours in an old
| fashioned conservative retreat into avoiding reason or
| ethical considerations.
|
| BTW I don't consider myself an activist.
| hntrader wrote:
| Their first point is one of epistemology. You asked them
| to prove it but that's outside of the scope of science.
| Proof is deductive and certain, whereas science (outside
| of math) is empirical and only asymptotes on certainty as
| theories remain unrefuted. Scientists have theories that
| can at best converge on truth and don't think in terms of
| proof.
|
| This notwithstanding, the ethical concerns seem
| premature. Shouldn't we wait for information on an actual
| concrete proposal? Perhaps it can be done with very
| little of the brain and when coupled with FMRI we can be
| sure enough that it isn't experiencing conscious states.
| But all this seems premature and subject to the actual
| details.
| anticensor wrote:
| Why do that when you can easily go for female-to-female cloning
| in woman's own womb?
| Tossitto wrote:
| It's a brave new world.
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments.
| Tossitto wrote:
| I'm not quite sure how you've come upon the conclusion that
| it's in any manner "unsubstantive", the comment is in fact
| underpinned by a well-known classical novel, which almost
| exactingly describes this machine and this process in a
| distant future. Moreover it calls upon the subject matter
| quite directly, as the article suggests that it may in the
| future be adapted to humans, which is a particularly strong
| narrative element in "Brave New World" and through the device
| a number of, what are now at least, morally objectionable
| means and ends. E.g. the deliberate destruction of faculties
| through ethanol and hormone inoculation of fetuses in vitro,
| which is utilized to simplify the conditioning used in the
| fictional caste system. It also acts to alienate children and
| adults, which is also used as a mechanism for conditioning by
| desensitizing the adults to what is described as a fairly
| torturous process.
|
| Considering the level of alignment in general trends to the
| thematic aspects of the book, and considering the possible
| applications of this technology and its further development;
| even if it is mothballed for experimentation in human
| subjects now, still presents the hypothetical and moral
| hazards that Huxley proposed. These are all certainly points
| for discussion, and I'm sure others could corroborate even
| more interesting interpretations of possible and probable
| outcomes both positive and negative from "Brave New World"
| alongside other novels, literature of a more scientific
| nature, as well as philosophy. But since you assert it's
| "unsubstantive", I yield to your discretion.
| alacombe wrote:
| The whole point is to avoid discussions and eliminate any
| concepts of either ethics or morality to be able to more
| easily control societies.
|
| The very root of progressivism / post-modernism / cultural-
| marxism is to prevent the idea of _meaning_ and allow to
| redefine anything on the fly to fit the current interest of
| the Party. Today 's Truth being different from yesterday's,
| which of course never existed and will prone you to
| cancellation.
| dang wrote:
| Simply dropping the name of a novel, especially in a
| context where the name is a cliche, without adding any
| information is obviously an unsubstantive comment. If you
| had filled in some of your additional thoughts around it,
| then it would have been more substantive.
|
| People often assume that an internet comment contains more
| information than it does because they're familiar with the
| surrounding thoughts in their own mind. But the rest of us,
| of course, don't have access to any of those. You have to
| share them explicitly.
| leshokunin wrote:
| Bring on the axtotl tanks!
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