Could the moment be approaching when little humans will emerge from artificial wombs? More and more research teams promise a breakthrough in a field that may turn out to be the answer to low birth rates in the Western world.
But are we ready for a time when parents can watch together as their baby grows in a high-tech incubator? Not just technologically, but emotionally…
Robot Mother
Few scientific disciplines have come as far over the past 40 years as reproductive medicine. If we go back a little further, about a century, we see that infant mortality was horrifying. Gradually things changed, and more children survived the critical months thanks to neonatology.
Then the very process of conception changed forever. In vitro fertilization gave a chance at life to many children who could not otherwise have been conceived. And then came surrogacy; it even turned out that a woman doesn't have to be pregnant to have a child of her own.
And yet the economically developed part of the world is melting away. For reasons that clearly have little to do with the technology of reproduction itself and have much deeper and broader roots, birth rates in developed countries are falling, and gradually the same is happening in other countries as they join the list.
Recently Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin turned their attention to the subject, and media attention followed. There was talk that the trend might be reversed thanks to an expected breakthrough that would make pregnancy unnecessary.
Life Is a Miracle
Prenatal education is a fascinating subject. There is serious evidence that while a baby is in its mother's belly, it takes in a huge share of the information coming from outside, and that information shapes it as an individual. It learns the language its parents speak, it gets used to their voices…
Today quite a few children come out of a womb that is not their mother's. Surrogacy became possible shortly after it turned out that there was no problem with a baby being conceived in a test tube rather than in the usual way… I mean the stork, of course.
In Bulgaria surrogacy is banned, except on objective medical grounds. Among celebrities in the West and the East, however, it is common practice. Yes, the baby has a mom and a dad; it's simply born from another woman's womb.
In some countries it's a business: young women decide it's a sensible way to secure a decent income, and the law allows it.
Now that there are plenty of children whose mothers never carried them “in their belly”… the next step seems logical. Let's build an artificial womb.
The Night Gives Birth from a Dead Womb…
The other medical specialty involved, neonatology, is advancing quickly too. Today specialists manage to save premature babies weighing a few hundred grams, tiny people no bigger than a hand's span, who a few decades ago would have had no chance…
The questions are meeting their answers. By all appearances, technology will soon allow babies to grow in an artificial environment. The bigger problem seems to be this: are we psychologically ready for that moment? Will it be the factor that reverses the birth rate trend? And at what price?
The occasion for talking about this came from one of the most interesting figures of our time. On his beloved Twitter, Elon Musk regularly posts crude jokes or claims that suddenly send a company's stock soaring. And sometimes he simply shares his views on the future of humanity, with the typical self-assurance of a court of last resort.
One such day was January 20 of this year, when Musk sparked the debate about artificial wombs. It began with the observation that demographics are humanity's biggest problem, and that because of them there will soon be no people left to send into space. Musk cited forecasts according to which the Earth's population will grow until the middle of the century and by its end will fall back to current levels. Over that time, however, Europe, Japan and China will be left with drastically smaller populations.
The Stork Retires
Nobody can accuse him, at least, of not doing everything in his power. He has seven children and shows no sign of slowing down. But as Musk also told The Wall Street Journal: “I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birth rate. And yet, so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It's completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers—if people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”
Sahil Lavingia, founder of the e-commerce platform Gumroad, chimed in on Twitter. He mentioned artificial wombs as a possible solution to falling birth rates. Another familiar hero of Digital Stories joined the discussion, Ethereum's creator Vitalik Buterin, who noted that synthetic wombs would ease the heavy social burden of pregnancy and reduce inequality. Buterin attached a chart that clearly shows how pregnancy affects women's pay today.
The fact is indisputable. Even in the United States, which has long fought for gender equality, women earn on average 79 percent of what men take home. In Japan the figure is 73 percent. Plenty of studies show that the cause is the period of pregnancy, which is entirely logical. Everyone has seen examples of this around them.
Mama Robot
According to Anna Smajdor, a professor of bioethics, pregnancy is barbaric. “If there were any other condition that caused such problems, we would classify it as a very serious illness.” This, in her view, is precisely what gives scientists a moral imperative to keep working on ectogenesis, as the scientific field aimed at creating an artificial womb is also called.
Yes, you will rarely hear politicians talk about such things, because the very idea still seems too strange. And yet, if it comes true, it could solve serious social and medical problems.
We already understand conception outside the human body well enough, and we can also care for a baby born much earlier than expected. All that remains is “simply” to cover the period in between.
Of course, it's anything but simple, because the mother's womb is a perfect creation of nature, the one that allows us to be on this planet at all.
Many teams are actively working on the subject, and news comes from all corners of the world. And although the big step doesn't yet seem very close, there is no shortage of curious details.
Born to Run
By tradition, the first serious progress comes with lab animals. In March of last year, a team of Israeli scientists reported that they had kept mouse embryos alive in an artificial uterus for a full 11 days. That's more than half the gestation period of our squeaking friends, which lasts 20 days.
This year perhaps the most interesting news on the subject came from China. Scientists from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology announced that they are working seriously on the endeavor.
Among the curious details of their project is the involvement of artificial intelligence. The idea is that in its early stages, the embryo needs constantly changing and ultra-precisely maintained conditions in order to develop. The first weeks, when we turn from a fertilized egg into an ever larger and more human-like being, are full of complex processes that require careful delivery of the right substances, exact temperature and all kinds of conditions.
This is where the artificial intelligence comes in, which the Chinese scientists are counting on to control the parameters. The machine has a “bandolier” of fine tubes that deliver the necessary substances, plus a special device for supplying oxygen. For now it, too, works with rodents, and it's hard to say how long it might take to get permission for trials with humans.
In its article on the subject, the South China Morning Post noted that “mass ‘production’ of babies in an artificial womb factory could help maintain population numbers in a country whose citizens are reluctant to have children.” But at the same time it asked: “What might the social and psychological consequences be?” Interestingly, despite the demographic problems looming ever larger in China, surrogacy is not permitted there either so far.
Both Father and Mother
A team from the Netherlands has also been working in this field for years. In 2019 the specialists predicted that the artificial womb would be a reality within a decade, by 2029.
How close the breakthrough is, it's hard to say. Both because of the technology and because of regulation.
Of course, the whole pregnancy doesn't necessarily have to take place in such “devices.” Research on the subject could also help save many more babies who come into the world so early that medicine so far has been powerless. Today the 24th week of pregnancy is considered the critical point that largely determines the chances of survival.
Work in this direction has been going on since the 1950s. A laboratory in Philadelphia experimenting with lambs has made serious progress. As we remember from good old Dolly the sheep, these animals are an important stage in scientific research.
It looks shocking the first time you see the artificial womb in which the bleating little creatures develop. They are removed by cesarean section shortly after the midpoint of pregnancy, at a stage equivalent to the critical human 23rd to 24th week. The placenta is replaced by an oxygenator connected to the umbilical cord. Nutrients are also delivered through it, and carbon dioxide is taken away.
In a word: inside something resembling a plastic bag, you can see a baby lamb growing. The neonatologists and zoologists working on the study say there has been serious progress that could be applied to humans as well.
Robot Midwives' Day
Many of the prejudices have a basis. For instance, the purely everyday risks. A great many of the curses with which we in the Balkans express our attitude toward the world—most of them involving someone's mother—will have to change their meaning. It becomes even less likely that we'll get a new Stoichkov, after Hristo Stoichkov, the Bulgarian football legend as famous for his foul mouth as for his goals.
But joking aside, it's important to keep the psychological consequences in mind. And even more so those that come with the possible next steps. It's wonderful that women will have much more time to work, time that today goes to pregnancy, but… then why not go straight to building robots to look after our children while we work?
The baby incubator may give women a chance to work much longer, but it will put those who decide to give birth to their children themselves at a serious disadvantage. Meanwhile the hot spot in the labor market will shift from pregnancy and childbirth to child-rearing. And in many countries maternity leave is already horrifyingly short.
And what about the benefits of breastfeeding in the first months of a baby's life?
The claim that the family is the basic cell of society may sound like a socialist-era slogan, but it is actually Aristotle's idea. And the family is also one of the most conservative elements of everything that makes us human. How will it fare in the future, when babies start emerging from artificial wombs? The answer is clearly not simple, but it is directly tied to our future as a species…
