US regulators will consider clinical trials of a system that mimics the womb, which could reduce deaths and disability for babies born extremely preterm.
Around 100 years ago there was only somewhere in the ballpark of 2 billion people on the planet. Today at roughly 8 billion, half the people could disappear and we’d still be overpopulated.
And people wonder why the climate is changing so rapidly. It’s not only the fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses, it’s also overpopulation.
The planet ain’t getting any bigger just because people wanna make a surplus of babies. We already have enough, how about let’s allow birth rates to slide a bit for a while?
I think this is worth pursuing not because of population concerns but for the simple fact that child birth is still a fairly dangerous thing to go through for both the mother and child. If we had a viable option for reproduction that didn’t require women to go through child birth that could have a profound impact on both women’s mortality as well as infant mortality. It also as pointed out in the article could help preterm survival rates.
They’ve done decoded the human DNA sequence right? Well can’t they just make genetically modified women that fixes the narrow birth canal issue?
You know, like utilize our knowledge of DNA to fix known issues as such, while still encouraging natural biological processes?
Tell ya what though, if I found out I was grown in a bag in a laboratory, I’d flip the fuck out. You want more people with psychological issues, go ahead, start growing people in a lab…
That’s not really how that works. There’s not a section in one’s DNA that codes for bones, rather there are sections that code for proteins that get involved in chemical reactions that begin building bones themselves. DNA codes for chemicals that when they come together at the right time produce your fingers for example. It’s not that the DNA codes for a 32mm birth canal it just codes for the proper chemicals to come together to begin developing what will eventually become the birth canal.
So editing the DNA to modify a particular physical aspect is not just reprogramming a new number somewhere in the DNA, it’s coding for more expression of particular chemicals to come together. But like anything, adding more reactions can have various side effects, having those chemicals linger for too long and the tissue may eventually become too frail to even give birth to begin with.
You know, like utilize our knowledge of DNA to fix known issues as such
And that’s easier said than done. Editing DNA isn’t something we regularly do and when it is done, it’s usually done on something simple because editing usually results in a 99% loss. Long story short, editing haploids (and most likely male sperm) is going to be the primary means for germline genetic editing that “might” be passed on to children because most people are not ethically okay with attempting to edit embryos with a 99% failure rate.
But editing haploids doesn’t assure that the trait will be conveyed to the offspring. During combination some of the genetic material is mixed around in a sort random fashion. So that new trail could get mixed around and now you’ve coded for a pregnancy that might end in miscarriage or even worse, might not.
It’s really complicated and incredibly error prone to edit DNA. Which is why it is mostly done with sperm, yeast, bacteria, and what not. Things that if we kill 99% of it, isn’t some big ethical concern. Editing an embryo is like rolling ten million dice and every single one of them have to land on six otherwise you’ve just doomed that person. That’s not an impossible thing, just a highly improbable thing and no one is really comfortable with those odds from an ethical standpoint. We’re not really good at editing DNA correctly the first time, but given enough of something, we can eventually have success. So if the odds are one in a million and you have 500 million of something, then you’ve got really good odds at success.
So you should keep that in mind when you think about editing DNA. Even if we got really good at knowing which genes to express and which ones to repress (which we’re not even there yet), putting in those changes that would actually make it to the offspring would also be monumental. So yeah, we’re not anywhere near where I think you think science is at.
start growing people in a lab
I also commented elsewhere about this notion. But also, even if we did have an artificial womb today, it’s likely going to be in the NICU of your local hospital and not some laboratory. Because an artificial womb, as I indicated in my other comment, would only really be for preterm births greater than 22 weeks gestation, which is way better than what we get with incubators that only give moderate success rates at 28 to 32 weeks gestation and are ideally for 32 to 37 weeks gestation.
Well, if you read the article, you’d know that this isn’t about artificially inflating the population, but helping preterm infants survive. So are you saying that you’re all for preterm infants dying when we have the means to allow them to survive? In addition preterm infants often have lifelong medical issues, some of which will drastically shorten their lives.
You’d “flip the fuck out” if you were born in a bag in a laboratory, but wouldn’t flip the fuck out if you were born out of your mom’s genetically modified bag? Why force lifelong gene alteration on 50% of the population because you don’t feel good about where you might have spent 9 months you’d never remember?
I suspect the narrow birth canal issue is a result of evolutionary trade offs. Sure, you might be able to engineer a wider birth canal but doing so without impacting your ability to walk might be challenging.
Have you ever seen some of those natural large hip women out there? They don’t have any trouble walking (excluding the extremely wide/obese of course).
I’m not even talking about engineering artificial DNA, more like copy over a few genes from known reasonably healthy women that haven’t had any issues giving birth.
Tell ya what though, if I found out I was grown in a bag in a laboratory, I’d flip the fuck out. You want more people with psychological issues, go ahead, start growing people in a lab…
Why? What difference does it make? I’d have no problem with that. In fact I’d think that’s pretty cool. Would you freak out if you found out you were delivered via cesarian section? I’m not really seeing how this is much different.
You know, like utilize our knowledge of DNA to fix known issues as such, while still encouraging natural biological processes?
I would love to see us do that and in fact I think that’s the direction we need to go if we’re going to survive as a species. The big thing we need to watch out for is that we don’t start developing into a monoculture. We need to maintain a certain amount of diversity or else we open ourselves up to being wiped out by a single pathogen or disaster.
Ultimately our medical knowledge is getting too good. Genetic disorders that would have been death sentences 200 years ago are just mild inconveniences now and so those genetic defects are starting to proliferate. We need to utilize genetic tech to fix those obvious problems, while also not going overboard and classifying unusual variations as defects to be fixed which would ultimately result in the monoculture problem I discussed previously.
Ultima our medical knowledge is getting too good. Genetic disorders that would have been death sentences 200 years ago are just mild inconveniences now and so those genetic defects are starting to proliferate.
If those genetic defects are no longer a problem, why do we need to “fix” them? You’re getting dangereously close to eugenics here, buddy.
Because we’re not fixing the problems, only treating the symptoms. Those genetic defects becoming more widespread means that the extreme cases become more popular as well, which will, while they are still manageable, be inherited to the next generation. Eventually defects will reach a point where they are just bad enough to be treatable for most people but still crippling to a good portion. Take bad eyesight for example, if no gene manipulation takes place, eventually most people will need glasses or surgery to fix the inconvenience. Unfortunately at hat point some people will have eyesight so bad that neither glasses nor surgery can fix the, at that level, crippling defect. The issue here is that an average increase in mild incenvience means also an increase in extreme cases of the inconveniences. And I don’t think it’s in the best interest of anyone to work towards more crippled people. Not because cripples are somehow subhuman but because being crippled means a life filled with needless suffering. Being able to bypass deaths due to these minor issues saves lifes, unfortunately it can also mean that more people will die/suffer far worse effects than if we never had invented remedies for these problems.
I think long term, despite ethical issues, meddling with our DNA to get rid of known defects is better than letting nature run its course.
Basically what Neshura said, but here’s some more context. Survivable is not the same thing as no longer a problem. I’m diabetic, it is 100% survivable, but it has also had a profound impact on my life. One of the things I have to consider when trying to decide if I have a child is if I want to risk passing this disease on to them. It’s not 100% guaranteed my child would have diabetes because my wife doesn’t, but it’s a pretty good chance. If I had the option to get genetic editing done to guarantee my child wouldn’t get diabetes I absolutely would do so because nobody should have to live with this.
That’s just one disease, one single example. There are hundreds of genetic disorders that range from mild to severe impact on peoples health and life. Things that modern medicine can treat the symptoms of, and allow people to survive at least long enough to reproduce. Many of these diseases are still ultimately fatal, but not till much later in life. This is to say nothing of diseases like Parkinson’s that are normally not symptomatic or fatal until later in life.
You’re getting dangereously close to eugenics here, buddy.
I am aware that this is dangerous territory, but the need out weighs those risks, and if you notice I was very specific to point out that there is risk and we need to be very careful with how this tech is used. A perfect example of where we need to walk carefully is autism. Is that something that should be treated? Maybe, but probably not. Except in the most extreme cases it’s not really something that’s dibilitating, and there are also advantages to being autistic. That’s one example where we should probably just let things be. But there are plenty of others where I’m sure everyone can agree stepping in is the right thing to do.
The biggest risk, the thing we must absolutely avoid, is the allure of a “designer baby”. It’s very tempting to give people the ability to do things like pick their childs eye color or tweak their height or do dozens of other things that ultimately are not medically necessary. That is the really dangerous path and the risks there absolutely outweigh the advantages.
Have you forgotten how much school children torment other kids over not having both parents and a ‘normal’ family? Now imagine going to school and everyone tormenting you over being a test-tube/bag baby?
Do you really think that kid is gonna grow up without losing his/her shit somewhere along the way?
… Have you honestly, genuinely never heard of test tube babies? Do you not realise we’ve had them since the 70s?
Think about that, then realise we had all this shit about “but the poor children” back then, for that, and none of it ever materialised because nobody gives a shit or ever knows the difference or cares at all.
It’s no different than giving birth by c-section, or indeed vaginally. There is no difference.
How would anybody find out? The kid would only ever really need to know at a young age (where they might out themselves without Knowing the social risks) if they had ongoing medical needs from complications resulting from it. Plus, it’s an artificial womb, not cloning; the kid would still have two genetic parents who would be their actual legal guardians, unless life happened and the kid lost one or both of them, which would just mean the bullying would focus on that instead.
Sounds to me the process could eventually be used with frozen eggs and sperm from 50+ years ago. You’re not making me any more comfortable about the future of an already overpopulated planet.
If they’re viable samples, it would be probably be possible as soon as it’s people can have their contemporary eggs and sperm used in a fully artificial gestation process.
I wasn’t talking at all about overpopulation because it wasn’t directly related to your comment about bullying. I don’t think we have an overpopulation problem so much as a resource distribution problem and lack of political will among those with power to actually change our systems into something less cruel to ourselves and the planet. We produce far more than we need to in our current system for the population we have, but our resource distribution system is directed by the whims of market forces and profit instead of community need.
Plus, I tend to automatically reject the assumption we’re overpopulated because bringing it up gives off an implication that it needs to be intentionally resolved, and that gets into really horrific territory really quickly.
On top of that, nobody even knows what the human carrying capacity of the planet even is; there’s zero scientific consensus on total human capacity or how to even measure it. It’s a non-starter for me, and I just do not think it’s an issue worth worrying about, but I am deeply concerned with how quick people are to blame everything on overpopulation as the cause of shortages when we haven’t really tried a different approach.
It’s only a problem at the moment because countries are trying to sustain an unsustainable economic model that requires endless growth. It will collapse eventually. Might as well not increase environmental problems as a trade off to make it last a bit longer.
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Around 100 years ago there was only somewhere in the ballpark of 2 billion people on the planet. Today at roughly 8 billion, half the people could disappear and we’d still be overpopulated.
And people wonder why the climate is changing so rapidly. It’s not only the fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses, it’s also overpopulation.
The planet ain’t getting any bigger just because people wanna make a surplus of babies. We already have enough, how about let’s allow birth rates to slide a bit for a while?
I think this is worth pursuing not because of population concerns but for the simple fact that child birth is still a fairly dangerous thing to go through for both the mother and child. If we had a viable option for reproduction that didn’t require women to go through child birth that could have a profound impact on both women’s mortality as well as infant mortality. It also as pointed out in the article could help preterm survival rates.
They’ve done decoded the human DNA sequence right? Well can’t they just make genetically modified women that fixes the narrow birth canal issue?
You know, like utilize our knowledge of DNA to fix known issues as such, while still encouraging natural biological processes?
Tell ya what though, if I found out I was grown in a bag in a laboratory, I’d flip the fuck out. You want more people with psychological issues, go ahead, start growing people in a lab…
That’s not really how that works. There’s not a section in one’s DNA that codes for bones, rather there are sections that code for proteins that get involved in chemical reactions that begin building bones themselves. DNA codes for chemicals that when they come together at the right time produce your fingers for example. It’s not that the DNA codes for a 32mm birth canal it just codes for the proper chemicals to come together to begin developing what will eventually become the birth canal.
So editing the DNA to modify a particular physical aspect is not just reprogramming a new number somewhere in the DNA, it’s coding for more expression of particular chemicals to come together. But like anything, adding more reactions can have various side effects, having those chemicals linger for too long and the tissue may eventually become too frail to even give birth to begin with.
And that’s easier said than done. Editing DNA isn’t something we regularly do and when it is done, it’s usually done on something simple because editing usually results in a 99% loss. Long story short, editing haploids (and most likely male sperm) is going to be the primary means for germline genetic editing that “might” be passed on to children because most people are not ethically okay with attempting to edit embryos with a 99% failure rate.
But editing haploids doesn’t assure that the trait will be conveyed to the offspring. During combination some of the genetic material is mixed around in a sort random fashion. So that new trail could get mixed around and now you’ve coded for a pregnancy that might end in miscarriage or even worse, might not.
It’s really complicated and incredibly error prone to edit DNA. Which is why it is mostly done with sperm, yeast, bacteria, and what not. Things that if we kill 99% of it, isn’t some big ethical concern. Editing an embryo is like rolling ten million dice and every single one of them have to land on six otherwise you’ve just doomed that person. That’s not an impossible thing, just a highly improbable thing and no one is really comfortable with those odds from an ethical standpoint. We’re not really good at editing DNA correctly the first time, but given enough of something, we can eventually have success. So if the odds are one in a million and you have 500 million of something, then you’ve got really good odds at success.
So you should keep that in mind when you think about editing DNA. Even if we got really good at knowing which genes to express and which ones to repress (which we’re not even there yet), putting in those changes that would actually make it to the offspring would also be monumental. So yeah, we’re not anywhere near where I think you think science is at.
I also commented elsewhere about this notion. But also, even if we did have an artificial womb today, it’s likely going to be in the NICU of your local hospital and not some laboratory. Because an artificial womb, as I indicated in my other comment, would only really be for preterm births greater than 22 weeks gestation, which is way better than what we get with incubators that only give moderate success rates at 28 to 32 weeks gestation and are ideally for 32 to 37 weeks gestation.
Hey, great comments! You’re really contributing to the debate, giving serious feedbacks!
Yeah yeah, I was almost born premature at 4 months, almost certainly wouldn’t have survived. Would I care? Hell I wouldn’t have even known.
Again, we have absolutely no shortage of humans, why are we so focused on figuring out how to make more? Go adopt one, orphans exist too ya know.
Well, if you read the article, you’d know that this isn’t about artificially inflating the population, but helping preterm infants survive. So are you saying that you’re all for preterm infants dying when we have the means to allow them to survive? In addition preterm infants often have lifelong medical issues, some of which will drastically shorten their lives.
You’d “flip the fuck out” if you were born in a bag in a laboratory, but wouldn’t flip the fuck out if you were born out of your mom’s genetically modified bag? Why force lifelong gene alteration on 50% of the population because you don’t feel good about where you might have spent 9 months you’d never remember?
I suspect the narrow birth canal issue is a result of evolutionary trade offs. Sure, you might be able to engineer a wider birth canal but doing so without impacting your ability to walk might be challenging.
Have you ever seen some of those natural large hip women out there? They don’t have any trouble walking (excluding the extremely wide/obese of course).
I’m not even talking about engineering artificial DNA, more like copy over a few genes from known reasonably healthy women that haven’t had any issues giving birth.
Why? What difference does it make? I’d have no problem with that. In fact I’d think that’s pretty cool. Would you freak out if you found out you were delivered via cesarian section? I’m not really seeing how this is much different.
I would love to see us do that and in fact I think that’s the direction we need to go if we’re going to survive as a species. The big thing we need to watch out for is that we don’t start developing into a monoculture. We need to maintain a certain amount of diversity or else we open ourselves up to being wiped out by a single pathogen or disaster.
Ultimately our medical knowledge is getting too good. Genetic disorders that would have been death sentences 200 years ago are just mild inconveniences now and so those genetic defects are starting to proliferate. We need to utilize genetic tech to fix those obvious problems, while also not going overboard and classifying unusual variations as defects to be fixed which would ultimately result in the monoculture problem I discussed previously.
If those genetic defects are no longer a problem, why do we need to “fix” them? You’re getting dangereously close to eugenics here, buddy.
Because we’re not fixing the problems, only treating the symptoms. Those genetic defects becoming more widespread means that the extreme cases become more popular as well, which will, while they are still manageable, be inherited to the next generation. Eventually defects will reach a point where they are just bad enough to be treatable for most people but still crippling to a good portion. Take bad eyesight for example, if no gene manipulation takes place, eventually most people will need glasses or surgery to fix the inconvenience. Unfortunately at hat point some people will have eyesight so bad that neither glasses nor surgery can fix the, at that level, crippling defect. The issue here is that an average increase in mild incenvience means also an increase in extreme cases of the inconveniences. And I don’t think it’s in the best interest of anyone to work towards more crippled people. Not because cripples are somehow subhuman but because being crippled means a life filled with needless suffering. Being able to bypass deaths due to these minor issues saves lifes, unfortunately it can also mean that more people will die/suffer far worse effects than if we never had invented remedies for these problems.
I think long term, despite ethical issues, meddling with our DNA to get rid of known defects is better than letting nature run its course.
Basically what Neshura said, but here’s some more context. Survivable is not the same thing as no longer a problem. I’m diabetic, it is 100% survivable, but it has also had a profound impact on my life. One of the things I have to consider when trying to decide if I have a child is if I want to risk passing this disease on to them. It’s not 100% guaranteed my child would have diabetes because my wife doesn’t, but it’s a pretty good chance. If I had the option to get genetic editing done to guarantee my child wouldn’t get diabetes I absolutely would do so because nobody should have to live with this.
That’s just one disease, one single example. There are hundreds of genetic disorders that range from mild to severe impact on peoples health and life. Things that modern medicine can treat the symptoms of, and allow people to survive at least long enough to reproduce. Many of these diseases are still ultimately fatal, but not till much later in life. This is to say nothing of diseases like Parkinson’s that are normally not symptomatic or fatal until later in life.
I am aware that this is dangerous territory, but the need out weighs those risks, and if you notice I was very specific to point out that there is risk and we need to be very careful with how this tech is used. A perfect example of where we need to walk carefully is autism. Is that something that should be treated? Maybe, but probably not. Except in the most extreme cases it’s not really something that’s dibilitating, and there are also advantages to being autistic. That’s one example where we should probably just let things be. But there are plenty of others where I’m sure everyone can agree stepping in is the right thing to do.
The biggest risk, the thing we must absolutely avoid, is the allure of a “designer baby”. It’s very tempting to give people the ability to do things like pick their childs eye color or tweak their height or do dozens of other things that ultimately are not medically necessary. That is the really dangerous path and the risks there absolutely outweigh the advantages.
Have you forgotten how much school children torment other kids over not having both parents and a ‘normal’ family? Now imagine going to school and everyone tormenting you over being a test-tube/bag baby?
Do you really think that kid is gonna grow up without losing his/her shit somewhere along the way?
Who the hell is getting bullied for being a test-tube baby?
We had all this shit in the 70s before the first IVF baby, and to the best of my knowledge, bullying over it has simply never been a thing.
Have you never heard of the very common meme, “Daddy went to get a pack of smokes and never came back”
Yeah, image that meme on steroids, “You don’t even have a mother?”
… Have you honestly, genuinely never heard of test tube babies? Do you not realise we’ve had them since the 70s?
Think about that, then realise we had all this shit about “but the poor children” back then, for that, and none of it ever materialised because nobody gives a shit or ever knows the difference or cares at all.
It’s no different than giving birth by c-section, or indeed vaginally. There is no difference.
How would anybody find out? The kid would only ever really need to know at a young age (where they might out themselves without Knowing the social risks) if they had ongoing medical needs from complications resulting from it. Plus, it’s an artificial womb, not cloning; the kid would still have two genetic parents who would be their actual legal guardians, unless life happened and the kid lost one or both of them, which would just mean the bullying would focus on that instead.
Sounds to me the process could eventually be used with frozen eggs and sperm from 50+ years ago. You’re not making me any more comfortable about the future of an already overpopulated planet.
If they’re viable samples, it would be probably be possible as soon as it’s people can have their contemporary eggs and sperm used in a fully artificial gestation process.
I wasn’t talking at all about overpopulation because it wasn’t directly related to your comment about bullying. I don’t think we have an overpopulation problem so much as a resource distribution problem and lack of political will among those with power to actually change our systems into something less cruel to ourselves and the planet. We produce far more than we need to in our current system for the population we have, but our resource distribution system is directed by the whims of market forces and profit instead of community need.
Plus, I tend to automatically reject the assumption we’re overpopulated because bringing it up gives off an implication that it needs to be intentionally resolved, and that gets into really horrific territory really quickly.
On top of that, nobody even knows what the human carrying capacity of the planet even is; there’s zero scientific consensus on total human capacity or how to even measure it. It’s a non-starter for me, and I just do not think it’s an issue worth worrying about, but I am deeply concerned with how quick people are to blame everything on overpopulation as the cause of shortages when we haven’t really tried a different approach.
Edit: I fixed the last sentence to make sense.
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It’s only a problem at the moment because countries are trying to sustain an unsustainable economic model that requires endless growth. It will collapse eventually. Might as well not increase environmental problems as a trade off to make it last a bit longer.
Okay, and who’s going to raise those test tube children if people aren’t deciding to have children?
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