Scientists grow mice embryos in a mechanical womb
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
We could, however, remove consciousness (artificially induced coma).
"""
He swung open her door. “This is her nest,” he said proudly. I looked and gulped.
It was a great concrete dome, concrete-floored. Chicken Little filled most of it. She was a gray-brown, rubbery hemisphere some fifteen yards in diameter. Dozens of pipes ran into her pulsating flesh. You could see that she was alive.
Herrera said to me: “All day I walk around her. I see a part growing fast, it looks good and tender, I slice.” His two-handed blade screamed again. This time it shaved off an inch-thick Chicken Little steak. (Ch. 9)
"""
https://we-make-money-not-art.com/farming_the_unconscious/
> As long as their brain stem is intact, the homeostatic functions of the chicken will continue to operate. By removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken, its sensory perceptions are removed. It can be produced in a denser condition while remaining alive, and oblivious.
> The feet will also be removed so the body of the chicken can be packed together in a dense volume.
> Food, water and air are delivered via an arterial network and excreta is removed in the same manner. Around 1000 chickens will be packed into each ‘leaf’, which forms part of a moving, productive system.
It can be used for disease models too, I suppose. Not sure what to think of it, though.
/s Next thing you know, Umbrella Corp will get involved.
In contrast impossible foods Just sounds like ultra processed unhealthy to me.
I appreciate you are sort of writing a piece of dystopian science fiction, not really a statement of certain fact or even mere speculation.
The research is basic science, near term enabling a really interesting mouse model, long term advancing immunology and obstetric and reproductive endocrine therapies.
> 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.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2020/...
I brought this up thinking about the broader "chicken and egg" ethics & scaling problem of tissue growth. Currently the biotissue alternative meats are dependent on fetal bovine serum to get started. A vegan might object to these meats.
I don't personally support these methods, and am just spitballing ideas on the tech side of the aforementioned problem.
Still raises question of who is raising that child... and the societal implications of true orphans.
Finding families for those kids would not be an issue, rather the contrary.
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.
Many kids who go into foster care are not up for adoption because their biological parents want them back, and may get the chance in the future.
But yes it could be mostly unnecessary bureaucracy. If abortion is banned, there will need to be very significant changes to the adoption process to streamline it and encourage more people to adopt.
Per https://adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-myths-facts/domestic-us... we adopt around 135k babies per year in the USA.
If we introduce this technology and don't make other changes, the supply of fetuses for adoption will substantially exceed the supply of adoptive homes.
The number of adoptions happening per year doesn't actually tell you the supply of adoptive homes. The number of adoptive homes might be much much larger than the number of adoptions that happens. Especially if potentially adoptive parents are no longer scared away by multi-year waiting lists. If we add in government subsidization of adoption expenses, or even pay adoptive parents, the number of adoptive parents could grow a lot. Some countries are already paying parents to have biological kids[1]; paying parents to adopt seems even more likely.
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.
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."
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.
I think that's the scenario which will get a lot of pushback from usually progressive people.
Is it because he needs a egg from a woman?
I must be missing something.
Sure I can make up miracle solutions but given the data we have today removing abortion and saying “just have it surgically removed and implanted in this tube” seems less than great.
I still ignored the obvious questions of who pays for that given it likely ends up more expensive than abortion (ongoing costs) and that it really doesn’t solve the moral issues given there’s still be the shaming that happens around abortions, the usual crap about “irresponsible women”.
I think this is all a great option but I don’t see it replacing abortion for multiple reasons.
Currently the moral argument is that since women bear the risk of pregnancy, they should also have the exclusive right to decide to continue or abort. Once the child is born however the right to parents is given to the child, and thus neither the mother or father can refuse responsibility. At minimum they would both be paying child support.
If the technology would remove the risk aspect, it would give the father an equal stand in the matter, and one could imagine a future where a child would be brought forth as long as one of the parents wanted the child.
2/ In the current world, machines mean capital (money, intellectual). SO the more machine, the more concentration of power (at least until these are comoditized)...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
[1] Popular myth nature of this quip aside.
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".
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.
I think this applies more to wider generalizations as opposed to very specific instances due to the nature of probability and finity of resources invested in continued attempts, but it can be applied in either scenario. Think Murphy's Law.
I _think_ that's better then just saying we can't see any objections at all. Maybe.
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. :-)
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".
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.
> ... 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).
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.
At any rate the real issue is not who is a "person" but who is worthy of moral consideration.
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?
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.
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.
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).
True. If you throw ethics out the window and accept murder, then "immortality" may be possible with today's technology. Probably you run into problems with mutations eventually, but you could throw more bodies at the problem and use a selection process.
You'd think someone would be attempting this in mice.
I wasn't suggesting that gene editing be used to prevent a cerebrum from developing, but merely that an in-utero surgical procedure be used to destroy the cerebrum at some early stage of development. That seems doable. (This whole thing does, however, disturb me.)
> Like, there's a good deal of the endocrine system that's tucked away in the brain, delete the PFC and what results?
That's why I was speculating that the external supply of certain hormones would be required, particularly to get through puberty.
> Are organs grown in vitro adapted to actual use?
Yeah, also a good question.
I was assuming that the technique I was proposing, that of using a whole body -- as different from growing organs in-vitro -- would obviate the worst problems.
(There are still concerns about making sure the body doesn't atrophy, but I think something could be worked out. You can even imagine (again disturbingly) some serious exercise regimen, administered via electrostimulation of the muscles. Or occasional stress to the pulmonary system by injecting adrenaline.)
But in-vitro growth of isolated organs might also be possible. That would immediately skip the worst ethical issues, but it requires more discoveries than the full-body method. We're already getting there for simple organs, though it requires a donor organ to be used as a scaffolding, which is a problem.
> What about epigenetics and possible incompatibilities generated by them?
There must be case studies about organ transplants between twins? Presumably immunosuppressants were not needed?
> what kind of reaction will the whole have receiving a 1:1 transplant with a 20 year old liver in an 80 year old?
What little I've seen, from pop-science releases about experiments with mice, is that some rejuvenation tends to come from that sort of thing.
If we were to mass grow clones for organs we would probably start with whatever causes this and then add an engineered pituitary gland organioid that is added via surgery to develop the anencephalic clone to maturity for proper organ extraction.
You could even use this to grow bodies for eventual head transplants.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savior_sibling#:~:text=A%20sav....
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)
That said, this does not seem to be the future of the military. Robots can do things that humans cannot (e.g. fly, move around in asphyxiating gas), they do not have to be trained, can be produced much faster etc.
I can't speak for you but for me I think they might have to lock up the water. I'm not saying that your suggestion wouldn't work but if you could turn off those things with a switch - even if you had to rely on someone else to flip the switch - I think that would create some problems.
:-) That remind me of Catch-22. Where Yossarian is arguing with a nurse about the utility of pain. Yossarian says it's stupid - "why don't we have a neon sign on our forehead that says "ouch" in big red letters." The nurse believes it has utility. As it develops they're both atheists but Yossarian doesn't believe in a cruel malevolent God while the nurse doesn't believe in a good, kind and just God.
men too
It seems like an amazing way to grow up!
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.
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.
You're free not to use the outputs if you have personal objections.
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.
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.
The cases aren't the same, but the lazy callousness is.
Animals don't have human-level consciousness. We're not going to discover some day that they do.
N.B. I don't believe we fully understand consciousness. Just that factory farm animal consciousness is categorically not at a human level.
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.
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.
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?
And I think it's clear that I am considering more than just my own life.
People are people. It's a different bar, and I'm not going to equate people lives with animal lives.
And it's not like you defined one or attempt to find a rational underpinning to check for your bias. That's the tribal, conservative basis for many of the injustices over immutable differences we see every day (racial, sexual etc.)
Rational inquiry is about transcending this.
> 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
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.
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.
Or we do the sane thing and stop treating clumps of cells like people.