Womb, Artificial

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-11 06:06:34

When I created this topic I did not anticipate the directions folks might go with it.

Aside from ideology, there are practical reasons why writers have been thinking about artificial wombs for some time.

The human race is filling the planet with more people than the planet has ever seen before, and it is heading toward 10.2 billion people, and apparently there are individual humans who think this is not enough.

An artificial womb would solve the problem of females not wanting to be baby making machines to serve male egos.

(th)

Void · 2024-08-11 07:37:55

Quote:

An artificial womb would solve the problem of females not wanting to be baby making machines to serve male egos.

Can you substantiate the claim? It seems to me you are using the "Male Flail". Society is likely becoming more and more immune to that now.

So, a divergence from full placental gestation, may change things over time though.

Becoming more like Marsupials, or even more so like egg laying creatures.

Men have always been more like birds. Some are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo, and some are nesters.

Some nests are communal in part, we call them cities in some cases.

The human races are very dimorphic in the matter of gender, contrary to what the Cuckoo Quire will have you believe.

A Dual Asymmetry may complete understanding of how this may work. While the Cuckoo Committees may see an interest in using society to coerce service from non-breeding humans, such as lower ranked males (On the Cuckoo measurement system), in reality a healthy society would understand that like as a male sperm cell travels to the pregnancy potential of a female, a female may travel to a nest which is supported by non-breeding persons, many of whom may be male. Monogamy in general is probably the more correct version of this where value is tested for many talents instead of Cuckoo talents.

In part this may be due to placental birth.

So, it could be that if artificial wombs are established, then "Tomboys" may be more favored than "Girly-Girls".

But the future belongs to those who may be there, and that is not at all likely to be me.

Our present attitude is in part generated by the handling of the Baby Boom generation. I am of that group. A big bulge that was probably a burden to the time local ancestor generations. But having so many did indeed fill things up. Then our brilliant winners of the Cuckoo contest, decided that they needed to turn both male and females of the generation into eunuchs and maids and other non-breeders.

And so, they tested that generation in wrong ways, to promote wrong attributes. Decreasing the survival potential of subsequent generations.

And now it seems desirable to them to extract more and more, and of course something is going to break.

So, I could really go off on this but even I might get bored about it.

Done

Last edited by Void (2024-08-11 08:03:56)

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-11 08:03:41

For Void re #27

Thank you for pointing out that I offered an opinion that is not supported by actual interviews with women.

I expect that my opinion is based more on deduction, from the documented instances of rape that are reported each year around the world.

It is possible that in some of those cases, had there been interviews with both participants, the women might have indicated they did not wish to be impregnated. You are correct in pointing out I just ** assumed ** they objected to the treatment they received.

However, I was thinking about the ages before there was any birth control other than abstinence. For most of that time, all humans knew about how babies were created is that they happened when men and women copulated. For all that time, most women did not have a lot of control over their fates. In the modern age, we ** still ** have societies where women are denied self-governance.

Now that women ** do ** have some control over what happens to them, I find it unsurprising that many of them choose to execute that control.

I would like to thank RobertDyck for the scholarly opening posts for this topic. Those posts set the stage for what could be a valuable series.

(th)

Void · 2024-08-11 08:10:53

Quote:

For all that time, most women did not have a lot of control over their fates. In the modern age, we ** still ** have societies where women are denied self-governance.

Again, not substantiated. I could also cherry pick from stories. But in reality, from my point of view, these stories are mostly again a "Male-Flail" so that the Cuckoo breeding program can be justified.

Even in Islamic Cultures, I expect that women who conform to the requirements imposed by their society, (And not just men), have much more power than you suppose.

I anticipate that in Sub-Saharan Africa, women have the greater power, where-as, I think that in China it is the other way around. But that needs measuring of results, and before that, a determination of what kind of results matter.

Done

Last edited by Void (2024-08-11 08:33:34)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-11 13:06:30

tahanson43206 wrote:

The human race is filling the planet with more people than the planet has ever seen before, and it is heading toward 10.2 billion people, and apparently there are individual humans who think this is not enough.

Geographers are scientists who study large populations, such as an entire country or the whole planet. They define the term "fertility rate" as meaning the number of babies a woman will give birth to during her entire life. It's an average over the population studied. Medical science defines the term differently but I'm going to use that definition. You may think a couple needs to have 2 children to ensure the next generation has the same number of people, but due to child deaths and other technical factors the number must be 2.1. And since families can have various forms these days it's presented as babies per woman. Adoption has its role, but that doesn't affect population of the country or the planet. If fertility rate is above 2.1 the population grows, if it falls below the population shrinks. The problem is fertility rate has fallen below sustainability in absolutely every developed country. And as developing countries adopt our lifestyle, it's falling there too.

For several years now, developed countries have accepted large numbers of immigrants to compensate for this low birth rate. Population would be shrinking if they did not. But that is causing other problems. Many countries have accepted immigrants so quickly that they are not assimilating. That is creating culture clashes between citizens and new comers. In some cases this has broken into violence. In Germany, the city of Bonn had a massive protest of Muslim immigrants who demanded Sharia Law. Of course Germany said no. Germany then reduced their immigration rate, but they are now experiencing an aging population.

When fertility rate is low, population doesn't shrink right away. Citizens retire, they don't just drop dead. Rate of individuals retiring from the workforce is greater than the number of young people maturing and entering the workforce. This results in a shrinking workforce at the same time as number of retirees grows. So the question is who is going to maintain roads, who is going to maintain power generating stations, power lines, water treatment facilities, sewage treatment, water mains, all the things needed for modern society. Who is going to fix the plumbing in your house? Reshingle your roof? Who is going to manufacture goods in stores?

Froma government's perspective, who is going to pay taxes to fund pensions and healthcare? As number of retirees increase, number of seniors requiring healthcare increases. That increases demand on healthcare systems, requiring more healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, etc) as well as more funding to pay for it. If number of individuals Woking and paying taxes decreases, how is this going to work?

Tom quoted a claim that world population is increasing. But I saw in interview with authors of a book that claimed UN estimates and predictions are based on formulas from the 1970s and completely out of date. They predicted world population would peak at 8.0 billion in 2060, then decline. The UN announced world population hit 8 billion in March 2022. But the US census bureau said it didn't. The US census bureau said it reached that in October 2022. Later studies showed it hit 8 billion in November 2022. So we did hit that number, but not as soon as the UN announced. Birth rate is falling faster than most people expected, so world population is not going to grow much more. We pretty much peaked now.

One issue is China. Federal funding for cities is dependent on population so cities have lied about their population for a long time. China ended their one-child policy in 2015. But they couldn't just but out, they changed to a two-child policy. That didn't work so they changed to a three-child policy in May 2021. In July 2021 they removed all limits. But China has moved from rural to urban, with efficiency apartments and condos in tall tower buildings. They don't have room for children. China's fertility rate dropped to 1.15 in 2021 and appears to still be declining. They revised down their population estimate, but real population may be even lower yet.

Peter Zeihan is an American economist. He predicts in 10 years Germany won't have enough workers to sustain an industrial economy. He predicts China will face a crisis causing their economy to collapse about the same time. What will happen to these countries? Germany is a democracy, but China is a dictatorship. Nasty things happen in a dictatorship when the economy collapses.

Robert Malthus wrote a book in 1798 about scarcity. He believed population growth would eventually result in insufficient food for everyone. Malthusian theory has led to a lot of atrocities. One reason for World Wars 1 & 2 was belief that nations must complete for limited resources. Robert Zubrin has spoken about this. He pointed out Germany today has smaller land area than beginning of WW2, yet per capita standard of living is higher. The reason is humans convert raw materials into resources, and human ingenuity can create new resources. James Burk had a British TV show in the 1970s called "Connections". He pointed out how one innovation led to another. One example was a war in the 1800s severely restricted access to elephant tusks. Wealthy middle class played a game called billiards (pool). Billiard balls were carved from ivory. So someone offered a prize to anyone who could invent a substitute for ivory. One chemist invented celluloid. It's made from cellulose from wood, treated with chemicals like sulphuric acid and nitric acid. Sulphur is a plentiful mineral from rocks, and wood comes from trees. There are definitely more trees than demand for billiard balls. So there's no longer any practical limit of resources for billiard balls.

Many resources are like that. Paleontology found an encampment of Neanderthals. It includes food residue. They harvested seeds of tall grass, pounded them to a paste between rocks, then cooked a flatbread on a rock at the side of a bonfire. Humans selectively planted grass seed to increase yield. Result was two plants called Einhorn and Emmer. Then they found crossbreeding these two produced a hybrid with even greater yield. The hybrid was sterile, but more food per acre. Eventually a mutation of the hybrid bred true, so they could just plant that. The hybrid is wheat. Farmers then selective bred wheat to increase yield further. In the 20th century, scientists have produced varies of many staple foods with higher yield. And fertilizer increases yield further.

Around 6,500 BC, ancestors of Sumeria arrived in Mesopotamia. Latest belief is they came from a valley that is now the bottom of the Persian Gulf. When Lake Agassiz drained, sea level rise causing their valley to flood. Lake Agassiz was created by melting ice in North America at the end of the last ice age. Moving upstream along the same river is not exactly radical. The southern most part of Mesopotamia was swamp, but most was very dry. Mesopotamia is defined by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Lots of water in the rivers. Around 3,500 BC (5,500 years ago) Sumerians invented irrigation. That greatly increased food production, enabling their population to swell from villages to the first cities.

The point is more humans means more innovation. More innovation increases standard of living for everyone. Economy of scale also reduces cost per unit, and if cost of goods goes down, again standard of living increases.

Space is filled with resources. There's a limited amount of gold on Earth, limited silver, platinum and platinum group metals. However asteroids have all of these. The third richest deposit of platinum in the world is Sudbury Canada. That's an asteroid that hit about 2 billion years ago. There's a crater 30 miles wide by 60 miles long. The asteroid cracked the crust, causing lava to intrude into the cracks. The nickel and platinum group metals mined today are fragments of that asteroid. If you mine a metal asteroid in space, it's pure asteroid material, not fragments mixed with Earth rock.

Robert Zubrin pointed out there are people today who view humans as a blight upon the Earth, damaging the environment or damaging nature. That attitude is very dangerous because leads to treating people as vermin. Instead view people as improving the environment, so people are treated as creators. As Robert Zubrin pointed out, terraforming Mars or other worlds leads to treating humans as creating life. Therefore humans are beneficial, we need to support and celebrate humans.

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-11 19:27:32

For RobertDyck ... thank you for the thought you put into Post #30...

Thank you for correcting my (incorrect "memory" ) for Mr. Malthus' book.

I was (apparently) thinking (incorrectly) that Malthus published more recently than he did.

You posed a number of questions that most certainly deserve thoughtful answers. I hope our members will be able to find answers.

It seems to me that it is a ** very ** good idea to gradually reduce the population to 5 billion while sustaining the high level of living for the lucky few, and raising the level of living for everybody else.

Robotics and AI look to me like technologies that are arriving just as women gain control over their bodies in civilized countries.

However, the prospect of expanding away from Earth is about 50/50 in my estimation. The benefits of expanding away from earth into the rich resource base of the Solar System seem compelling enough to give the human race plenty of room for expansion, while simultaneously reducing the population of the planet to something that allows other earthly creatures to continue to exist.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-11 20:19:08

Wikipedia: Scarcity
Click the heading "Concept".

Malthus and absolute scarcity
Thomas Robert Malthus laid "the theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically, on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries."In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-11 20:53:56

For RobertDyck ... I have corrected post #31. Thank you for your patience in clearing the cobwebs!

I am sure that at some level there ** must ** be a limit to population growth.

Science fiction writers have imagined population far greater than we have on Earth today, and I do not find the images appealing.

I'd like to see the standard of living enjoyed by a few on Earth today extended to the entire population, and that can best be achieved by slowing the growth, and gradually reducing the totals to something that is a good balance for humans and and other creatures with whom we share the planet.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-11 21:06:08

AI is entirely dependent on microprocessors manufactured in Taiwan. There are a few companies, but the all get their manufacturing equipment from the same one supplier. There's one company in Germany that only produces lenses for these machines. They have only one customer, and they are the only supplier. The machines need argon gas with few suppliers. More major supplier was in Mariupol, east Ukraine. The entire city was leveled by Russians. Luckily there is more than one supplier, but there aren't many.

Depending on AI is depending on an unreliable, non-robust system. China still wants Taiwan. China doesn't know how to operate the machines to make the processors, so even if they could take the factories intact, production shuts down. China is dependent on importing food. What food production they do have depends on importing inputs such as fertilizer. Russia makes fertilizer, but Chinese oil comes from the Middle East. If China invades Taiwan, America will blockade the straight of Malacca. China is preparing by building a road from Tibet through Pakistan to the coast. China rented land on the coast of the Arabian Sea, and built a port. They could bypass shipping through the straight, but seriously how much can trucks carry over a single lane road through the Himalaya mountains? Furthermore, that road goes through the province of Cashmere. That province is disputed between Pakistan and India. China sent their army on maneuvers on the boarder to distract India, have them move their army away from Cashmere while the road was built. So invading would be stupid, but they may anyway.

Read about the Bronze Age Collapse. We could see an economic collapse similar.

China's economy is dependent on selling to western countries, primarily the US. But China announced they are trying to change their economy to internal. So again, invading Taiwan is stupid, but they're watching the war in Ukraine. If the US abandons Ukraine then China will believe the US will abandon Taiwan too. So for those who want to be isolationist, are you ready to lose smartphones, desktop and laptop processors, gaming video cards, and server farms to train AI? Take good care of your existing equipment, new equipment will be cut off if Taiwan is invaded.

RobertDyck · 2024-08-12 00:30:58

The book"Caves of Steel" by Isaac Asimov imagined a world completely encased with solid city. Domes covered every city, and the domes were connected. With multiple levels within each dome. But I don't think we'll get to that point. We currently have birth rate (fertility rate) below sustainability in every developed country. Developing and under developed countries bare trying to catch up to us as fast as they can. And that is already bringing with it the fertility rate problem. We need a more stable birth rate, something to sustain current population. The birth rate is crashing causing all the problems I cited above. I don't think we need to worry about overpopulation.

Your profile doesn't say where you live. Didn't you say you live somewhere in New England? Perhaps you need to take a road trip to the Midwest. The Atlantic coast of the US is packed with cities that flow into eachother. But drive west of this line. No one did this on purpose, it happened due to rain. It's dry west of the line. California from the coast to the mountains obviously has a lot of rain, consequently California is the most populous state. Note: 20% of US population lives west of the line, including California. Now imagine population not including California. Take a road trip in the unpopulated area of the US. There's lots and lots of room.

If you click the first image, it's a YouTube video. The border line is the 98th meridian. And if you exclude Pacific coast, the population west of that line is 1/3 the land area of the US but only 9% of the population.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2024-08-12 11:15:52)

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-12 06:19:26

For all...

I'd like to refocus this topic on the very practical issue of development of a safe and effective artificial womb.

We have allowed this topic to wander into all sorts of directions that have nothing directly to do with the topic. My impression is that the majority of off-topic posts are reactions to the ** idea ** of an artificial womb. There are plenty of places in this forum for wild conjecture and commentary on off-topic subjects. That conversation is NOT needed in this topic.

RobertDyck opened this topic with a set for scholarly posts about how humans might create an artificial womb. I'd like to see this topic return to a sharp focus on how such a system would work, and more importantly, what we can do to make it happen.

Contributions of links to reports of actual work on this system would be appropriate.

Some time might be allocated to warning of risks that may be present but any such post should (short of ** must ** ) include a suggestion for a remedy or countermeasure.

(th)

Void · 2024-08-12 07:43:03

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificia … plications.

Quote:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Artificial womb

Figure from a 2017 Nature Communications paper describing an extra-uterine life support system, or "biobag", used to grow lamb fetuses.[1]
An artificial womb or artificial uterus is a device that would allow for extracorporeal pregnancy,[2] by growing a fetus outside the body of an organism that would normally carry the fetus to term. An artificial uterus, as a replacement organ, would have many applications.

And I will venture no ideas.

Done

Last edited by Void (2024-08-12 07:44:47)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-12 09:52:47

As I said, the "biobag" from the 2017 article that Void posted above is the difficult one. That requires cutting the umbilical cord and interfacing directly with baby's blood via the umbilical cord. Platelets could be damaged causing blood clots. That approach is necessary for clinical use, for premature babies. However, I believe the best approach to developing any new technology is to do the easy part first, then build on success toward the more difficult. The advantage of a womb designed for use from conception to birth is a lot of parts are grown by the baby, so you don't have to provide them.

One component of an artificial womb is artificial blood. This replaces mother's blood. It washes over the blastocyst until it develops a placenta, then washes over villi of the placenta. It doesn't enter baby's body so doesn't have to be perfect. But it must carry oxygen, release oxygen to the villi, carry CO2, release CO2 to the heart-lung machine, carry urine, carry food.

Wikipedia: Blood substitute

History
...
Efforts to develop blood substitutes have been driven by a desire to replace blood transfusion in emergency situations, in places where infectious disease is endemic and the risk of contaminated blood products is high, where refrigeration to preserve blood may be lacking, and where it might not be possible or convenient to find blood type matches.
In 2023, DARPA announced funding twelve universities and labs for synthetic blood research. Human trials would be expected to happen between 2028-2030.

Approaches
Perfluorocarbon based
Perfluorochemicals are not water soluble and will not mix with blood, therefore emulsions must be made by dispersing small drops of PFC in water. This liquid is then mixed with antibiotics, vitamins, nutrients and salts, producing a mixture that contains about 80 different components, and performs many of the vital functions of natural blood. PFC particles are about 1/40 the size of the diameter of a red blood cell (RBC). This small size can enable PFC particles to traverse capillaries through which no RBCs are flowing. In theory this can benefit damaged, blood-starved tissue, which conventional red cells cannot reach. PFC solutions can carry oxygen so well that mammals, including humans, can survive breathing liquid PFC solution, called liquid breathing.
Haemoglobin based
Haemoglobin is the main component of red blood cells, comprising about 33% of the cell mass. Haemoglobin-based products are called haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs).
Unmodified cell-free haemoglobin is not useful as a blood substitute because its oxygen affinity is too high for effective tissue oxygenation, the half-life within the intravascular space that is too short to be clinically useful, it has a tendency to undergo dissociation in dimers with resultant kidney damage and toxicity, and because free haemoglobin tends to take up nitric oxide, causing vasoconstriction.
Efforts to overcome this toxicity have included making genetically engineered versions, cross-linking, polymerization, and encapsulation.
Stem cells
Stem cells offer a possible means of producing transfusable blood. A study performed by Giarratana et al. describes a large-scale ex-vivo production of mature human blood cells using hematopoietic stem cells. The cultured cells possessed the same haemoglobin content and morphology as native red blood cells. The authors contend that the cells had a near-normal lifespan, when compared to natural red blood cells.

For an artificial womb, the issue with stem cells is the normal lifespan of red blood cells is 115 days (3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days). Some blood cells would die before that, requiring frequent replacement over a 9 month gestation.

tahanson43206 · 2024-08-12 10:26:31

Also flowing from Void's contribution of the Wikipedia article is a set of references and "more reading" items...

One of the reference items is thoughtful essay from CA 2004, which considers technical and ethical issues.

I thought I had captured a link to the reference, but had not, so I'll have to go back for it.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/TNA03-Rosen.pdf

I read the entire article.

A considerable amount of time/space in the article was devoted to the question of whether an artificial womb can take the place of a real human host.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2024-08-12 12:52:47

Placental Enzymes
Springer Link. A single chapter from a book titled "Placental Function Tests", pages 34-38.
Placental Enzymes
Google preview:

However, there are some enzymes synthesised and secreted by the placenta which are, to all intents and purposes, specific. The most notable of these are heat-stable alkaline phosphatase (HSAP) and cystine aminopeptidase (CAP-also referred to as oxytocinase).

Pay wall. There's a price of US$29.95 plus exchange into Canadian dollars, plus Canadian tax. I don't want to pay that for a single chapter of a book, only 5 pages, so if someone has institution access, please send me a copy of the PDF.

This is important for the artificial womb from conception to birth. As I said, a rubber wall will be required to serve as the mother's uterus where it interfaces with the placenta. The placenta produces enzymes to open blood vessels, allowing mother's blood to wash across the placenta. The rubber wall will require flow channels moulded into it to simulate mother's blood vessels, and placenta enzymes must be able to open them. So what are these enzymes and what materials could be dissolved by these enzymes?

RobertDyck · 2024-08-12 13:49:33

Intravenous Feeding
This deals with intravenous feeding of adults for various medical conditions. I am saying the same forums can be added to artificial blood of an artificial womb. The placenta absorbs food from mother's blood. This is food added directly to the blood of an adult, so this can be used to feed an embryo/fetus.

Studies have shown that babies often have a preference for the kind of food that mother ate while pregnant. There are exceptions. One refinement could be various formulations of IV food based on different foods. The IV food must be processed, equivalent to what is absorbed into blood of an adult after being processed by the digestive tract. But different formulations based on different meals. A parent could use an app on their smartphone to enter what meal the mother is eating today, and the IV food provided to the baby could be adjusted to match. Helping create a bond between mother and baby.

RobertDyck · 2024-08-12 13:56:29

Another item for research: a late term fetus will have a functioning liver. Metabolic waste will be processed to recover nutrients and extract the last bit of energy. Final waste product will be urine aka piss. Baby's kidneys will not yet function, releasing urine through the placenta into mother's blood. Mother's kidneys will filter that out, so mother literally pisses for two. However, for an embryo, an early term baby, will unprocessed waste cross the placenta? Does mother's liver process that?

I said a dialysis machine sized for an fetus could extract waste from the artificial blood. Will waste from an early term baby complicate that?

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