I totally agree. Even "mere" breast feeding is still full of mysteries that developed during the millions of years of mammal evolution.

I agree with you, there’s probably a lot of epigenetic activity going on in response to environmental factors.

On the other hand, these things can probably be studied and identified. There is an organ shortage for transplantation, which historically peaks in times of peace. One idea is to genetically modify animals to make them more immunologically compatible. I could see a world where being able to control every aspect of the development process allows for more suitable organs (less risk of infection, etc).

> thousands of factors

But this includes risk factors, too.

E.g., IIRC there's research into how certain stressors on the mother during pregnancy increase the likelihood of things like anxiety and depression for their offspring.

Yes, I think people who haven't studied this at all have a very naive view of the end-to-end complexities of pregnancy. It's currently very infeasible to simulate this environment, we don't have the knowledge or the technology, or even a path of how to get there.

What's more likely to come first is artificially created sperm, from a sample of any cells - first by converting them to stem cells, then differentiating those to sperm-producing cells. It's already been trialed in the lab. I expect it's only a matter of time before this becomes a widely available reproductive technology, like IVF is now. Perhaps a few decades, if that.

The most interesting thing about this is it can be done with female cells to make "female sperm", both in the sense that it comes from a female individual and that every sperm cell will be X chromosomed (thus producing only daughters).

At that point, men will be effectively obsolete, and will gradually diminish in population, as each successive generation will be skewed more towards female.

It will be interesting to see how society adapts to being female-centered instead of male-dominated.

Like the vast majority of medical research, this aims at solving problematic cases where intervening reduces critical risks.

The stated case for this is premature birth, were the choice is between an artificial womb, the traditional setting, or letting the newborn die.

Still better than a preterm baby dying.

Yeah the language they learn pre-birth is also a fascinating topic.

This is one of the reasons I am not an organ donor. Think of all the specific things that a body has for a kidney. Should it be taken out, experience completely different conditions, and then be placed into an entirely different body that wasn’t grown around it organically? This could have horrific consequences for the recipient and I cannot, in good conscience, participate. It is unethical.

It seems to me most of the big ethical challenges would involve acts which would already be atrocity-proximate even involving regular wombs. Weird experiments, clone armies, etc.

The common case seem much more straightforward, such as laws to prevent a hospital/creche from early-terminating a 9-month lease on Uterine Replicator #123 for non-payment, different fields on "birth certificate", some case-law around, er, "miscarriage" events, etc.

It's possible to have a non-functioning womb while still having functioning ovaries. I don't see any philosophical or ethical problems with artificial wombs as an alternative to surrogacy.

They’d be ethically valid to use on babies born too early to survive.

Your idea of optimism is literally replacing the entire human race (the lineage of all humans on the planet) with a simulation of humans? That's pretty bleak.

> I hope they eventually become a viable alternative for mothers.

Sadly it seems that modern liberal societies that don’t enslave their women seem to not achieve sufficient fertility rates to avoid going extinct. Artificial wombs would be a huge advance toward fixing that problem.

Uterine replicators were a very cool aspect of the Vorkosigan Saga by the very talented Lois McMaster Bujold.

It was extra interesting to see how the technology was adopted by different cultures and what a massive impact it had.

    Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!    
    Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?    
    Skies are blue inside of you    
    The weather's always fine;    
    For       
    There ain't no Bottle in all the world    
    Like that dear little Bottle of mine.

Underrated comment.

>To put it bluntly: in NYC, a 26-weeker is 90% likely to survive to term. In some areas of the country a 26-weeker is 90% likely to die

This is probably because of a shortage of highly competent medical personnel, especially in rural areas where no top medical school graduate in her right mind would want to work, just like they probably wouldn't want to live and work in someplace like Iran.

I don't really see any way to fix this. Getting excellent medical care means having excellent medical professionals living and working in proximity to you, and since they're humans with free choice, they tend to move to places that are nice for them to live in, which not surprisingly usually doesn't include economic backwaters.

> why limit ourselves only to particular species? Likely it's possible to make a "generic" solution

I dunno, at least for primates and mice, pregnancy is a carefully balanced fight between rejection by the mother and cancerous parasitism by the embryo [0], complete with mind control drugs.

[0] https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...

I realize many take your comment as naive, but it may be that such a process won't be possible with non-biological solutions (ECMO, dialysis, etc) but will need to wait for fully bio-engineered solutions.

Perhaps you could skip the birth and spend an entire life happily suspended in the vat imagining a wondrous life unconstrained by physical limits. Perhaps you are.

The main idea behind the popular book _The Happiest Baby on the Block_ is that true cause of colic (inconsolable crying by newborns) is "The Missing Fourth Trimester". During the first 3-4 months after full term, the best methods for soothing an infant are recreating the conditions it experienced in the uterus. Humans evolved to "evict" their babies earlier due to the species' growing head sizes necessary for larger brains. After the infant's first 100 days, they are better able to self-sooth and can explore their environment (with help and supervision) to best continue brain development.

What's the end goal of this? Why would we do this? Reducing postnatal risks sounds great but not sure about the stuff after.

It would be truely impactful, but I don't think in a positive way.

It's equivalent to moving to eggs, and getting morally immature individuals immediately get a full grown body. I might be mistaken, but it feels like reversing the whole evolutionary process that brought humans, when as a species we're currently pretty well adjusted to our earth environment. I don't think "nature" or evolution should be seen in a positive way just for the sake of it, but our whole history has consistently extended the childhood period, and we're still pointing at young adults as immature.

It's of course a different story if you're planning on dominating earth with an army of clones, or dominating space with a fleet of soldiers.

Is there reason to believe that the human genome would produce almost arbitrarily large brains, solely as a consequence of removing the space and time constraints imposed by in utero development? An extra arm might come in handy, but I don't suppose that would just happen.

Egg laying animals already grow their babies externally, yet mammals dominate. Why?

Over the very long term, using this method of bringing babies to term might result in babies with larger heads, and therefore larger brains (because the baby wouldn't have to pass through the birth canal).

If a person can have a fetus removed from their body without invasive or dangerous surgery and still have it survive, I don't see too many ethical issues with limits on abortion where it's more than just a small clump of cells.

The whole issue with restricting abortion is no one is entitled to the use of my body, even if they need it to live. However if they don't require another person's body and could instead survive outside the body, I think abortion becomes morally worse than allowing it to come to term in an artificial womb.

Premature infants already might only spend half the normal gestation time in the womb. This ship sailed long ago.

I think you model Pro-Lifers incorrect. Do you know any dedicated catholics in real life? And yes, while it is a weird/artificial sci-fi tech, per definition unnatural, even people opposed seem to agree that the unborn child is innocent and did nothing wrong.

Anyway, I see more cautious interest for artificial wombs by anti-abortion advocates than by pro-abortion advocates.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2579952/anti-abortio...

> “The term ‘artificial wombs’ is misleading about this technology,” Catholic policy expert Leah Libresco Sargeant told the Washington Examiner. “A [neonatial intensive care unit] incubator is already a kind of artificial womb, trying to provide some of the support the baby would have otherwise gotten from his or her mother. If we’re able to provide better support to extremely premature babies, I’m all for it.”

While my feeling currently is that pro-phoicers see it as a “threat to abortion rights”, because it challenges the viability standard. That alone makes pro-lifers want to embrace it! See a typical discussion here among pro-lifers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/1886k8z/abortion_i...

> Artificial wombs are the easiest way to test if someone actually views abortion as simply ending a pregnancy or ending a life. Most of the time, PC don’t want to admit they support the ending a life because it contradicts all their arguments that abortion is simply ending a pregnancy.

> It’s the most pro-choice thing ever for us to give them a solution that should be a compromise between our viewpoints, and them to still whine about wanting to kill their babies instead.

I presume you mean some new technology to transfer the fetus?

As it is now, people ‘adopt’ babies before they’re born, all the time.

Mother wants to give baby up for adoption. Couple is matched up with the mother and they help the mother during the pregnancy, physically, emotionally and financially. I’ve known several people involved in adoption.

Some countries effectively have exactly that: There are "baby boxes" on the public facing walls of hospitals where you can put a newborn (sometimes older children too) and walk away, no questions asked. The child is assigned a name and put into social care together with other people who have no parents or other guardians.

Realistically, what will happen is once this technology becomes cheaper than a natural birth, you won't be able to have a natural pregnancy paid for by insurance.

Probably through the form of "discounts" for having vasectomies or tubal litigation. We'll probably develop better extraction methods so having physical BC becomes less of a stigma because you'll still be able to get the gametes.

In italy after birth you can just not recognise the kid as your own.

> And to go further: I don't recall anything from before I was 2 years old. What difference would it have made…

You’re putting forward the idea that your personal memory is the thing that makes you valuable. Why should we think that’s true? Memory is frail, too. How much do you have to be able to remember before your life is worth protecting?

Besides, one day you won’t remember anything anyway. Is it OK to jump forward just a bit and have you killed today? You won’t remember it.

I would encourage you to change your mind! The vast, vast majority of humanity would consider you a moral monster for believing such a thing. Many awful, awful things "used to be normal", and many things we take for granted today, future societies will (hopefully) see as awful as well! Why should we care about fetuses? Instead of the standard argument, I will appeal to "The Human Experience". I think we should care because at one point, you were a 20 week old fetus, with a mother who loved you. And you were knit in the womb in the Image of God, and when you were born your parents had dreams and hopes for you that you are likely living out now. And hopefully one day you will have children of your own, to love and care for, and you will try to give them everything you didn't have and fail to do so, but when your kids grow up, they will know that you have tried. That is why we should care, not for child mortality rates or cultural customs or anything, but because you are part of an unbroken chain of shattered dreams and undying hopes.

edit: (fixed some typos) And eulgro? I hope you read this. I promise you from the bottom of my heart, you are loved.