Recently, the discussion on how to improve the willingness to have children has also been widely debated on the Internet. No, even the famous Tesla founder Musk also summoned several tech billionaires to discuss how to improve people's willingness to have children, and as a result, several billionaires unanimously proposed that the use of "artificial womb" instead of women to give birth, I have to say that using "artificial womb" to reduce women's reproductive pressure is indeed a good idea. However, the artificial womb does not only solve the problem of fertility willingness, but directly solves the problem of human origin. Let's talk to you about this today.
01, artificial womb, may turn people into commodities
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Many people only think of the couple choosing an artificial womb, but what if this choice is not just a couple? For example, if companies or governments choose artificial wombs, then people are commodities.
As for raising, it is directly in accordance with modern breeding theory (of course, people are more advanced, can be called "socialized parenting"). At the core of the current population problem is that fertility must be carried out by men and women, and once this limit is broken, that person is the product.
You can imagine some scenarios: FactorY A needs a group of people, Factory B is responsible for producing people, Factory C is responsible for sales people...
After the two people met and greeted each other: Which factory are you from?
02, research on artificial wombs
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In fact, the artificial womb may come sooner than expected, I once wrote a content, moved over.
Last year, a study on artificial wombs was published in Nature, which is currently at the forefront of the field
The whole research process is like this
In this process, the blastocysts were successfully developed to a certain stage (mouse embryos are six days – about one-third of the length of pregnancy)
You can even see some organs starting to develop, including the heart, stomach, head, and limbs.
Moreover, this degree of simulation is very close to that of normal embryos, which is very critical, you can't use artificial wombs to breed a freak.
Through omics studies, it was found that artificial uterine development and normal uterine development are very close (exactly the same is impossible, you can see the E map, basically the cell map can be brought together. ）
So, it is estimated that some people are curious, what does this artificial womb look like?
Em, this artificial womb looks like this
Behind this, though, are many complex designs
The whole system can be summarized as follows
03, What are the requirements for artificial wombs?
The artificial womb itself is a simulation of the human womb, but this system has many complex contents.
The first is temperature control, which is no problem at the moment.
The second is air control, you know, the oxygen and waste removal in the womb are not the same as air, and need to be accurately simulated, including both ingredients and pressure.
The third is nutrition and hormone control. This point is currently the most rare, that is, in the process of fetal development, it is necessary to regulate different nutrients and hormones at different times, at present, due to its own restrictions on embryo research, we are not exactly clear about the needs of each moment, we can only know these needs at certain stages, so this step is also urgently needed to be solved, such as what kind of nutrition should be given at a certain moment of development.
04, Will the artificial womb solve the problem of human fertility?
I believe that with the support of science now, if we invest heavily, we may be able to solve this biggest problem in the next ten to twenty years.
Well, at the moment, IVF has matured, combined with an artificial uterus.
Then the problem of human fertility will be completely solved.
Now a couple tends to have only one child. But from the sperm-egg perspective.
Sperm: Unlimited supply
Eggs: There are hundreds of eggs in women's lives, most of them are not fertilized and eventually form a menstrual period (and through cloning + induced pluripotent stem cell technology, this may also be broken).
It can be said that in the future, if the artificial uterus is completely opened, then fertility will no longer be a problem.
Someone wants to have a baby, make an appointment to the hospital, the woman gets an injection, ovulation, and then the man provides sperm.
Next, just wait to collect the child (em, how does it feel weird)
The field of artificial womb belongs to the field of partial engineering, why not mention the scientific direction, because the scientific direction is difficult to set a future, such as the problem of two dark clouds in physics. But the engineering problem is based on the existing scientific understanding to break through the engineering problem, it can be a miracle, for example, how to know the nutritional hormone needs of each node of fetal development? Do it vigorously, invest money to smash out these data, so that according to the specific data to provide artificial wombs, as long as the investment is large enough, can be refined to every second (imagine the accuracy of rocket launch).
As for the problem of raising children after childbirth, this is actually since many families now have nannies and nurses, then to some extent, to solve these problems, socialized upbringing can be achieved.
ref Aguilera-Castrejon A, Oldak B, Shani T, et al. Ex utero mouse embryogenesis from pre-gastrulation to late organogenesis[J]. Nature, 2021, 593(7857): 119-124.