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NPR: Inside The Lab Where Scientists Are Editing DNA In Human Embryos

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NPR: Inside The Lab Where Scientists Are Editing DNA In Human Embryos

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Scientists can fertilize an egg and "fix" mutant DNA in sperm. The disease gets fixed AND the new genetic copies get passed on to future offspring. Question: Will we be creating "biologically superior" children?

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Doctors successfully transplanted a head of a person whose body was failing onto the body of a dead person. In the future, this would lead to immortality for those who could afford the high price.

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Controversial head transplant doctor claims success after rat op

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Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero announced an experiment to reattach the head of a corpse to a body had been achieved as planned.

He said the test showed it was possible to reattach the spine, nerves, blood vessels, veins and skin from the head to the body.

The next step will be to carry out the procedure using a live, but brain dead, human being who has agreed to organ donation, before the first attempt at a living person with a functioning brain is made.

Dr Canavero, is dubbed Dr Frankenstein for his bid to be the first medic to carry out a full head transplant on a living human.

He claims eventually a successful head transplant will lead to "immortality" for those who can afford it and mega rich business "tycoons" whose bodies are failing will be queuing up to buy the procedure and fuse their age-old head onto the body of an athletic person in their 20s or 30s.

Professor Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, announced the success at a press conference in Vienna today.

The procedure was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren, who last year grafted a head onto the body of a monkey.

Mr Canavero promised a full report of the Harbin Medical University team's procedure and a timeframe for the live transplant within a few days.

He said: "For too long nature has dictated her rules to us.

"We're born, we grow, we age and we die. For millions of years humans has evolved and 110 billion humans have died in the process.

"That's genocide on a mass scale.

"We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands.

"It will change everything. It will change you at every level.

"The first human head transplant, in the human mode, has been realised.

"The surgery lasted 18 hours. The paper will be released in a few days.'

"Everyone said it was impossible, but the surgery was successful."

He said the next step of using a brain dead organ donor would pave the way for a real operation.

Why I want to be first HEAD TRANSPLANT patient

In 2015 Mr Canavero announced he had a volunteer for the first live operation.

He described how he would have just seconds to decapitate disabled volunteer Valery Spiridonov, 31, before attaching his "live" head to an able-bodied dead donor patients' body.

He said within minutes blood would be flowing between his brain and "new body" and the whole operation would be over in under an hour, but post surgery procedures could go on more than 24 hours.

Speaking about the corpse procedure today, he said: "And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.

"It will be for a medical, neurological condition, not for life-extension.

"This is a medical condition for people who are suffering awfully so it isn't a joke."

We're born, we grow, we age and we die. For millions of years humans has evolved and 110 billion humans have died in the process.

Sergio Canavero

There has been criticism from the medical world as a whole, amid claims the procedure on a corpse has negligible scientific or medical benefits.

Dr James Fildes, NHS principal research scientist at the University Hospital of South Manchester's Transplant Centre, said: 'Unless Canavero or Ren provide real evidence that they can perform a head, or more appropriately, a whole body transplant on a large animal that recovers sufficient function to improve quality of life, this entire project is morally wrong.

"Perhaps far more worryingly, this endeavour appears to revolve around immortality, but in each case a body is needed for the transplant, and therefore a human needs to die as part of the process.

Where does Canavero propose to get the donor body from if the goal is to tackle the laws of nature?

"Has Canavero considered how he will tackle acute rejection of the constituent parts of the head?

"What will rejection of the skin, muscles, eyes, and brain manifest as? I hope this is not just egotistical pseudoscience."

Dr Jan Schnupp, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford, added: "I find it inconceivable that ethics committees in any reputable research or clinical institutions would give a green light to living human head transplants in the foreseeable future.

"Indeed, attempting such a thing given the current state of the art would be nothing short of criminal."

Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, told CNN: "I would not wish this on anyone. I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death.'

"As a neuroscientist, I would really quite like the general public to be reassured that neither I nor any of my colleagues think that beheading people for extremely long shot experiments is acceptable. It is not."

Mr Canavero announced in September 2016, a'Frankenstein' like plan to reanimate human corpses in trials to test if it is possible to reconnect the spinal cord of a head to another body and then stimulate the nervous system with electrical pulses.

In an article for the Surgical Neurology International, Dr Canavero pointed to the Frankenstein story, where the monster was brought to life using corpses and electricity, and experiments in the 1800s on dead criminals.

In May this year, scientists carried out a head transplant on a rat.

They fixed the heads of smaller donor rats onto the bodies of larger ones, but the two headed-creatures survived for an average of just 36 hours.

However, it was managed without causing blood loss-related brain damage to the donor, said the team including Mr Canavero.

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IMMORTALITY POSSIBLE? World's first human head transplant 'successfully' carried out

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Controversial head transplant doctor claims success after rat op Sign up HERE for science breakthroughs in health, business and more that matter We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you've consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding.

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The FDA approved genetically modified salmon to be eaten by humans and the this video it discusses why there is such an uproar about GMO's. What are the long term effects of GMO products?

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Is It Safe To Eat Genetically Modified Animals?

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Discusses the pros and cons of genome editing and how ethical/unethical it can be based on your view of it. Genome editing allows parents to select the traits they want for their children like blonde hair, height, blue eyes, e.t.c. Is it morally acceptably to allow parents to modify their kids for the sake of improving them or to prevent potential life threatening diseases?

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Genomics Research from Technology Networks

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Two weeks ago, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics released a seminal report on the social and ethical issues of heritable genome editing. In an article written exclusively for Technology Networks, Hugh Whittall, Director of the Council, gives an insight into how the report's conclusions were reached, and addresses the strong reactions to the report's main conclusion, that heritable genome editing interventions could be morally acceptable.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics' latest report concludes that 'heritable genome editing interventions could be morally acceptable'. What exactly do we mean by this?

Not exactly the 'green light for designer babies' so beloved of headline writers and editors who have captioned this as such, packaged it up with strongly expressed opinions and commentary, and catapulted it into the world's media. Not exactly a call to change the law to allow the use of these techniques in assisted reproduction in the here and now. And definitely not that any and all potential uses of the technology could be deemed ethically acceptable.

What we mean is this: in our view, heritable genome editing is not morally unacceptable in principle, and therefore there is no reason to rule it out altogether.

There are circumstances that we can foresee where there are good, moral reasons for its use. For example, for families affected by serious, life-limiting genetic diseases such as sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, it might allow them to have a genetically related child free of the risk of that disease, especially in some rarer cases where there are no other existing methods for achieving this.

There are also, potentially, less good reasons to use genome editing, and at the heart of our report are concerns that the possibilities it raises could have significant impacts on individuals, families and on society. We must therefore have appropriate measures in place to secure a responsible path to innovation and, perhaps, uptake of this technology in a reproductive context.

Some of the media coverage about our report has asserted something along the lines of we 'don't rule out the possibility of using genome editing for selecting traits such as eye color, hair color and height'. We might counter that this is at best a misinterpretation, and at worst a deliberate sensationalist approach that does little justice to the much more nuanced discussion that our report promotes.

Firstly, it plays down the great uncertainty that exists over the sorts of things genome editing might be able to achieve, or how widely its use might one day extend. There is no one gene for intelligence or for athletic ability and most observable traits in humans are likely to involve complex interactions between different genes, or between genes and environmental factors. In short, our genes do not prescribe everything about who we are, and genome editing seems unlikely ever to be capable of controlling such characteristics.

Secondly, it casts aside one of the two ethical principles put forward in our report to guide the use of heritable genome editing interventions, namely that they should not increase disadvantage, discrimination or division in society. The other principle is that they must be intended to secure, and be consistent with, the welfare of the future person.

The safety of the technique itself is obviously an important consideration in welfare, given that uncertainty about the risks of unintended consequences, and the possibility of passing them on, is a concern for many people. The technology cannot yet be considered safe enough, and indeed it might never be.

But welfare is more than 'good health'- it includes social and psychological wellbeing and it is dependent, to some extent on the circumstances in which people live. For example in the case of a person with a genetic disease (which might include disability or impairment), their welfare depends on their particular circumstances, including their physical and social environment, and the availability of healthcare and assistance.

We have carried out our inquiry over 20 months, and in the course of our deliberation we have taken views from many people, and we have heard strong moral arguments on all sides. Our ethical analysis takes into account of the interests of individuals who would be directly involved, and of others whose interest may also be affected.

Understanding the relationships between these interests, and the responsibilities of others to protect or enable these interests has allowed us to develop our two core ethical principles.

In unpacking these ethical issues, the context in which the reproductive goals and decisions of prospective parents are taking shape is significant. The ground is shifting with our increasing understanding of genomics and increasing access to our own personal genetic information. This new territory brings with it new reproductive decisions, responsibilities and expectations. Now is the right time to have a broad and inclusive debate, paying particular attention to the interests of the people and groups in society who are likely to be most affected if this were to be introduced. Importantly our report recommends that the technique should not be introduced before the risks of adverse effects for individuals, groups and society have been appropriately assessed, and measures are in place to monitor and review these and to impose a moratorium if necessary.

We can only make our regulatory recommendations to bodies in the UK, but of course that's only one part of the picture. Countries around the world are having their own discussions about genome editing. It is our hope that this report will have resonance across the globe and that the UK can work actively and constructively with other countries to develop a framework that respects the values of different countries and that safeguards human rights.

For more information, please see the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report 'Genome editing and human reproduction: Social and ethical issues', available here. Alongside the in-depth report, a 13-page overview of the report is available to download or read on the Council's website.

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Genome Editing and Human Reproduction: Behind the Headlines of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report

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Two weeks ago, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics released a seminal report on the social and ethical issues of heritable genome editing. In an article written exclusively for Technology Networks, Hugh Whittall, Director of the Council, looks in-depth at the conclusions and implications of the Council's report.

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Physician-assisted suicide an issue for nominee Gorsuch | CNN

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Neil Gorsuch’s views on physician-assisted suicide have come under scrutiny amid a showdown over the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation.

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Doctors have started to talk more and more about patients having end of life care.  This article talks about why we should have it, what it is, and why some health insurance companies don't want to have end of life care.

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A study found that Artificial Intelligence can predict if someone will be a criminal or not solely based on their facial features. How accurate is this tests that can tell if you are a criminal or not?

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The fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning are moving so quickly that any notion of ethics is lagging decades behind, or left to works of science fiction. This might explain a new study out of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which says computers can tell whether you will be a criminal based on nothing more than your facial features.

The bankrupt attempt to infer moral qualities from physiology was a popular pursuit for millennia, particularly among those who wanted to justify the supremacy of one racial group over another. But phrenology, which involved studying the cranium to determine someone's character and intelligence, was debunked around the time of the Industrial Revolution, and few outside of the pseudo-scientific fringe would still claim that the shape of your mouth or size of your eyelids might predict whether you'll become a rapist or thief.

Not so in the modern age of Artificial Intelligence, apparently: In a paper titled "Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images," two Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers say they fed "facial images of 1,856 real persons" into computers and found "some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle." They conclude that "all four classifiers perform consistently well and produce evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic."

Though long ago rejected by the scientific community, phrenology and other forms of physiognomy have reappeared throughout dark chapters of history. A 2009 article in Pacific Standard on the racial horrors of colonial Rwanda might've been good background material for the pair:

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Belgians, in their role as occupying power, put together a national program to try to identify individuals' ethnic identity through phrenology, an abortive attempt to create an ethnicity scale based on measurable physical features such as height, nose width and weight, with the hope that colonial administrators would not have to rely on identity cards.

This can't be overstated: The authors of this paper - in 2016 - believe computers are capable of scanning images of your lips, eyes, and nose to detect future criminality. It's enough to make phrenology seem quaint.

The study contains virtually no discussion of why there is a "historical controversy" over this kind of analysis - namely, that it was debunked hundreds of years ago. Rather, the authors trot out another discredited argument to support their main claims:, that computers can't be racist, because they're computers:

Unlike a human examiner/judge, a computer vision algorithm or classifier has absolutely no subjective baggages, having no emotions, no biases whatsoever due to past experience, race, religion, political doctrine, gender, age, etc., no mental fatigue, no preconditioning of a bad sleep or meal. The automated inference on criminality eliminates the variable of meta-accuracy (the competence of the human judge/examiner) all together. Besides the advantage of objectivity, sophisticated algorithms based on machine learning may discover very delicate and elusive nuances in facial characteristics and structures that correlate to innate personal traits and yet hide below the cognitive threshold of most untrained nonexperts.

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Troubling Study Says Artificial Intelligence Can Predict Who Will Be Criminals Based on Facial Features

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A new study says computers can tell whether you will be a criminal based on nothing more than your facial features.

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Face Transplant gives suicide survivor a second chance

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Face Transplant gives suicide survivor a second chance

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Historic face transplant gives suicide survivor a ‘second chance’ | CNN

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When Katie Stubblefield was 18, she tried to kill herself with a gun. Now, she is the youngest face transplant recipient in US history and wants to raise awareness around suicide prevention.

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Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop - much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus - but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.

It's appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it's important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today's study. "It's complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there," he says.

Instead, the point of developing an external womb - which his team calls the Biobag - is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

The Biobag may not look much like a womb, but it contains the same key parts: a clear plastic bag that encloses the fetal lamb and protects it from the outside world, like the uterus would; an electrolyte solution that bathes the lamb similarly to the amniotic fluid in the uterus; and a way for the fetus to circulate its blood and exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Flake and his colleagues published their results today in the journal Nature Communications.

Flake hopes the Biobag will improve the care options for extremely premature infants, who have "well documented, dismal outcomes," he says. Prematurity is the leading cause of death for newborns. In the US, about 10 percent of babies are born prematurely - which means they were born before they reach 37 weeks of pregnancy. About 6 percent, or 30,000 of those births, are considered extremely premature, which means that they were born at or before the 28th week of pregnancy.

These infants require intensive support as they continue to develop outside their mothers' bodies. The babies who survive delivery require mechanical ventilation, medications, and IVs that provide nutrition and fluids. If they make it out of the intensive care unit, many of these infants ( between 20 to 50 percent of them) still suffer from a host of health conditions that arise from the stunted development of their organ systems.

It's "complete science fiction" to think you could do this without the mother

"So parents have to make critical decisions about whether to use aggressive measures to keep these babies alive, or whether to allow for less painful, comfort care," says neonatologist Elizabeth Rogers, co-director for the Intensive Care Nursery Follow-Up Program of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the study. "One of the unspoken things in extreme preterm birth is that there are families who say, 'If I had known the outcome for my baby could be this bad, I wouldn't have chosen to put her through everything.'"

That's why for decades scientists have been trying to develop an artificial womb that would re-create a more natural environment for a premature baby to continue to develop in. One of the main challenges was re-creating the intricate circulatory system that connects mom to fetus: the mom's blood flows to the baby and back, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. The blood needs to flow with just enough pressure, but an external pump can damage the baby's heart.

To solve this problem, Flake and his colleagues created a pumpless circulatory system. They connected the fetus's umbilical blood vessels to a new kind of oxygenator, and the blood moved smoothly through the system. Smoothly enough, in fact, that the baby's heartbeat was sufficient to power blood flow without another pump.

For decades, scientists have been trying to develop an artificial womb

The next problem to solve was the risk for infections, which premature infants in open incubators face in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. That's where the bag and the artificial amniotic fluid comes in. The fluid flows in and out of the bag just like it would in a uterus, removing waste, shielding the infant from infectious germs in the hospital, and keeping the fetus's developing lungs filled with fluid.

Flake and his colleagues tested the setup for up to four weeks on eight fetal lambs that were 105 to 120 days into pregnancy - about equivalent to human infants at 22 to 24 weeks of gestation. After the four weeks were up, they were switched onto a regular ventilator like a premature baby in a NICU.

The lambs' health on the ventilator appeared nearly as good as a lamb the same age that had just been delivered by cesarean section. Then, the lambs were removed from the ventilator and all but one, which was developed enough to breathe on its own, were euthanized so the researchers could examine their organs. Their lungs and brains - the organ systems that are most vulnerable to damage in premature infants - looked uninjured and as developed as they should be in a lamb that grew in a mother.

Of course, lambs aren't humans

Of course, lambs aren't humans - and their brains develop at a somewhat different pace. The authors acknowledge that it's going to take more research into the science and safety of this device before it can be used on human babies. They've already started testing it on human-sized lambs that were put in the Biobags earlier in pregnancy. And they are monitoring the few lambs that survived after being taken off the ventilator to look for long-term problems. So far, the lambs seem pretty healthy. "I think it's realistic to think about three years for first-in-human trials," Flake says.

"It's so interesting, and it's really innovative," Rogers says. "To be able to continue to develop in an artificial environment can reduce the many problems caused by simply being born too early." Rogers adds that not every facility has the resources or expertise to offer cutting-edge care to expecting mothers - a problem that the Biobag won't be able to solve. "We know there are already disparities after preterm birth. If you have access to high-level regionalized care your outcomes are often better than if you don't," she says.

"I'm still blown away, whenever I'm down looking at our lambs."

And Rogers worries about how hype surrounding the Biobag could impact parents coping with preterm infants. "I think many people have been affected by preterm birth and they think this is going to be some magic bullet. And I think that prematurity is just really complicated." Preventing it in the first place should be a top priority, she says, but the Biobag could help drive that research forward.

For Flake, the research continues. "I'm still blown away, whenever I'm down looking at our lambs," he says. "I think it's just an amazing thing to sit there and watch the fetus on this support acting like it normally acts in the womb... It's a really awe-inspiring endeavor to be able to continue normal gestation outside of the mom."

This post has been updated with video.

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An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep - and humans could be next

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop - much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb.

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Genetics is fun

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Can doctors refuse to treat certain patients?

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Can doctors refuse to treat certain patients?

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Doctors can refuse to treat people from either their religion or from certain laws. Doctors must provide emergency care.

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Can Doctors Legally Refuse To Treat Patients?

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An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next

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An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next

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Hassan

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Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop - much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus - but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.

It's appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it's important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today's study. "It's complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there," he says.

Instead, the point of developing an external womb - which his team calls the Biobag - is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

The Biobag may not look much like a womb, but it contains the same key parts: a clear plastic bag that encloses the fetal lamb and protects it from the outside world, like the uterus would; an electrolyte solution that bathes the lamb similarly to the amniotic fluid in the uterus; and a way for the fetus to circulate its blood and exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Flake and his colleagues published their results today in the journal Nature Communications.

Flake hopes the Biobag will improve the care options for extremely premature infants, who have "well documented, dismal outcomes," he says. Prematurity is the leading cause of death for newborns. In the US, about 10 percent of babies are born prematurely - which means they were born before they reach 37 weeks of pregnancy. About 6 percent, or 30,000 of those births, are considered extremely premature, which means that they were born at or before the 28th week of pregnancy.

These infants require intensive support as they continue to develop outside their mothers' bodies. The babies who survive delivery require mechanical ventilation, medications, and IVs that provide nutrition and fluids. If they make it out of the intensive care unit, many of these infants ( between 20 to 50 percent of them) still suffer from a host of health conditions that arise from the stunted development of their organ systems.

It's "complete science fiction" to think you could do this without the mother

"So parents have to make critical decisions about whether to use aggressive measures to keep these babies alive, or whether to allow for less painful, comfort care," says neonatologist Elizabeth Rogers, co-director for the Intensive Care Nursery Follow-Up Program of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the study. "One of the unspoken things in extreme preterm birth is that there are families who say, 'If I had known the outcome for my baby could be this bad, I wouldn't have chosen to put her through everything.'"

That's why for decades scientists have been trying to develop an artificial womb that would re-create a more natural environment for a premature baby to continue to develop in. One of the main challenges was re-creating the intricate circulatory system that connects mom to fetus: the mom's blood flows to the baby and back, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. The blood needs to flow with just enough pressure, but an external pump can damage the baby's heart.

To solve this problem, Flake and his colleagues created a pumpless circulatory system. They connected the fetus's umbilical blood vessels to a new kind of oxygenator, and the blood moved smoothly through the system. Smoothly enough, in fact, that the baby's heartbeat was sufficient to power blood flow without another pump.

For decades, scientists have been trying to develop an artificial womb

The next problem to solve was the risk for infections, which premature infants in open incubators face in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. That's where the bag and the artificial amniotic fluid comes in. The fluid flows in and out of the bag just like it would in a uterus, removing waste, shielding the infant from infectious germs in the hospital, and keeping the fetus's developing lungs filled with fluid.

Flake and his colleagues tested the setup for up to four weeks on eight fetal lambs that were 105 to 120 days into pregnancy - about equivalent to human infants at 22 to 24 weeks of gestation. After the four weeks were up, they were switched onto a regular ventilator like a premature baby in a NICU.

The lambs' health on the ventilator appeared nearly as good as a lamb the same age that had just been delivered by cesarean section. Then, the lambs were removed from the ventilator and all but one, which was developed enough to breathe on its own, were euthanized so the researchers could examine their organs. Their lungs and brains - the organ systems that are most vulnerable to damage in premature infants - looked uninjured and as developed as they should be in a lamb that grew in a mother.

Of course, lambs aren't humans

Of course, lambs aren't humans - and their brains develop at a somewhat different pace. The authors acknowledge that it's going to take more research into the science and safety of this device before it can be used on human babies. They've already started testing it on human-sized lambs that were put in the Biobags earlier in pregnancy. And they are monitoring the few lambs that survived after being taken off the ventilator to look for long-term problems. So far, the lambs seem pretty healthy. "I think it's realistic to think about three years for first-in-human trials," Flake says.

"It's so interesting, and it's really innovative," Rogers says. "To be able to continue to develop in an artificial environment can reduce the many problems caused by simply being born too early." Rogers adds that not every facility has the resources or expertise to offer cutting-edge care to expecting mothers - a problem that the Biobag won't be able to solve. "We know there are already disparities after preterm birth. If you have access to high-level regionalized care your outcomes are often better than if you don't," she says.

"I'm still blown away, whenever I'm down looking at our lambs."

And Rogers worries about how hype surrounding the Biobag could impact parents coping with preterm infants. "I think many people have been affected by preterm birth and they think this is going to be some magic bullet. And I think that prematurity is just really complicated." Preventing it in the first place should be a top priority, she says, but the Biobag could help drive that research forward.

For Flake, the research continues. "I'm still blown away, whenever I'm down looking at our lambs," he says. "I think it's just an amazing thing to sit there and watch the fetus on this support acting like it normally acts in the womb... It's a really awe-inspiring endeavor to be able to continue normal gestation outside of the mom."

This post has been updated with video.

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An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep - and humans could be next

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop - much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb.

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Cloning can occur at the level of DNA, at the level of the single cell, or at the level of the whole organism

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Gene editing has become an option now due to new scientific advances. But scientists are planning on only using this technique to prevent and treat diseases, not create the perfect baby.
Question: In the future, will some scientists start genetically modifying for the purpose of enhancement for people or babies? How will society react? - Camille

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The National Academy of Sciences Says Yes to Gene Editing—for Medicinal Purposes Only

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A National Academy of Sciences committee reviews the do’s and don’ts for gene editing. Cures: good. Enhancements: Not right now.

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Extinct species such as the wooly mammoths and passenger pigeons could be brought back from extinction. Many of these species were driven to extinction at least partially by humans.
Sam W.

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The increasingly realistic prospect of ‘extinct animal’ zoos

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Animal cloning is becoming more common – and cloning extinct species could be on the horizon. Could parks and zoos for these creatures be round the corner?

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Allie
Artificial wombs provide a safe place for the fetus to develop, but have two ethical issues.

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E arlier this year, researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) revealed that they had developed an artificial womb capable of sustaining a premature lamb during a period of development roughly equivalent to 23 to 24 weeks' gestation in humans. That's a critical time. In the United States, an estimated 30,000 babies are born extremely premature each year. Weighing about one pound, their survival is uncertain. Those who do survive have a much higher likelihood of lifelong health problems such as lung disease, cerebral palsy, and hearing and vision impairments.

The new device, the researchers suggested, could one day dramatically improve outcomes for this particularly vulnerable group.

Such were the very narrow and targeted goals of the CHOP team. The public response among bioethicists and the media, however, was far more elaborate. In the weeks following the paper's publication, a wide range of speculative narratives painted the development with a dystopian air. In an interview with NPR, Dena Davis, a bioethicist at Lehigh University, invoked Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," in which human conception and gestation occur entirely outside the body - a concept known as "ectogenesis" - under the control of an autocratic state. In that same NPR segment, Scott Gelfand, a bioethicist at Oklahoma State University, worried that employers could require female employees to use artificial wombs to avoid maternity leave.

The U.K.'s New Statesman magazine ran an article with the title "Artificial wombs are only three years away - how scared should women be?" The author provided a feminist perspective on the question of whether an artificial womb will make women obsolete. And an article from Gizmodo declared that the technology could threaten a woman's right to an abortion. In response, the conservative National Review magazine accused the Gizmodoauthor of wanting "a constitutional right to a dead baby."

Discussions about where technology is taking us are surely warranted, though in the case of artificial wombs, the publication of one scientific paper became an occasion for speculation that left the particulars of physiology - and technology - in the dust. For example, the structural integrity of tiny blood vessels, the physical limits of synthetic tubing, the complex molecular exchange between fetus and placenta, and the often-poor outcomes of premature infants (despite receiving today's most cutting-edge interventions) all speak to the immeasurably complex science attending fetal viability outside the human womb. Furthermore, the sometimes-sci-fi speculation potentially distracts from the murky ethical terrain that already exists in neonatal intensive care units across the country, where parents and physicians face a vexing question: Should they resuscitate an extremely premature infant with a high likelihood of death and severe disability?

A handful of groups worldwide are working on devices that would allow infants at this tenuous threshold of viability to survive. I became aware of the media conjecture while writing an article for the University of Michigan, where researchers are working to develop an artificial placenta. In the press, the lead researchers at CHOP and the University of Michigan have commented - not always favorably - on each other's devices. But one thing both agree on: They are nottrying to lower the age of viability, which is currently around 22 to 24 weeks' gestation.

Dr. Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon and the corresponding author for CHOP's Nature Communications paper, suggests that the ethical objections appearing in the press reflect a "lack of insight into the clinical context and the science that we're doing." Speaking about bioethicists in particular, he says, "It would be nice if they even just wanted to call me up and we could discuss it. It might add to their insight before they start raising these highly sensationalistic ethical objections."

I. Glenn Cohen, a bioethicist and legal scholar, offers a different take. In an email interview, he writes that by staying ahead of the science - contemplating its possible trajectory and consequences - bioethicists can motivate the scientific community, laypeople, or legislators to change direction. "In my view," Cohen says, "this is one of the most important contributions bioethicists make."

While not completely discounting the thought experiments that accompanied the CHOP announcement (and which have followed analogous efforts elsewhere), a variety of scientists and medical practitioners suggest that the challenges and limits of technology are too often being overlooked. For anyone agonizing over (or hoping for) an imminent "Brave New World," the scientific realities are likely to prove eye opening.

I t's worth noting that the term "artificial womb" never appears in CHOP's research paper. The text, which describes how eight premature lambs survived four weeks without breathing air through their lungs, uses terms like "system" and "device."

In photographs, that device appears otherworldly: A lamb is sealed inside a clear bag filled with synthetic amniotic fluid. Three small tubes, called cannulas, connect the umbilical cord to an oxygenator located outside of the bag, creating a circuit. Blood flows through the tubing from the lamb to the oxygenator, which provides nutrients and oxygen, while removing carbon dioxide. The replenished blood then flows back to the lamb.

In July, the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, New York, provided a shot of adrenalin to the abortion debate when it published a report by Cohen that imagines a scenario in which an infant could be sustained in an artificial womb at 18 weeks' gestation. That's a tiny being, just over four months into a pregnancy and less than half a pound. Such a device, Cohen suggested, might lead courts to ban abortion at that age.

What would happen if doctors tried to connect this infant to CHOP's artificial womb? There's a vast difference in size and development between an 18-week-gestation fetus and a 23-week-gestation fetus, says Flake. The size difference matters because a smaller infant doesn't pump as much blood. If there isn't enough blood flow through the artificial womb's tubing, the blood will clot. "At the present time, there's nothing made or manufactured that can function adequately with those [lower] blood flows," says Flake.

Even if a device could support a lower blood flow, it would be impossible to connect it to such a small infant, says Jutta Arens, a biomedical engineer working on artificial placenta technology at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. An artificial womb's cannulas must connect with an infant's blood vessels, but the smaller the baby, the smaller its vessels. If the blood vessels aren't thick enough, they won't be able to stabilize a cannula. "There really is a physical limit to everything that we do regarding the diameter of the vessels of the baby," she says. The German group's current target is 24 weeks' gestation. "Perhaps we could go down to 23 or 22," she says, but "I don't think we could push the limits further down."

Similar devices already exist that take over heart and lung function for adults and children recovering from organ failure. But they are only a last resort because complications can arise from long-term use. These technologies save thousands of lives, but their effectiveness is time-limited. This is one of the reasons Flake considers it "very unlikely" that a device like his could support an infant as long as 5 or 6 weeks.

"We're trying to optimize the benefit-to-risk ratio here," says Flake. "By going back to 18 weeks, you increase the risks dramatically and really negate the benefit." I sense that Flake is tiring of these hypotheticals, but I press on: What about speculation that artificial wombs could provide a desirable alternative to pregnancy?

"That's all pure fantasy stuff," he says. "They're making this stuff up just for the sensationalist value of it. It's ridiculous. You're never going to have a zero-risk system."

A rtificial wombs and placentas are being developed with the goal of treating infants who are already receiving intensive care in NICUs across the country.

"In the United States, children born at 23 or 24 weeks' gestation - most of them are going to receive attempts at aggressive care," says Dr. Mark Mercurio, chief of neonatology and director of the program for biomedical ethics at Yale School of Medicine. This includes measures such as mechanical ventilation, fluid and electrolyte management, and surgical procedures.

Despite these interventions, outcomes for this group of infants are so poor that they exist in what's called the " gray zone" of viability, when survival is uncertain and chances of severe disability are high. Among infants born at 23 weeks' gestation, only about a third survive. At 24 weeks, the odds of survival double. Among survivors in both groups, the likelihood of disability is extremely high due to long-term health issues such as chronic lung disease, neurodevelopmental problems, and impairments of hearing and vision.

Mercurio believes a technology that improves outcomes for these children "would receive a great deal of interest." He sees that as a better focus than the question, "Couldn't we get them even smaller?"

Sandra Bellini, director of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Track at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing, has spent 30 years working in neonatal intensive care. She is skeptical about the notion of lowering the current age of viability because while neonatology has made great strides in treating premature infants, "every single thing we do can carry risks of short- and long-term damage" to the baby. "We are all about saving babies, but we want to save babies who are going to go on to have a happy, healthy life," Bellini says. She mentions data showing that families whose babies received a high degree of medical intervention in the NICU have "huge incidences of [post-traumatic stress disorder], divorce, and financial ruin." Some families have medical insurance policies with a lifetime cap. Daily NICU costs exceed $3,000 per infant, and a prolonged stay can top one million dollars. NICU children can hit their cap before they ever leave the hospital.

All of this means that parents of infants born at 23 weeks' gestation must make a difficult decision about whether to pursue aggressive, uncomfortable, and often ineffective care for their premature baby. A successful artificial placenta, by improving outcomes for these infants, would eliminate the decision. "My device doesn't introduce huge ethical questions if it's applied appropriately, meaning to a 23-weeker to improve outcome," says Flake.

For its part, the CHOP team is not against bioethical input on these technologies. In fact, they're collaborating with some bioethicists to identify the best way to introduce artificial wombs into the clinic once the technology is ready. Describing his artificial womb, Flake says, "I think it needs an ethical framework that is based on its capabilities and the science and the clinical context that it will be used in."

Even if CHOP's artificial womb isn't capable of lowering the current age of viability, isn't it possible that once in place, it might allow other research groups to create a device that could?

"Not a chance, no. Not good," says D. Michael Nelson, an obstetrician at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who has been researching the placenta for over 30 years. He is editor emeritus of the journal Placenta, and recently gave an inaugural address at the International Federation of Placenta Associations.

"There are a lot of programming things that go into babies," he explains. In this case, he isn't referring to genetic programming, but to programming that comes from interactions with the environment to which the baby is exposed in the mother's womb. The maternal placenta provides a complex and changing mixture of proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, minerals and growth factors. "You start putting [babies] in an artificial environment, and it changes everything," says Nelson. Machines and artificial sources of nutrition are not as good as the placenta and the mother's blood supply.

Nelson believes that researchers will make significant advances in prematurity prevention before they perfect an artificial womb. He cites research at the March of Dimes Prematurity Research Centers, a network of researchers based at major medical centers, including his own, studying how factors such as the microbiome, circadian rhythms, and genes might contribute to prematurity.

"Our goal is to avoid premature birth," he adds in an email message, "rather than putting our preterm babies in a bag."

T hat's certainly a brusque way to describe the technological advances being made at the frontiers of infant viability. But in its brusqueness, it also serves to underscore the vast distance between the science of human gestation as it now stands, and the faraway horizons where it would need to go to breathe real life into the ethical worries - boxed pregnancies, valueless women, and other Brave New Worlds - that the CHOP innovation recently set in motion.

Of course, to bioethicists, the gap between what we can do now and what we might be able to do in the future is precisely where all the potential consequences ought to be fully considered. "By the time a breakthrough is here and widespread," Cohen says, "it is often hard to have a real conversation about 'where to go' because we are already there."

By most measures, scientists suggest, we won't be there for quite some time.

"Reproduction is very complex and it's taken millions and millions of years to create the systems we have and there are still huge amounts that we just don't understand about it all," says Dr. David Adamson, a reproductive endocrinologist and CEO of Advanced Reproductive Care, a national network of fertility clinics.

Adamson believes that ectogenesis might one day be possible, but in the distant future: decades at least, perhaps even a century. He also points out that this will likely require technologies other than those currently available to us. He mentions big data, and a better understanding of gene expression, and perhaps stem cells to create special types of placental tissues that aren't currently available. "If we look over 40 years, because IVF's not 40 years old yet, we see that there's been a lot of progress in terms of our being able to do in vitro growth of embryos on the one hand, and, on the other side, to reduce the gestational period at which viability can occur," he says.

But just as IVF and surrogacy are supplemental procedures today, he envisions ectogenesis as an assisted reproductive technology, akin to IVF but much more complex - and far, far in the future.

In the meantime, many scientists agree with Jutta Arens, the German engineer:

"There's no way," she told me, "of substituting the womb."
Sara Talpos is a freelance writer whose recent work has been published in Mosaic and the Kenyon Review's special issue on science writing. Sara has an MFA in creative writing (poetry) and is interested in the connections between science and literature. She taught writing classes at the University of Michigan for ten years.

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Nurturing Controversy: The Real Science Behind the Artificial Womb

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E arlier this year, researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) revealed that they had developed an artificial womb capable of sustaining a premature lamb during a period of development roughly equivalent to 23 to 24 weeks' gestation in humans. That's a critical time.

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Stem cells can develop into many different cells during early life and growth. They serve as an internal repair system. There is controversy over the protection of human life as these stem cells are prevalent in the blastula  but only for a short time. What moral status does the human embryo have?

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Scientists are coming up with new ways to preserve bodies and be able to bring them back to life.

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