Thread by @antonioregalado

“Baby steps” towards ectogenesis, or growing animals in a vat. Humans, too (Thread)

Here’s a news roundup from @NatureNews of recent efforts to grow human embryos longer in the lab...as long as 13 days... and to make embryo mimics from stem cells nature.com/articles/d4158…

Nature news portrays the scientific value of sustaining and modeling the embryo in a dish, but what is this technology’s ultimate application?

Are we developing technology for ectogenesis, aka development outside (“ektos” in Greek) the womb?

Even the dictionary think ectogenesis is science fiction, not fact.

From the first chapter of Huxley’s Brave New World, a description of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, where humans are manufactured by the “dozens”

Not to get ahead of the thread, but Nature News notes manufactured “embryoids” lack key parts, citing this as an ethical plus, as likely aren’t viable.

in Brave New World, tho, introduction of defects/ developmental limits is the whole point. That’s how you make an Epsilon

The technology of ectogenesis is arriving from two directions simultaneously. From conception forward and from birth backwards.

Considering IVF and extreme ICU preemies, the total time a human has to be in a womb is already as little as 20 weeks, half the usual 40.

From conception forward, 4 relevant technologies:

(1) IVF in which embryos grown in lab 5 days

(2) recent breakthrough growing embryos up to 13 days (so far)

(3) getting stem cells to spontaneously self-assemble into embryos

(4) manufacture of sperm and egg from stem cells

These techs are about fully understanding, controlling and recapitulating early development. Links to articles on each.
(1) advancedfertility.com/blastocy.htm
(2) nature.com/news/human-emb…
(3) technologyreview.com/s/608173/artif…
(4) technologyreview.com/s/608452/a-new…

Then, from birth backwards, we have the artificial womb.

https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/856891811838799872

So the people mimicking embryos and developing artificial wombs insist THIS IS NOT ABOUT ECTOGENESIS

..just science!

Ok, but if scientists aren’t developing ectogenesis, then why try so hard to hide the pea?

Examples:

- the artificial womb team tried to censor publication in the media of the creepy video above

-the stem cell to embryo crowd employs obfuscating nomenclature like “gastruloid”

scientists don’t want you to speculate about ectogenesis. But it’s too late for that. Here’s the speculation of none other than the dean of Harvard Medical School, Gerge Daley:

Where do we draw the line? It depends what’s possible and what we want.

Do we want, for example, headless vat clones of ourselves from which we can obatain youthful matching organs?

Headless clones? Once I found a patent application that got pretty close to spelling it out. From those nutty guys at Advanced Cell Technology way back in 1997.

patents.google.com/patent/US62359…

NT stands for nuclear transfer, aka cloning.

There’s a pretty bad contemporaneous novel by Robin Cook called Shock about harvesting organs from clones. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_(no…

Cook originally got famous with a better book, Coma, in which organs are stolen from people in comas.

Please take this poll and then tell me what YOU think ectogenesis technology will be good for in the comments. /END

Ectogenesis is: