Mice embryos have been grown in artificial wombs. Could humans be next?
The idea of growing(is that the right word?) humans in an artificial embryo is rife with ethical concerns. Even if there existed the technology to do something like that, how welcoming(or not) society would be of people who are artificial in origin is unsure.
There is every reason to think that there many folks would consider such people as ‘other’ and potentially even think of them with hostile intentions.
After all, such hostility is extended towards people who are all too natural in birth. We draw the dividing lines across racial/religious lines all too often. It’s no stretch of the imagination to think that we would add an additional division between so-called natural and artificial humans.
On the flipside, it’s amusing to think what could be potentially worse than people hating others of the same species for no valid reason. If humans are already that fallen, then how worse could an artificially grown human could be? Not much, don’t you think? Then, what exactly are we fearing?
That’s just my personal view. But Decisions regarding such things shouldn’t be based on individual preferences but on collective viewpoints.
We wouldn’t have to take such decisions any time soon, for the simple fact technology to create humans artificially doesn’t exist yet.
But we may be getting there in the very near future. A latest experiment by scientists in Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science has resulted in mice embryo being grown in artificial wombs.
Beating hearts, eyes, head, a fully living thing grown artificially. I am not sure I have still completely processed the significance of this news. I have been desensitised towards such things to a certain extent, what with watching sci-fi and horror flicks which show the potential for things going wrong in such scenarios.
These movies and the like are meant to point out the dangers that are inherent in such experiments. But in my case at least, what they have done more than anything is make me accept the fact that one day or another, such technology is bound to come.
The Israeli experiment is probably a preview of things to come.
The possibilities that this opens up are potentially endless. For instance, if living beings could be grown artificially, it could find application in saving endangered species- and we do have plenty of those thanks to the Anthropocene.
Also, it is conceivable that living beings grown in artificial embryos could be done so combined with the process of gene editing. That may open up a new era of human-animal interactions.
For one thing, this may help give us a wider pool of options for pets. Certain traits of certain species which may be potentially harmful to humans at the moment may be edited out, making them suitable for domestication.
Of course, these are mere speculations at this point. Such scenarios may not come to pass, after all. For one thing, in the case of gene editing in animals, there is the potential harm of unforeseen consequences.
And it may be seen as too risky a thing to do in that context.
But there’s no denying that the future just got even more full of possibilities with this latest experiment from Israel.
