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

[1984hasarrived]

I just had to check the date was not April 1st before posting this.

The words "seemed to develop" do not inspire me with confidence.

But hey, this is our future.  When it first happened, in vitro fertilisation was considered spooky scifi stuff, now it is commonplace.

The lambs spent four weeks in the external wombs and seemed to develop normally
(before being served up with a delicious mint sauce) *my addition - 1984*

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.

More here https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421...erm-infant

[Mystic Wanderer]

Very good!
Could be a major step up in the medical field for premature babies to get a fair shake at life.

However, they need to come out with the major technology that has been around for many decades, being used in the Black Ops programs now before we'll be up to date with what they are using.
Heck, they have been producing clones since the 1950's!  I'm sure they could give us a more "modern" incubator than a plastic bag.