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

[skimread]

[video=youtube;dxn6msihFjc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxn6msihFjc[/video]


http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/1...uterus-lamb-sheep-birth-premie-preterm-infant


This is pretty amazing. Imagine you and your wife visiting your kid to see how it looks like as it grows from day 1 inception.

 

[Kosmik]

AS the father of a 27 week premie all I can say is,

 

[Ninja'd]

Yeah, I've seen this movie.

[video=youtube;IojqOMWTgv8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojqOMWTgv8[/video]

 

[Thor]

Saw it on facebook, did not even click the video as I thought it was fake news again.

/Watches Video.

Oh wow!

 

[LazyLion]

Just a bunch of cells...

 

[Kosmik]

A side note for any who may not see the HUGE benefit in this, I'll recount from personal experiance:

* Our eldest was born @ 27 weeks ( 3 MONTHS early )
* Weighed in @ 730grms
* Minimal lung development and unable to breath unassisted.
* Minimal ocular development ( quite literally his eyeballs has yet to expand and were like flat balloons
* Anemic requiring blood transfusions
* Cranial internal bleeding
* Had to fight off numerous infections and was kept in a highly clean environment for 85 days.
* Medical cost very high requiring multiple specialists and 24/7 monitoring and care.

Now if he had access to this, it would have eliminated all of that. The reason for my sons early birth was a failure in the placenta ( the food and life transfering organ ). It basically ruptured from the womb, putting both him and my wife in critical danger. If not for modern science, both would have been killed. We need this technology, as soon as possible. Not to mention think of adult applications, leveraging stem cell and foetal growth techniques for repair to heavily injured people.

 

[Nerfherder]

Just a bunch of cells...

Dont you worry... its getting there.'Just see what we will be able to create with a bag like this.

 

[Nerfherder]

A side note for any who may not see the HUGE benefit in this, I'll recount from personal experiance:

* Our eldest was born @ 27 weeks ( 3 MONTHS early )
* Weighed in @ 730grms
* Minimal lung development and unable to breath unassisted.
* Minimal ocular development ( quite literally his eyeballs has yet to expand and were like flat balloons
* Anemic requiring blood transfusions
* Cranial internal bleeding
* Had to fight off numerous infections and was kept in a highly clean environment for 85 days.
* Medical cost very high requiring multiple specialists and 24/7 monitoring and care.

Now if he had access to this, it would have eliminated all of that. The reason for my sons early birth was a failure in the placenta ( the food and life transfering organ ). It basically ruptured from the womb, putting both him and my wife in critical danger. If not for modern science, both would have been killed. We need this technology, as soon as possible. Not to mention think of adult applications, leveraging stem cell and foetal growth techniques for repair to heavily injured people.

I think that the tricky thing will be to transfer these prenates to the new womb. It will definately help in a lot of situations. Hopefully also save a lot of money and resources, I assume it wont need the kind of facilities that ICU care require.

 

[Kosmik]

The transfer is not that difficult as it would be effectively hooking up the umbilical, remember they don't breath yet and there is no birth canal pressure to force it. The highest risk is infection, his early days was actually in a perspex like box that was shrinkwrapped to create an "artificial womb". This is a stage prior to the traditional incubators which are only used after a certain weight is reached.

As to the transfer, I recall the theatre nurse quite literally running through the corridors with him from the operating theater to the NICU. Sometimes I have nightmarish thoughts about what might have happened if she slipped. We never even saw him initially, only about 4 hours post birth.