Disruptive Technologies in human augmentation impacting beyond 2040 II

Roberto Saracco April 25, 2018 Blog 1,215 Views

Male pregnancy and artificial womb

An artificial womb, so far experimented only on a lamb. On the left photo the lamb after 4 days in the artificial womb, after having been delivered prematurely at 107 days of gestation (normal sheep gestation is 152 days); on the right the photo of the same lamb after 28 days in the artificial womb. Photo credit: Partridge et al/Nature Communications

Technology is pushing the boundary of what is possible, blurring the differences between science and science fiction. This is happening in many areas, although the ones involving us, human beings, are the one most sensitive and more fraught with ethical, legal and societal implications.

Male pregnancy

Ectopic pregnancy, the implant of the fertilised egg outside of its required uterus location, is a not so rare event requiring surgical removal of the egg, since it would threaten the life of the mother. Abdominal ectopic pregnancy, the implant of the egg on the peritoneum, happens in 1% of the ectopic pregnancy. Some researchers are seeing this as a possible way to have male carrying out the gestation, under medical supervision. The egg would be implanted in the peritoneum that will serve as placenta. It is still pure speculation but it has entered the domain of scientific possibility. Image credit: Cunningham et al

If there has always been a clear separation between men and women is that the former cannot bear children whilst the latter do. Yet technology is blurring this separation by making possible to a man to bear a child and to have a machine, an artificial womb, to bear the child.

The path towards this seemingly impossible result is already well defined, and although it might seem strange having a man bearing a child might be closer than having a machine doing it.

There have already been successful uterus transplants on women born without a uterus, that have led to child bearing. The transplant of a uterus on a man is more complex since it would require the creation of blood vessels connecting the transplanted uterus and the creation of a supporting muscular tissue, both present in women born without a uterus, but this is not a showstopper. Sometime in the next 15 years it may become reality.

Artificial womb

The creation of an artificial womb is further down the lane (ectogenesis). We already have minimal artificial womb to take care of preterm babies, with successful outcome from the 22nd week of gestation (although these preterm babies have immature organs that make survival difficult).

Recently researchers at the Children Hospital of Philadelphia have managed to create and experiment an artificial womb for lambs. Notice that the baby sheep spent 2/3 of the normal gestation period in its mother womb, so we are quite far from a real artificial womb that can take a fertilised egg and carry out the whole gestation. Still, in the case of the baby sheep researches have been able to create an artificial placenta providing nutrients and getting rid of metabolic waste so it really is a step forward.
According to the Imperial College foresight study by 2040 we might have artificial wombs to cary out human gestation. This from a technical point of view. At that time (and obviously along the way) ethical, legal and societal issues will emerge.

There are already discussions going on on the societal as well as psychological implications. It would clearly be a disruption challenging roles that seemed to be carved in our very essence.

A child with two dads

Schematic representation of in vivo and in vitro development of germ cell in mouse. The in vitro scheme of derivation and differentiation of PGCs from mES cells is based on the methodology adopted by us. The known genetic and epigenetic events including genetic profile at each stage of development are shown. Credit: Institut Pasteur

A further evolution, somewhat in parallel with the creation of a fully functional artificial womb, is the possibility to have two males generating an offspring. Today a male couple could adopt a child, and none of them will be the biological father, or one can use is sperm to fertilise an egg donor, in which case he will be the biological father. The availability of an artificial womb would make this possible without the mother to carry out the gestation.

Genetic manipulation is reaching the point of making possible to take a male cell by taking a primordial germ cell -PGC- from a male and direct it (through gene tinkering) to create an egg. That egg can be fertilised by the sperm from the other male leading to a baby that is actually the biological child of two fathers. Notice that the egg developed from the PGC will contain woman DNA, from the mitochondria (these are always inherited via the mother line) that are present in the cell.

The Imperial College foresight study is not mentioning this possibility but evolution in genetic engineering and the availability of an artificial womb can make this scenario possible.

Cloning

Proud sheep in British summer time. It made the headlines as the first cloned sheep. Born on July 5th, 1996 it lived a healthy life till its dead on February 14th, 2003 – note: the average life of a sheep is between 10 to 12 years, do Dolly life was shorter but no relation to cloning was identified. Image credit: GEN/Getty

Cloning is already happening, just not at the human level. Human and more generally primate cloning present harder technical issues but in principle human cloning can be possible. There are significant ethical issues in this area as well. For an interesting overview read the Cloning Fact Sheet written by the Human Genome Research Institute.