Ectogenesis
Pregnancy is a great toll for women, therefore it’s wise if we perform the pregnancy outside the womb, i.e. ectogenesis.
I’ll not discuss the societal implications of such a tech, because it will quickly turn into the Maury’s Show (“He is not the father!!”). I’d rather discuss the technical feasibility of such a tech.
To retrieve the egg, the doctor implants a tiny robotic sleeve inside the fallopian tube, connected to a thread at the rear end for easy retrieval. What this robot does is it senses when an egg has entered inside its chamber in the fallopian tube and closes the chamber. That’s all it does. Then it notifies the user that the egg (ovum) is ready for collection. If we implant two such sleeves in the fallopian tubes, we can harvest two eggs at one collection.
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Now that we have the egg, we get the sperm from the father and use it to fertilize the eggs. Then begins the fun part, the egg starts dividing to a certain stage and then we can’t successfully do anything with it currently. But I suggest that we use some chemicals (like hormones or chicken egg yolk proteins) to induce the egg to sprout a umbilical cord. This is the most crucial stage of the procedure. If we can find any chemical capable of sprouting our egg, we have succeeded.
Next, we take micro cannula and cannulate the umbilical cord(artery goes where arteries go, and vein goes where veins normally go). We feed the cord with oxygenated and nutrient rich blood. The nutrients need to be included in the blood at the rate that they are consumed. The embryo begins to suck up the good blood and begin circulation. Soon enough, it’s heart starts beating and the procedure has advanced further.
Now, we need to wait until the embryo grows into a fetus. We need to make sure that our supply is flexible enough to provide nutrients at a steady growth rate. The cannula has to increase in size and the blood amount needs to adjust. Adaptive hydrogels could work its magic for this, or electroactive polymers who increase their diameter based on voltage applied.
Pretty soon, our fetus will begin growing inside a bag filled with amniotic fluid. From the time that it’s an egg, the baby has constantly been in an amniotic fluid environment. It will continue to be in one until its birth. Instead of tough labor, the baby will be simply extracted out of a bag or box.
This is indeed a dream worth pursuing. The only new stuff i’ve added here is the use of electroactive polymers to automatically adjust for cannula size variation required.
I hope this gets made soon, can’t wait for one to arrive in my city. Happy breeding everybody!!
