Medical Marvels Or Ethical Missteps? – Lab–Grown Embryos And Human–Monkey Hybrids
In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World,” people aren’t born from a mother’s womb. Instead, embryos are grown in artificial wombs until they are brought into the world, a process called ectogenesis. In the novel, technicians in charge of the hatcheries manipulate the nutrients they give the fetuses to make the newborns fit the desires of society. Two recent scientific developments suggest that Huxley’s imagined world of functionally manufactured people is no longer far-fetched.
Researchers have grown mammal embryos later into development than ever before in an artificial womb. Vitalii Kyryk/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA
On March 17, 2021, an Israeli team announced that it had grown mouse embryos for 11 days – about half of the gestation period – in artificial wombs that were essential...