Scientists Create a Concept Video Depicting the World's First Artificial Womb Facility

Photo byChristian Bowen on Unsplash

After a scientist unveils a concept video showing what the world’s first artificial womb facility would look like, fertility scientists say that future will come sooner than we think. The video shows a fictional future womb facility called EctoLife that allows the parents of the future to select the characteristics of their baby from a menu that includes everything from hair and eye color to physical strength, intelligence, and height. In addition, parents can also choose to keep or remove genetically inherited diseases from the DNA of their babies.

According to the World Health Organization, 48 million couples and 186 million individuals suffer from infertility. Although infertility is attributed to many factors that could affect both males and females, EctoLife will enable infertilecouples to become biological parents and promises to help countries such as Japan and South Korea to reverse their declining populations.

Scientist and the creator of the concept video, Mr. Hashem Al- Ghaili, further claimed that his futuristic artificial womb facility would be able to yearly grow around 30,000 babies. Furthermore, he claimed that Ectolife is based on decades of ground-breaking scientific research, saying,

“Every single feature mentioned in the concept is 100% science-based and has already been achieved by scientists and engineers. The only thing left is building a prototype by combining all the features into a single device.”

The Concept Video of the World’s First Artificial Womb Facility

Although Ectolife merely shows a glimpse of how future humans will conceive, Scientists such as the late Professor Stephen Hawkins feared what genetic engineering might do to humanity regarding the creation of superhumans. Moreover, Professor Hawkins also stressed the possibility of how people with means could be tempted to edit their DNA and the DNA of their children so as to be more intelligent and live longer.

Nevertheless, in a future where babies will be conceived in pods as their parents will observe their vitals from their phones as an artificial intelligence system monitors the physical features of the babies is not the kind of progress we envision for humanity, Mr. Hashem in explaining the benefits of the system said,

“EctoLife allows your baby to develop in an infection-free environment. The pods are made of materials that prevent germs from sticking to their surfaces. Every growth pod features sensors that can monitor your baby’s vital signs, including heartbeat, temperature, blood pressure, breathing rate, and oxygen saturation.”

Although EctoLife’s concept of pregnancy removes the pain and the risks associated with pregnancies, it nevertheless opens the pandora’s box of everything that can go wrong with genetic engineering. Of course, time will tell whether humanity will trust artificial pods for wombs and artificial intelligence as the guardians that will protect future babies from genetic abnormalities.

Still, history proves humans will try and risk anything for profit. Nevertheless, as interesting as Hashem’s concept video is, it underscores our over-reliance on technology and its risks, a future problem humanity will have to come to terms with at some point.