An effort to help premature infants survive — creating an “artificial womb” — is gathering considerable attention, though ethics concerns loom given its possible implications.
A small study published Tuesday in Nature Communications discovered that for approximately one month, the artificial womb in question seemed to promote normal development for extreme premature fetuses. That said, it’s not as if the device is ready for humans just yet; researchers have only done tests on fetal lambs. But a lead researcher says the group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years.
“The whole idea is to support normal development; to re-create everything that the mother does in every way that we can to support normal fetal development and maturation,” study leader Alan Flake, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NPR. The lambs in this study had normal growth, lung maturation and brain maturation, Flake says.
Here’s what the device looks like: a clear plastic bag loaded with synthetic amniotic fluid, with an outside umbilical cord connected to a machine serving as a placenta, NPR reports.
While the device has been touted as “a major breakthrough” by Thomas Shaffer, a physiology and pediatrics professor at Temple University, the ethics concerns are leaving others skeptical.
“If it’s a question of a baby dying versus a baby being born who then needs to live its entire life in an institution, then I don’t think that’s better, Dena Davis, a Lehigh University bioethicist, told NPR. “Some parents might think that’s better, but many would not.”
Barbara Katz Rothman, a City University of New York sociologist, added that “the problem is a baby raised in a machine is denied a human connection.”
Flake clarified that his team members don’t have plans nor have they ever had ones “of extending the limits of viability further back.”
In the future, Flake and his researchers hope to better the device and shrink it to accommodate human infants, reports Reuters. They’re about one-third the size of the lambs studied. And the potential doesn’t end there.
“Potential therapeutic applications may include treatment of fetal growth retardation related to placental insufficiency or the salvage of preterm infants threatening to deliver after fetal intervention or fetal surgery,” according to the study. “The technology may also provide the opportunity to deliver infants affected by congenital malformations of the heart, lung and diaphragm for early correction or therapy before the institution of gas ventilation.”
Researchers said approximately 30,000 U.S. babies are born in the 23 to 26 week range, aka “critically early,” Reuters reports. Babies that young don’t have a strong chance of survival.
The 11 Most Dangerous Places in Your Home for Babies and Small Kids
What’s the Healthiest Month to Be Born In?
More from U.S. News
How to Promote Safe Sleep for Your Infant
The 11 Most Dangerous Places in Your Home for Babies and Small Kids
What’s the Healthiest Month to Be Born In?
This ‘Artificial Womb’ Could Help Premature Babies originally appeared on usnews.com
