Artificial womb could improve survival among premature babies
By Sally Robertson, BScApril 26, 2017
Researchers have designed a womb-like device that could allow premature babies to develop their lungs and organs in the critical few weeks that remain before they face the outside world.
In animal studies, the artificial womb provided a prenatal, fluid-filled environment in which premature lambs stayed alive and grew for four weeks, which is the longest time to date.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20170426/Artificial-womb-could-improve-survival-among-premature-babies.aspx
Interesting but hardly revolutionary from an R and D perspective.
In fact, all of the elements of living things have been reproduced artificially in parts. There are synthetic bones, lungs, neurons, eyes, muscles, blood, pancreas, heart, liver (in some regards) teeth, kidneys, skin, sperm, eggs so why not a womb?
Likewise, the elements of consciousness itself (the sensations of human consciousness) may be within the scope of computer simulation as well. After all, we already have computers which can process more FLOPS than a human brain (the brain rate is around 20 billion FLOPS) just not in an associative format like the human brain does (computers doing linear computations can do many times more than 20 billion FLOPS). If you consider the reality of human consciousness, everything we perceive as real is actually an impulse of a chemical/electric circuit (neuron) being perceived as visual, auditory, sensation or taste/smell perception. The entire physical universe is only ever experienced by the human neural system. So reality as we know it is entirely contained within the matrix of the human neuro/chemical system.
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that consciousness itself, indistinguishable from "real" consciousness, could be generated using artifice. This theme has been explored in books like William Gibson's cyberpunk novels (Neuromancer), also a book ( in the posthumous Foundation Series) by Ben Bova, films like The Matrix, Inception, Avatar, Brainstorm and others.
Life, both in a physical and perception sense is not all that sophisticated in some ways. We can't create physical life from inert matter, but we can generate most of the functions of life independently in all ways except that. Although artificial life is a disturbing idea in some ways, it is also somewhat realistic. We already have enabled robotic eyes to directly communicate with the visual cortex through artificial interface (electronic/neural interface) generating primitive dot-matrix images. We able to grow living tissue, even complete organs, outside bodies. We can save lives with artificial blood and skin. Why not save lives with an artificial womb.
Technology is always a double-edged sword. For every technological breakthrough dreams and nightmares always become possibilities.
Since all perception eventually comes down to chemical-electrical impulses being conveyed and processed by neurons, it is possible that some day the entire scope of the experience of consciousness could be generated and perceived by artificial means.
