John Adoyi, PBA Journalism MenteeThe world’s declining birth rate in the last 70 years has been a major concern for countries like Japan, South Korea and Portugal whose population growth has been greatly affected. There are official moves to adopt artificial womb model that would guarantee at least 30,000 babies a year.
According to the United Nations (UN), the birthrate in the 50s was 5 birth per woman but as of 2021, it reduced to 2.3, with the UN projecting that by 2050 it will be 2.1 birth per woman.
These decline in birthrate is due to health challenges for men and women like low sperm count and cervical cancer respectively. Other reasons for low birthrate include women taking up taxing careers, people deciding to ditch marriages and women getting married late.
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This have made developed countries with aging population to source work force from countries in Africa, South America and Asia.
All this would soon be history with the next level artificial womb being prepared by Scientist.
The artificial womb which has been called the next big thing in biotechnology is called Ectolife.
This biotechnology is a brain child of Hashem Al-Ghaili, who is a 32 year old molecular biotechnologist, science communicator, director and producer from Yemen.
This concept of growing babies outside the womb artificially by Al-Ghaili, joins a list of other technology based fertility research that scientists have been working on to make having babies easier and faster.
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In 2017, Scientist grew a lamb in an artificial womb called Biobag and in 2021, Israeli scientist were able to artificially grow a mouse within a short time.
This is the biotechnology that Al-Ghaili had in mind when he came up with the concept of Ectolife.
According to him, Ectolife is a baby facility that can birth 30,000 babies a year and it is “a perfect solution for women who [have] had their uterus surgically removed due to cancer or other complications. It could also help solve issues that stem from low sperm count,” Al-Ghaili said.
Ectolife which is still not in reality is being built to have exquisite features, suitable to grow a very healthy baby.
Ectolife is completely powered by renewable energy. The facility is highly equipped with 75 labs with each lab able to contain 400 artificial wombs. These wombs are built with material that resist germs from sticking to their surfaces, making them clean and infections free.
Every womb has sensors that can monitor the baby’s vital signs like temperature, heartbeat, oxygen circulation, breathing rate and blood pressure. The ecto system can also detect any genetic complications of your baby by monitoring the physical attributes of the baby.
Apart from this, Ecto life has an app that can be installed on the parent’s phone. This app can show you life data of the development of your child. It also has a screen for parents who want to see the stage by stage development of their babies.
Another mind blowing feature of Ectolife is that it is equipped with little speakers that can play music to a developing child. This is because children can learn languages while in the womb. As a parent, you can even choose what your child should listen to through the app.
Ectolife is built with 2 reactors that are connected to each artificial womb. One of the reactor carries rich nutrients to the baby and the other removes the baby’s waste from the womb through the artificial umbilical cord. The system also has genetically modified enzymes that are meant to recycle the baby’s waste back to nutrient so that there would be constant nutrient for the baby.
There is another package of Ectolife called the elite package which allows you to genetically modify your embryo before putting it in the artificial womb. This elite package has over 300 genes that can customise your baby’s eye colour, hair colour, complexion, height and the level of intelligence.
If you don’t want your baby to be in the facility, you can grow your baby in a growth pod or womb, powered by batteries and it is accessible.
Though this idea is raising a lot of questions concerning parenthood and how possible it will be to achieve this, Al-Ghaili, believes that technology like Ectolife “could ultimately make miscarriage a thing of the past.”
This idea of artificial womb is a thing of “one man’s food is another’s poison.”
China’s population is aging at a significant rate and it is giving the Chinese government serious concerns.
In 2021, the Chinese government gave hint that the one child policy which has been in place since the 1970s would be abolished after it relaxed the one-child policy in 2016 to allow families have 2 children. But some experts doubt if that would solve the problem of China’s rapid aging population.
Yi Fuxian, an expert on Chinese population issues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, once said the number of China’s working adults will fall from some 880 million in 2014 to an estimated 570 million in 2050, when there will be one-and-a-half elderly people for every working age adult.
People age 60 and above make up 17.8 percent of China’s 1.4 billion citizens.
A lot of experts doubt the trend of China’s aging population can be solved by increasing birth rate.
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