Tag Archives: baby factories

Progress made creating artificial womb: Today it’s animals, Tomorrow may be humans

Revelations 13:14 “…by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth…”

Important Takeaways:

  • While a typical healthy pregnancy ends around 40 weeks, babies born after just 21 weeks in the womb have survived thanks to incubators, devices that keep prematurely born babies warm and safe until their bodies are developed enough to live outside the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
  • At the other end, in the beginning, embryos for in vitro fertilization (IVF) are typically grown in the lab for a few days before implantation. Researchers have even grown embryos outside the body for up to two weeks (and they could probably go longer).
  • Some scientists think we could take this a major step further, creating fully “artificial wombs” that provide the ideal environment from conception through gestation, eliminating the need to actually carry a baby inside the body.
  • This hypothetical process of developing a fetus outside the body is known as “ectogenesis,” and not only would it eliminate the many health risks linked to pregnancy and childbirth, it would also make biological reproduction available to people for whom it’s currently difficult or impossible.
  • In December 2022, biotechnologist and film producer Hashem Al-Ghaili released a short film depicting EctoLife, a fictional factory where hundreds of babies could grow in artificial wombs. Many mistook the concept for reality and lashed out against it as “scary” and “dystopian.”
  • We’re a long way from baby factories, but if artificial wombs ever do come to fruition, the social backlash against them could prove temporary — IVF was once considered scary and unethical, too, but today, it’s largely accepted.
  • Ultimately, concerns about the ethics of growing babies in artificial wombs will need to be weighed against the very real physical and mental trauma of human reproduction today and the challenges of infertility. If technology could potentially free people from that, is it unethical not to pursue it?

Read the original article by clicking here.

Nigerian police free 19 women and girls from Lagos ‘baby factory’: statement

By Seun Sanni and Angela Ukomadu

LAGOS (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, have freed 19 women and girls who had mostly been abducted and impregnated by captors planning to sell their babies.

The girls and women, aged from 15 to 28, had been brought from all over Nigeria with promises of work, Lagos police said on Monday. Four babies were also found.

“Baby factories”, as such premises are widely known, are most common in parts of eastern Nigeria.

“The young women were mostly abducted by the suspects for the purpose of getting them pregnant and selling the babies to potential buyers. The girls were tricked with employment as domestic staff in Lagos,” said Lagos police spokesman Bala Elkana.

“Boys are sold for 500,000 naira ($1,630) and girls for 300,000 naira ($980).”

The girls and women were brought to Lagos from the southern and eastern states of Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Abia and Imo.

Elkana said the raid had taken place on Sept. 19 but had been kept secret to enable the police to apprehend suspects.

Two women aged 40 and 54 were arrested in connection with the case and police were still looking for a third.

One of the freed women, who did not want to be named, said she had been impregnated by her boyfriend and told by her aunt that there was a job for her in Lagos.

She said a woman to whom she was introduced had induced her labor when she was seven months pregnant.

“After being in labor for three days, that was when police raided the place and took all of them. The baby came out weak and finally died,” she told Reuters.

Elkana said the state criminal investigation department would take over the case and was working with other agencies to resettle the women and girls and their babies.

Last week, around 400 boys and men, some as young as five and many in chains and scarred from beatings, were rescued from a building in the northern city of Kaduna that purported to be an Islamic school.

(Reporting By Seun Sanni and Angela Ukomadu, writing by Libby George; editing by Alexis Akwagyiram and Kevin Liffey)