Using science to create a sex-less utopia.

[VicistiGalilaee (imported)]

So scientists are now on the brink of creating artificial wombs:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/f ... e.research

Apparently, women experience a decrease in sex drive similar to that experienced by males after an orchiectomy when their ovaries are removed. What if humanity started removing the ovaries of women, and the testicles of men, shortly after birth, effectively eliminating the need or desire for sexual reproduction, and instead, used these artificial wombs to reproduce? Biologists are currently capable of producing any form of cell, including sex cells, from skin cells, so sexual reproduction is verging on obsolescence.

What do you guys think of this idea? I personally think the elimination of sexual intercourse would solve a lot of serious problems. I think humans would potentially live a much happier existence.

[Paolo]

Next it'll be Borg maturation chambers.

[fhunter]

What do you guys think of this idea?

Our civilization is rather brittle as it is. Making it even more brittle and dependent on technology? I am not sure.

[Jhalemore (imported)]

I guess women would have a sort of advantage by not having to physically involve themselves in pregnancy. However, I doubt that a technological womb can give the baby all of the development factors that are necessary to make a healthy child. Surely they can make a child, but it most likely will be missing something from the environment and the properties of the umbilical fluids.

[Wolf-Pup (imported)]

I don't think women would go for it generally speaking. The ladies I've known liked bringing life into the world. Feeling it grow inside of them. being able to feed the baby from their body with milk...there a whole lot more going on than just a pregnancy in a clinical sense. Extreme bonding between mother and child. mother and father, and eventually father and baby.

Dehumanizing the process would be a very bad thing IMHO.

[C&TL2745 (imported)]

Sounds like something straight out of the plot of Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, which was anything but a utopia.

Wolf-Pup is right. There's more to reproduction than the mechanics. I think it would be a very cold world (emotionally). I wouldn't want to live there.

Sandi

[Ernie of Maine (imported)]

Sound like away to Slave Worker to me. Ernie

[ZeuterMe (imported)]

I guess women would have a sort of advantage by not having to physically involve themselves in pregnancy. However, I doubt that a technological womb can give the baby all of the development factors that are necessary to make a healthy child. Surely they can make a child, but it most likely will be missing something from the environment and the properties of the umbilical fluids.

In a word, antibodies.

[ZeuterMe (imported)]

I don't think women would go for it generally speaking. The ladies I've known liked bringing life into the world. Feeling it grow inside of them. being able to feed the baby from their body with milk...there a whole lot more going on than just a pregnancy in a clinical sense. Extreme bonding between mother and child. mother and father, and eventually father and baby.

Dehumanizing the process would be a very bad thing IMHO.

I enjoy playing Devil's advocate.

If Dad can do all hi

s bonding after the baby's born, why can't the mother?

Sounds like something straight out of the plot of Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, which was anything but a utopia.

Wolf-Pup is right. There's more to reproduction than the mechanics. I think it would be a very cold wo

rld (emotionally). I wouldn't want to live there.

Sandi

Lots of couples develop warm and loving relationships with children who were either adopted or conceived through the use of IVF, donor gametes, or surrogate mothers. Why is this really all that different? Hell, we've got a thread around this board somewhere pointing out that in the right century, eunuchs were the preferred form of teacher, based on their developing a maximally nurturing and supportive personality. If anything, it'd eliminate those relationships that are founded out of lust and hormones that result in children being neglected, or the relationship, having no other moorings, dissolving in six months after a child is conceived.

</advocate class="devil's">

[Riverwind (imported)]

I am not so sure the a dad does not bond with his child several months before the child is born. I know I did with all of mine.

River