This machine could keep a baby alive outside the womb. How will the world decide to use it?

"Beth Schafer lay in a hospital bed, bracing for the birth of her son. The first contractions rippled through her body before she felt remotely ready. She knew, with a mother's pit-of-the-stomach intuition, that her baby was not ready either. At just 23 weeks of gestation, her son teetered on the cliff edge of viability, the fragile threshold where modern medicine offers any promise of keeping babies alive. Beth's son did not could not cry when he was born."

"Scientists worldwide are racing to buy more time for extremely premature babies like Beth's. In 2017, researchers in Philadelphia unveiled an experimental lifeline: an artificial womb, engineered to gestate babies outside the human body. In their study's photos, fetal lambs floated inside what looked like overgrown Ziploc bags, eyes closed and hearts pumping as if they had never left their mothers. That prototype was only tested on animals, but the technology is edging closer to human use."

An infant born at 23 weeks lacked the lungs and maturity to survive and could not cry at birth, prompting frantic resuscitation that failed to replace needed time in utero. Researchers have developed experimental artificial wombs to gestate extremely premature infants outside the human body, with 2017 fetal lamb studies showing sustained fetal physiology inside fluid-filled biobags. The technology is progressing toward human trials and regulatory review, raising questions about redefining viability and creating a new developmental stage that will require legal and ethical frameworks. The approach aims to buy critical time and improve outcomes for babies born at the edge of viability.

Read at www.theguardian.com