RE: BIOTECH: artificial wombs in six years?

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 23:47:22 MST


At 04:47 PM 1/23/02 +1030, Emlyn wrote:

>Do you know who Jeremy Rifkin is? :-)

Still:

>> We know that the developing fetus responds to
>> the mother's heartbeat, emotions, moods and movements. What
>> kind of child would we produce from a liquid medium
>> inside a plastic box?

This is not an altogether silly proposition. If the speculation embodied in
it is anything like correct, we'll need to mimic these maternal inputs
carefully with artificial chaotic but regular sounds and motions, bursts of
neuromodulators, etc. The upside: maybe the control we could thus exercise
over these epigenetic inputs would produce calmer, more emotionally secure
children. People less hysterical and apparently power-hungry than, say,
Jeremy Rifkin.

Damien Broderick



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:36 MST