> On Sun, 20 Jul 1997 17:44:09 +0000
> Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> >What bliss to be alive at such a time! What astounding, crippling
> >stupidity in the world that this was not the lead story with screamer
> >headlines on the front page. (Well, maybe they're being cautious and
> >details are scant or dubious; fair enough. Still.)
> >
> Actually I would be *very* cautious about this. What worries me is this
> : there's a lot of evidence to suggest that infants are a bundle of
> expectations - possibilities waiting to be fulfilled by events in the
> world. This is how nature and nurture interact, in the broad sense.
> Artificial wombs would have many positive benefits, for sure, but I
> worry that infants raised in them might be mentally disturbed by the
> lack of typical womb-like sounds and sensations, and also the responsiveness
> and 'feedback' or 'communication' between mother and child in-womb (e.g.
> infant shifts position, mother shifts position, stuff like that).
Maybe the right kind and combination of in vitro stimuli could help grow
smarter brains. Of course experimentaion would be a touchy subject...
Exovivo!
Michael Bowling