A few days ago, such a hot topic appeared on Weibo—”Male Pregnancy Likely to Become Reality”, could the “Artificial Uterus” truly be on its way? Can women really be spared from the pains of childbirth, and even have males take their place?
Here’s the deal, in July this year, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University completed the fourth “Removal of ECMO to Artificial Uterus Animal Experiment”, where the fetal lamb survived outside the womb for 90 minutes, becoming the world’s first successful case.
By placing the fetus into a “special device”, connecting it to the mother through a tube, anyone with a blood type matching the fetus can thus “nurture life” outside the body. According to laboratory researchers, if life is nurtured in a vessel alone, based on the experimental results, it’s entirely possible to “connect” the fetus with the father. This means that the phenomenon of male “pregnancy” from science fiction movies may be gradually becoming a reality.
Specifically, once the fetus is taken out of the mother’s body, it is placed into an artificial uterus, perhaps a “bag-like” structure, and then the fetus’s and father’s blood vessels are connected for the father to provide oxygen and nutrients to the fetus. In reality, anyone with a blood type matching the fetus can act as a provider.
The father can then carry this “bag” around externally, continue working, traveling without hindrance. When the father is tired, a small tube can be used to connect with the child’s mother, enabling them to take turns. They can even carry out this operation by themselves.
Furthermore, team leader Zhao Gaofeng explained that the artificial uterus isn’t for mass-producing babies but for enabling fetuses unable to remain in the womb to survive. According to data from the China Population Association and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, one in every six couples in China is facing fertility issues.
Zhang Zhenyu believes that although replacing birth with an artificial uterus isn’t quite realistic, in the future, it might offer new choices for such cases, reducing the suffering of women during childbirth and improving the survival rate of fetuses.
However, this is just scratching the surface. Many individuals seeing this concept may mistakenly assume that fetuses could remain in an artificial uterus from fertilization, skipping the process of maternal pregnancy and childbirth. The enthusiastic comments from netizens about “technology benefiting humanity” or “emancipation of both men and women” may need to wait a little longer.
As of now, the current artificial uterus isn’t capable of nurturing human fetuses, it can only sustain a fetal lamb outside the womb for 90 minutes, and its initial design was to address survival issues rather than production problems.
Currently, the steps of pregnancy and childbirth are indispensable.
To completely replicate an artificial uterus capable of sustaining human fetuses, it will likely require further extensive research, as there are still many mysteries yet to be solved, such as how the mother’s emotions or the hormones inside the uterus influence the fetus, and more. Nonetheless, we are pleased with the success of this experiment, giving us greater expectations for future medical technologies.
