BIG YES BOMB!!!!!

explainlikeimfive-ModTeam · 2025-04-14T00:25:41+00:00

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teflon_don_knotts · 2025-04-14T00:00:45+00:00

True ELI5: It would take a lot of work to get there. We can do something sort of like that for animals, but only for the last little bit of their growth. We don’t know how long it will take to develop an artificial womb that could completely replace normal pregnancy.

Simplified, but too much for a 5yo: There have been studies that were able to use artificial wombs for short term support of lamb and pig fetuses that were significantly developed, but not ready to be born. So it didn’t start at conception.

There was an FDA meeting in 2023 that discussed the topic and this article from CNN gives a fairly good overview.

Majestic-Macaron6019 · 2025-04-14T00:09:19+00:00

Things like this are extremely far away. There are a lot of details about how the placenta attaches and all the different conditions in the uterus needed for fetal development that we simply don't know a lot about. It's not clear whether it's even theoretically possible.

Basically, this is at the "unknown unknown" stage of discovery: not only do we not know how to do it, we don't even know all the things that we need to figure out how to do to make it happen.

Duae · 2025-04-14T00:08:46+00:00

Part of the problem is it looks simple when it's a 4 month old baby in a kinder egg, but an embryo is just a few cells. It attaches against tissue and uses chemical signals to start feeding from the tissue. If it attaches properly in the womb it will form a specialized cord that draws nutrients, blood, chemicals, etc. through the cord allowing the fetus to grow, as well as taking back waste . This is why doctors can't just grab a fetus the size of a small pin head and sever the blood vessels and tissue connecting it to the fallopian tube and move it down and reconnect it in the uterus in less than a minute. The uterus is an organ, and it's one that's very connected to the rest of the person in order to function.

It is a very complex biological process, one where a lot can go wrong, and we haven't even figured out artificial blood for transfusions or artificial kidneys to go inside you or an artificial liver, etc.

My_Soul_to_Squeeze · 2025-04-13T23:58:52+00:00

This is probably the wrong sub, but I don't think it's likely to be possible any time soon. I agree it would be incredible technology, and would make parenthood possible for millions of people that struggle with infertility, but there are major ethical and bio/mechanical hurdles that need to be addressed before they become real, and I'm not sure there's a good ELI5 to be had since it's all speculation at this point.

fried_clams · 2025-04-13T23:53:57+00:00

It is questionable if anything like this will ever be created. Who would pay for it, and why? You would need:

Decades or centuries of research and development, the will to do it (difficult to create, when natural wombs work fine already), changes in regulatory and moral laws that would allow it, a business model that would support it (hard to imagine one).

No one is going to invest the time and money to R&D something that has the problems listed above, and probably a dozen others I didn't think of.

BIG YES BOMB!!!!!

Sunday, April 13, 2025

ELI5: What would it take to make these fetal growth pods (AKA artificial wombs) work flawlessly? How many years away are they from a practical-working commercial model getting developed?

ELI5: What would it take to make these fetal growth pods (AKA artificial wombs) work flawlessly? How many years away are they from a practical-working commercial model getting developed?

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