BEHOLD: Scientists Grew These Lambs In Bags Because God Is Dead

This week in the human chronicles of playing God, eight fetal lambs were placed in artificial wombs where they continued to develop for four weeks.

The giant ziplock bag-like wombs behave the same way a normal uterus would, complete with an electrolyte solution similar to amniotic fluid. It shields the occupant to the outside world and even circulates blood via a system of tubes hooked up to the its umbilical cord. 
Rather than growing human babies wholesale, it’s hoped the technology could be used for extremely premature births, allowing them a safer environment for continued, healthy development. Prematurity is a leading cause of infant death in the US.
Published in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, by Alan Flake and his colleagues, the Biobag looks more like a dystopian nightmare than a lifesaving piece of technology. Suss it out in the video below.
So what happened to the bag lambs? Well, I have good news and bad news. 
The good news is when the lambs were removed from the Biobag and placed on a regular ventilator like a premature human baby, their health was nearly as good as lambs of the same age that had been delivered via cesarean section. The bag works!  
The bad news is all the lambs are dead. They were euthanised so the researchers could suss their organs and determine the effectiveness of the artificial womb. The lungs and brains of the lambs were uninjured and just as developed as those who grew in a regular womb. 
It sounds grim, but hey, this technology could save thousands of tiny premature babies from death or serious injury. 
Sometimes science has to be a dark art to achieve the best outcome.

Source & photo: The Verge.  

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