TOKYO -- Japanese researchers are pioneering new fertilization and genetic technologies that could alter the meaning of human reproduction. But such advances are also forcing them to face the thorny moral and ethical questions posed when tinkering with life and mortality.
A team at Tohoku University has developed an artificial placenta and uterus that can sustain a fetal lamb, which is suspended in a plastic tank with amniotic fluid heated to 39 C. Blood oxygen is supplied through a tube that acts as an umbilical cord. University researchers endured decades of failure before figuring out how to adjust blood volume, enabling them to sustain a lamb fetus for at least 50 hours.
