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"I'm a farm boy. It's very interesting; you can detect self-starting characteristics in this society and they are strongest among people who have had some kind of rural upbringing and a very impressionable stage."
- Frank Herbert
 |
| Synthetic Babies | ||
| A means of gestating eggs to term is found. |
This is the first science-fictional reference (or any other reference, for that matter) to an artificial womb that I can find.
| At that time the human race was not only degenerating as individuals but disappearing as a species. It was then that our scientists began to talk about synthetic babies...
It was determined that the eggs of the sea urchin would grow into mature adults without the aid of the male; all that was necessary was to put them in water containing certain salts at a certain temperature. “These experiments finally ended in the discovery that the human ovary could be kept alive and functioning under certain conditions in a glass vessel. Such an ovary was able to develop and expel a perfect ovum every twenty-eight days. By a process similar to that used with the eggs of the sea urchin, these ova could not only be kept alive but could be developed into fully matured babies. At a certain point in their growth, they were taken out of the sterile glucose solution and respiration started with a pulmometer. As far as any tests were concerned, they were just like all the other babies.
 (Glass Vessel Ovary by Dr. David Keller) “A great many of these synthetic babies were made and allowed to grow up under ideal conditions. It was soon discovered that they could be kept free from all the diseases of childhood, they could grow into vigorous adults and be compared very favorably with the best of the race — provided they came from the ovary of a woman who was perfectly normal. That caused a lot of thinking and the thinking ended in the rapid collection of material and building of large numbers of special laboratories to grow these synthetic babies in. |
| From A Biological Experiment,
by David H. Keller. Published by Amazing Stories in 1928 Additional resources -
|
It was decided that this was the only way to birth perfect babies:
“These babies, grown under ideal conditions, the offspring of tested ovaries, have in a thousand years saved
our race from degeneration. In fact, everybody now is
perfect in practically every way. There is little sickness and people finally die painlessly of old age.
Compare to synthetic life from Synthetic (1930) by Charles Cloukey, Bokanovski's Process from Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley,
artificial womb from Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley,
procreative stump from Hellstrom's Hive (1972) by Frank Herbert and
uterine replicator from Shards of Honor (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold.
The records show that the last child was born on the
western continent on July 4th, 3009. Since then the
race has been kept alive by the production of synthetic
babies. About one hundred and fifty thousand babies
are produced every year. They are all perfect in every
way because any who show defects are not allowed to
develop. The Government keeps them in nurseries till
they are called for. We saw how that happened in the
case of your sister and brother-in-law. After they
were forty years old, they decided to apply for a permit
to take a baby and they asked for a four-year-old child.
(Synthetic Babies by Dr. David Keller)
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| Mice Gestate In Mechanical Womb |
| Worlds With Underground Oceans More Conducive To Life |
| Monkey Gets A Bigger Brain, Thanks To Human Gene |
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