ECTOGENTIC BIRTH

Taranaki Daily News, 10 May 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

ECTOGENTIC BIRTH

A FANTASTIC -THEORY

(By

“Skepticus.”)

.. A startling prophecy in relation to human life and death was recently made by Lord Birkenhead when he predicted that in another thousand years octo-o-enetic birth—the development of children from fertilised cells drawn from, women’s bodies and ■ carried • out in laboratories —would be scientifically possible. “Even the possibility of this process will arouse the fiercest antagonism of religious bodies of many creeds,” said Lord Birkenhead. “But -S it will be scientifically possible . scientists will not be deterred from its attainment. If ectogenesis becomes an established part of human society the effect will be shattering. It will separate reproduction from marriage, but' women will ultimately, accept it as the price of - a freedom never yet achieved.”

To the layman the suggestion of_Lord Birkenhead* is an astonishing . and almost unthinkable one, a suggestion that once brought to actuality would cut away with one sweep the whole foundation of civilisation and society as we know it, and necessitate a completely new arrangement of life and new outlook upon it. The matter seems one that lies entirely in the hands of highly specialised science and medicine, and the majority of present-day medical opinion considers that the suggestion is definitely an impossibility. _ A New Plymouth medical practitioner who is highly qualified to on such a subject emphatically asserts that Lord Birkenhead’s prediction is a fantastic impossibility. “What is ten centuries compared with the years that have already gone by?” he asks.. “A century is but a flicker on a cinema film. It is futile to suppose that such a drastic step-in thfe evolution of mankind could be taken in that time.” “But apart from the matter of time,” continued the doctor, “medical science has achieved absolutely no ’results that can give us reason to think that such a complicated thing as the artificial reproduction of the upper forms of life is possible. A lot has been done in tissue culture. Dr. A. M. Begg, who was recently appointed director of research for New Zealand, has devoted a considerable amount of attention to tissue research, but in the reproduction of tissue he has been successful only when dealing with the simplest forms of animal cells. Highly- organised cells such as cells of nervous tissue are not able t-o be grown outside their natural environment. A moment’s reflection on tho extreme complexity of the environment of the growing human embryo should convince anyone- that ectogeriesig as described by Lord Birkenhead is hot within the wildest dreams of possibility. ”■ “The work of Voronoff has been completely disproved and discredited,” continued the doctor. “It has been shown that the transplantation of glandular cells is not possible, Voronoff had his special far min Africa and his special experiments, but there is no real scientific proof of results as claimed having been achieved from anything he has done. As far as human beings arc concerned conditions, of life are very rigid and they cannot be monkeyed with. There 'is no science in any of Voronofffe. radical theories.

“From reports we occasionally receive of cases in various parte of the world we may be inclined ,to think that we can replace organa in the human body. We hear reports of successful grafting operations, and are liable to think tliat we can replace organs in the body with similar organs obtained from another body. But it is not so. Certainly bone grafting has been accomplished, and success has been achieved, but the grafted bone does not take the place of the old one. It merely acts as a scaffold for the building up of air entirely new bone. The grafted bone in time is entirely replaced by new bone cells. One organism cannot use a foreign substance for its own purposes ; it must replace it with, its own tissue.

“Similarly from time to time we hear of the transplantation of organs such as the kidney. Again the principle is the same. The transplanted kidney is merely a scaffold. It must die and be replaced by the growth of an entirely new kidney.” Commenting on the recent results of research work on the subject the doctor said that the cancer cell, for example,, could be grown and'developed in. a suitable living medium and acted and re-acted upon by certain chemicals to give very -interesting results. But in tliis branch of medical and scientific research it had been found time and again that only the simplest forms , of life could be artificially reproduced. Complete failure had attended any effort to regenerate nerve cells by this, means.-,.,. ■ • . . An illuminating aspect of the question was the opinion on . evolution advanced by Butler, who held that heredity was really based on memory. According to this theory the beings of a new generation resembled and acted like . their fathers and mothers, and- so on back through long lines of ancestry, because in some strange way they inwardly and unconsciously remembered what their predecessors had done before them. “How can you expect,” said the doctor in conclusion, returning to the theory of ectogenetic birth as suggested by Lord Birkenhead, “how can you expect a cell in the human body, which is subject to' variations of influence from one moment to the next throughout many mouths of development, to be artificially cultured in a laboratory? While the human embryo is developing every dictatic variation and activity of the mother acts as a separate impulse upon it making in all an infinite mass of impulse -that no scientific work can ever achieve in an artificial manner. It is beyond the wildest dreams of possibility that this extraordinarily wonderful and ‘-complex influence of the .mother upon a growing embryo can ever be replaced. ■-People become captivated by the enormous advance made- by science on the physical side. Wireless, mechanical robots, the analysis . of the atom with its immense possibilities — Yes, but we have come no nearer the ■solution, of the .problem of life than we § thousand yiars ago.”