Photograph: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia This isn’t a replacement for pregnancy yet, but it is certainly the beginning.įrom left: Alan Flake, Emily Partridge, and Marcus Davey, creators of the Biobag. The lambs didn’t grow in the bags from conception they were taken from their mothers’ wombs by caesarean section, then submerged in the Biobag, at a gestational age equivalent to 23-24 weeks in humans. But this is not a substitute for full gestation. When I first see images of the Philadelphia lambs on my laptop, I think of the foetus fields in The Matrix, where motherless babies are farmed in pods on an industrial scale. In another four weeks, the bag will be unzipped and the lamb will be born. This is a foetus growing inside an artificial womb. It is submerged in fluid, floating inside a transparent plastic bag, its umbilical cord connected to a nexus of bright blood-filled tubes. It hasn’t been born yet, but here it is, at 111 days’ gestation, totally separate from its mother, alive and kicking in a research lab in Philadelphia. It is hairless its skin gathers in pink rolls at its neck. But this lamb is too tiny to venture out. Its crooked half-smile makes it look content, as if dreaming about gambolling in a grassy field. It swallows, wriggles and shuffles its gangly legs. It lies on its side, eyes shut, ears folded back and twitching.
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