I tried to watch this clip with an open mind. With the title 'EctoLife: The World's First Artificial Womb Facility', I couldn't help but think of Michael Bay's 'The Island', a film about completely unsuspecting clones that are having their organs harvested for their human counterparts. Despite all my efforts to remain unbiased, my suspicions were very soon confirmed, the EctoLife concept is completely dystopian.
The EctoLife video is essentially an advert for artificial pregnancy and birth, showcasing a laboratory that is capable of growing your very own fetus in chambers that mimic the conditions of a natural womb. Evidently, it presents an intriguing concept. The video describes the facility as capable of growing up to 30,000 babies in these artificial wombs, which seems simple enough and even useful. Yet the truth is, this facility does not exist.
Even if this is not a reality, it is distressing enough that creating this product appears to be the life goal of the creator, Hasheem Al-Ghaili.
Al-Ghaili is a biotechnologist and science communicator who allegedly designed the ExtoLife concept. It should be noted that I am watching this video on his YouTube channel and this video seems to be in the vein of his regular oeuvre where he creates videos, using AI, to give his viewers an idea of what the technology of the future will look like. However, although many of them are labelled with titles such as 'technology of the future' or 'made with AI' this video is conveniently not. This suggests to me that he is purposefully misleading his audience… and it's working as the video is one of his most viewed.
The video lauds his concept of an artificial womb facility as being especially helpful for couples that would otherwise be impacted by low sperm count or miscarriages.
Their mini-generators and long-life batteries means you can even grow your baby from the comfort of your own home! There are even more outlandish features that seem completely unrealistic and altogether strange, such as a VR-headset that allows you to experience what life inside this womb is like for your baby and an EctoLife jacket that you can wear to experience your baby kicking in this artificial womb. It gave me existential anxiety because every human experience associated with pregnancy is being replaced by something mechanical.
These high-tech promises belie an even darker reality, the guarantee that you can genetically edit your child to give them a 'brighter future'. This is not limited to just eye colour and hair colour under this new concept, but also intelligence and skin colour, and this is part of the 'elite package' meaning if you pay more, your baby will be better.
Immediately, red flags were going off. The implication of this is that children will become a signifier of wealth, babies in particular will lose an aspect of their humanity and instead be interchangeable with Gucci bags and Tesla cars. The clip tries to entice you with greenwashing, promising that this is a completely self-sustaining facility that runs on renewable energy. It's so egregious that I half expect every transition into a new element in this pretend facility to feature a neon sign that says 'we're doing nothing wrong!'.
In his cameo Al-Ghaili states that he designed the concept of EctoLife, another misleading claim. According to FullFact, artificial wombs have actually been used to grow mouse fetuses (see BioNews 1190) and lambs for short periods although it has never been used to grow a human. The video deceptively frames EctoLife as a near-term reality, but scientists in the Netherlands who are actively working on this idea, say it will be at least a decade before this becomes commercially viable. Even then, babies will not be able to be grown completely outside the womb.
Misinformation aside, Al-Ghaili presents EctoLife as an empathetic solution to combat severe population decline but instead it triggers an air of artificiality and cold scientific separation from fertility. In essence, it is not a very good advert. Paradoxically, it seems to be a kind of warning of what life could be like if we continue to allow scientific innovation to continue without any ethical checks and balances.
All in all, this video presents an intriguing concept but the execution is completely flawed. I can definitely see the upside of being able to grow babies in a way that may give mothers more freedom and will reduce pregnancy complications, resulting in a lower maternal mortality rate. Further, being able to edit DNA so the resulting baby isn't predisposed to genetic conditions seems like a genuine moral good. But the fatal flaw of the video is just how consumerist it all is and that is exacerbated by the misleading claims and title in order to get more views on YouTube.
Although it presents itself as an empathetic solution to population decline, the video showcases costly features that seem unnecessary digital veil over the human experience by commodifying alternative birthing solutions. My immediate reaction to this video was that if this concept is ever realised, babies will lose their humanity and instead become possessions that signify wealth… and I have not been convinced otherwise.
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