The First IVF Babies Conceived By a Robot Have Been Born (technologyreview.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they'd designed and sent it by DHL to New York City. They followed it to a clinic there, called New Hope Fertility Center, where they put the instrument back together, assembling a microscope, a mechanized needle, a tiny petri dish, and a laptop. Then one of the engineers, with no real experience in fertility medicine, used a Sony PlayStation 5 controller to position a robotic needle. Eyeing a human egg through a camera, it then moved forward on its own, penetrating the egg and dropping off a single sperm cell. Altogether, the robot was used to fertilize more than a dozen eggs. The result of the procedures, say the researchers, were healthy embryos—and now two baby girls, who they claim are the first people born after fertilization by a "robot."
The startup company that developed the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today. Right now, IVF labs are multimillion-dollar affairs staffed by trained embryologists who earn upwards of $125,000 a year to delicately handle sperm and eggs using ultra-thin hollow needles under a microscope. But some startups say the entire process could be carried out automatically, or nearly so. Overture, for instance, has filed a patent application describing a "biochip" for an IVF lab in miniature, complete with hidden reservoirs containing growth fluids, and tiny channels for sperm to wiggle through.
"Think of a box where sperm and eggs go in, and an embryo comes out five days later," says Santiago Munne, the prize-winning geneticist who is chief innovation officer at the Spanish company. He believes that if IVF could be carried out inside a desktop instrument, patients might never need to visit a specialized clinic, where a single attempt at getting pregnant can cost $20,000 in the US. Instead, he says, a patient's eggs might be fed directly into an automated fertility system at a gynecologist's office. "It has to be cheaper. And if any doctor could do it, it would be," says Munne.
The startup company that developed the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today. Right now, IVF labs are multimillion-dollar affairs staffed by trained embryologists who earn upwards of $125,000 a year to delicately handle sperm and eggs using ultra-thin hollow needles under a microscope. But some startups say the entire process could be carried out automatically, or nearly so. Overture, for instance, has filed a patent application describing a "biochip" for an IVF lab in miniature, complete with hidden reservoirs containing growth fluids, and tiny channels for sperm to wiggle through.
"Think of a box where sperm and eggs go in, and an embryo comes out five days later," says Santiago Munne, the prize-winning geneticist who is chief innovation officer at the Spanish company. He believes that if IVF could be carried out inside a desktop instrument, patients might never need to visit a specialized clinic, where a single attempt at getting pregnant can cost $20,000 in the US. Instead, he says, a patient's eggs might be fed directly into an automated fertility system at a gynecologist's office. "It has to be cheaper. And if any doctor could do it, it would be," says Munne.
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Through human history untold numbers, trillions, of embryos are either not viable or for whatever reason don't work out and are lost. It happens probably millions of times a day. Most of the time you don't even notice. Like stepping on insects.
Thus is the cruel reality of nature.
Though personally I could not do IVF where they implant some large number just to see which ones work out and kill the rest. That's not nature. But hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
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There's still a massive oversupply sitting on the shelves everywhere. If anything, we just need to import some more foreign goods to match demand... well, ok, that won't work in all aspects since the quality of domestic stuff is usually higher, but hey, we've grown accustomed to crap made abroad that breaks down after only a few months or maybe years of use with no option to repair, it's time companies get to swallow their own medicine for a change.
Re: Abortion In A Pill & Robotic Sperm Spewers (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, but instead of only rich people having control over their fertility and body, it's becoming more democratic and accessible to more people.
If this is your response now, just wait until CRISPR-CAS editing becomes standard. Gonna be fun.
Oh, and human life isn't cheap because of this. If anything, this tech will lead to more value on human life, not less, because you will have kids when you desire them, not when they're forced upon you.
The reason human life is cheap in the USA and other sociopathic societies is because unfettered capitalism doesn't value most human life at all. It only counts your cash. And it is only where labour is strong enough to win concessions such as healthy labour conditions that human life is valued more.
Brave New World! (Score:1)
Re:Brave New World! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's how they made rsilvergun.
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Actuly it was a unionized "people's robot"
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Obligatory _Demon Seed_ reference.
Robot? Hardly. (Score:3)
From the description, this is merely a specialized micro-manipulator.
Re: Robot? Hardly. (Score:2)
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Re:Tailsteak will be disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
Well that sucks. I was hoping to catch some action on robot on robot action.
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*robot on robot action
Re: Tailsteak will be disappointed (Score:1)
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From the description, this is merely a specialized micro-manipulator.
If it's not a human male inseminating a human female in the purest biological sense, it might as well be a fucking robot.
No matter how you want to micro-manipulate the desecription.
And now I'm seeing an image from twenty years from now, where a high school girl comes home and tells her parents, "I swear, momma, the robot's the daddy."
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Missionary, no doubt. Anything else might as well be bestiality.
Are they registered in a blockhain with AI? (Score:2)
Only then this would be an epic event.
Otherwise, I give birth to hunderds of ugly monkey pictures every day because they are in high demand.
And they are blockchained with some smart AI so nobody can own the picture but only the link to it.
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In web4 babies are born directly on the blockchain, with the immutable address emblazoned on the back of the neck. They can then be traded at your favorite exchange or stored offline in a cold wallet, we do not recommend hot wallets for blockchain babies.
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So you can trade up when that adorable little baby turns into an obnoxious teenager?
What an age to live in.
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Its all about dollar cost averaging. You need a well rounded portfolio.
Lame (Score:2)
Call me when they figure out IVG in humans -- In-vitro gametogenesis. That's when the game changes.
This is how it started! (Score:1)
It wasn't sky net launching our own nukes. It wasn't humans kept in a permanent dream state being used as an energy source in a dramatic violation of the laws of physics.
It was the computers cloning an army of humans to fight other humans!
We must have a 6 month pause in AI and cloning research (until my company can catch up).
Headline is a load of crap (Score:2)
But that seems to be the case with the majority of Slashdot headlines, nowadays.
The robot didn't conceive the baby any more than the petri dish did.
Just the easy bit (Score:4, Interesting)
As an IVF father, I have seen the end-to-end process, and this is just the easy bit. Over-stimulating egg release and harvesting them comes first, which is where the bulk of the cost comes from (the necessary drugs followed by surgery), and then there is embryo nurture and monitoring for a few days followed by implanting back in the mother afterwards. The direct injection of sperm into egg (ICSI = intracytoplasmic sperm injection) is not even used in many cases, except where for some reason the egg will not fertilise from outside contact. This robot saves less than an hours work for the person with probably the lowest salary on the team other than the receptionist.
As for "Think of a box where sperm and eggs go in, and an embryo comes out five days later," the same problem applies as with existing IVF: getting the eggs.
I'm not knocking this as a technological advancement in micro-manipulation, but advances in increasing the success likelihood of the first and last stages would be preferred by most IVF 'customers'. It is an expensive process which is more likely to fail than not.
Re: Just the easy bit (Score:2)
But why? (Score:2)
Why do this? Do we not have enough humans?
Re: But why? (Score:2)
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In fact, fertility rates and sperm counts are falling worldwide and some predict that in the near future (maybe even already) IVF will be more or less the only "reliable" way to have children. https://www.euronews.com/next/... [euronews.com] for instance is a recent study. If your thesis is that the human race should be allowed to die off and turn the planet into a nature park (until the next ape discovers fire) then okay, but if you start from a position of "the human race faces actual extinction due to biological stuff we don't understand" it's actually serious.
I don't think a tapering of population at this point would amount to extinction. People love the scaremongering such a word evokes, but tell me how long we'd have to have suppressed fertility rates before we'd dive so low as to risk extinction? Nature does what nature does. We've overpopulated ourselves, shoved more and more of ourselves into tight little knots called cities, and started seeing the consequences that any farmer who ever overpopulated a feedlot could have told you about. More disease, less he
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Even with these things, the human population has literally never been larger.
Yes, there’s all the hysteria about falling sperm counts but a lot of that falls squarely into the “CHEMICALS IN THE WATER! GAY FROGS!” Category. If sperm counts are truly falling, it can probably be reversed by feeding our kids more fruit and vegetables
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From what I’ve read, fertility rates are falling mostly because of women’s eduction, economic development, and the rising costs of raising kids.
All of those things are true and probably the dominant factor. The problem is that the other issue - biological performance issues (for want of a better word) is also real and it means that when an individual or couple decides that now is the time for a child, the process is harder. Doubly so because one of the side-effects of the item you mention above is that the age of first pregnancy is (at least in developed countries) steadily getting older, which means that _all_ conceptions are being pushed, by mult
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Sad (Score:1)
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It they take an egg from the wife and sperm from her husband and implant the sprog in the wife, how are they not parents?
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Re: Sad (Score:2)
If their school chums find out about this, it's the end of them. The viciousness will never end.
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Re: Sad (Score:2)
But this will be the trigger as well as a multiplier that will bring the taunts to a much higher level than "ha ha you're a doodiehead". And fear, enough that this could lead to more serious behavor like hate graffiti, death threats, and violence.
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First to ask the question (Score:2)
5th wave feminism? (Score:2)
Reading between the lines at Vice.com, it appears that the target audience is very fat lonely women, based on the graphics for the horoscopes and the prominent placement of vibrator ads.
Don't blame me. Check it out for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
I'm not the target audience, so I don't know if women these days want to fucked by a robot...
Comments?
Test tube babies (Score:2)
This was a huge running joke/insult in my high school back in the 1990s.
In the year 2525 (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Bummer. (Score:2)
Bummer. I thought the robot had had babies. Bummer. No news.
An end to survival of the fittest (Score:1)
Letting a laboratory technician choose which sperm to fertilize the egg of your child feels like an abomination of nature. Letting tens millions of our boys compete for the grand prize is how nature ensures genetic health.
No visit to the clinic needed (Score:2)
He believes that if IVF could be carried out inside a desktop instrument, patients might never need to visit a specialized clinic
But we still need to extract the unfertilized egg and re-implant it in the womb afterwards. That will not be done at home.