Ravings of a Classical Scientist

This blog is the result of a rational minded person looking at many aspects of the world around us. Warning: This blog is not for everyone, ignorance is bliss, so don't get angry at me for ruining it.

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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I'm an atheist humanist who strides to enlighten people if they have a desire to learn truths. As a professional physicist I can only be reasonable and logical because I dislike being wrong.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Logical end to preemies

Considered a miracle by some what is the inevitable end to this situation? Well as technologies advance we can save earlier and earlier preemies. But the cost is a child that may be extremely life long scars that may not allow the person to fully develop. Although we now try everything to keep alive any preemies, should we? More importantly who decides when to pull the plug? Note, these are babies being born months too early and weigh under a kg, not a few weeks early where the smallest was just under 300g!! Here I think some research would be good advice and since most preemies do well if they don't die (need to be resuscitated) and so it may be best to not resuscitate unless the parents say know the risks and say yes. But then again 1/3 come out physically fine but mentally a little weak. But it seems 28 weeks is a good approximate cutoff.

But in the end, just like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson and other diseases these are only a temporary problem. I think as biotechnology continues it's exponential growth it seems very likely that we should be able to take a preemie and incubate it in an artificial womb. The question that I think will be more interesting is why should a woman bear the child? Why not have the whole pregnancy in an artificial womb? Simple answer for at least early on: cost. But afterwards it may be a choice.

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