Friday 16 November 2007

Transporters for pregnancy transfer

With a Star Trek-style transporter, it might be possible to beam a baby from the womb of a woman who doesn't want it to a woman who does. That should satisfy both sides of the abortion debate and save some money on in vitro research. It might also make embryonic stem cells harder to get, which would put a bit of a damper on that debate too.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Of course the solution is impractical as yet.
PPS - Since we don't have any transporters.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even given the transporters it would be very, very difficult. First, there's the physiological changes in the female body that happen during pregnancy -- even at an early point in the pregnancy, the new mom's body wouldn't be prepared. And then there's the minor detail of the baby actually being a *part* of Mom. Never mind detaching from the donor Mom -- what about re-attaching to new Mom? That would require quite a bit of microsurgery.

Even if we had transporters, I doubt it would be feasible.

Chris said...

There's also the issue of how transporters work. Right now, the working theory is that you're destroyed in one place and rebuilt from air molecules in another. Not only would this mean there'd have to be enough matter inside the surrogate mother's womb to build a baby from scratch, but it also means the original baby gets killed and cloned without a soul. And I've seen enough movies to know that children without souls are not good things.

John said...

Spoilsports. :P