False posts about 'artificial womb lab' misrepresent Chinese study
- Published on October 31, 2023 at 08:05
- Updated on October 31, 2023 at 08:06
- 5 min read
- By Hailey JO, Carina CHENG, AFP South Korea, AFP Hong Kong
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"China has completed making artificial wombs," reads a Korean-language Facebook post shared on August 7.
It features a video showing babies inside transparent pods, a baby wearing an eye mask lying under a blue light and a human embryo.
The footage is credited to Hashem Al-Ghaili.
Philippine news channel Manila STV showed the same footage in a report broadcast a year earlier, in which the presenter said that scientists in China had created the device to tackle the country's declining birth rate.
The presenter says the device can "monitor and care for human embryos in artificial womb" and "allows the foetus to grow more safely and efficiently than it does within the natural setting of a woman's womb".
She says a study on the technology -- which was purportedly developed by the researchers at the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering -- was published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering.
She adds that news of the device was originally reported by Hong Kong daily The South China Morning Post (SCMP).
The SCMP later published a correction saying it had "incorrectly reported that the technology developed by the researchers in Suzhou could eliminate the need for a woman to carry a fetus outside the body."
Similar images of the "artificial womb" surfaced widely on social media, including on Facebook and other popular platforms in South Korea.
A post on Daum Cafe claimed the device showed a "reproduction machine developed by China to churn out humans."
Another post on DC Inside claimed a baby was successfully born from an artificial womb, while another on MLB Park said China was planning to produce cloned, gene-edited designer babies from artificial wombs.
Cells, not foetuses
Keyword searches on Google found the study mentioned in Manila STV's report corresponds to a paper published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering in December 2021 (archived link).
The research -- called "Design and experiment of online monitoring system for long-term culture of embryo" -- developed a tool for scientists to cultivate embryos and observe their development process.
One of the study's authors, Sun Haixuan, told AFP that the research has the potential to help scientists better understand genetic diseases -- although the paper itself did not directly address this issue.
Social media posts and news reports had "grossly misrepresented" his research -- which used mouse embryos, not human embryos, he explained.
"This device can only simulate a small part of the functionality of a human uterus," he said.
"It is impossible for it to actually grow a foetus, as it cannot develop an umbilical cord."
Sun provided AFP with an illustration of the device that his team developed -- which is "fundamentally different" from the transparent pods seen in the video circulating online.
"Our device is used for nurturing cells, while the other (transparent pods seen in the video) is used for nurturing foetuses," he explained.
Scientists not involved in the research said that the artificial womb technology seen in the video does not exist.
"There isn't any artificial womb successfully generated in the lab. It is just a thought but technically it is impossible to do that," Martin Cheung, associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Hong Kong, told AFP on October 5.
"I think the video tries to depict the advancement which we aim to have in the future," he added. "I guess it's possible it might happen, but there are lots of ethical issues along the way."
Lab-grown human embryo models sparked calls for stricter regulation in the rapidly advancing field when several different labs around the world released pre-print studies earlier this year.
Misused images
Moreover, the video shared in false posts do not appear in the research paper.
Reverse image searches and keyword searches on Google found the clip that appears to show babies in transparent pods was taken from a Facebook post shared by Berlin-based filmmaker Hashem Al-Ghaili on January 12, 2020 (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in one of the false posts (left) and Al-Ghaili's video (right):
Al-Ghaili's website describes his work as "imagining the future through science-based groundbreaking concepts" (archived link).
While Al-Ghaili did not respond to a request for comment, AFP previously debunked posts misrepresenting a similar artificial womb video that he shared online.
At the time, he told AFP the video was created as a "concept" and portrayed a fictional facility.
The image of the baby lying under blue light, while cropped, matches a photo published by photo agency Getty Images (archived link).
According to Getty's caption, the photo shows a baby suffering from jaundice in a phototherapy unit at China's Xining Children Hospital on May 17, 2006.
Other clips featured in the false posts were taken from another video by Al-Ghaili, which was shared on YouTube on February 20, 2020, titled "How to create designer babies from skin cells" (archived link).
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