Japan Has Created the First Artificial Womb

May 25

Note: Artificial womb technology has only been successfully used in animals, not humans. It remains experimental and years away (if possible at all) from human use.

If birth is the beginning of life, what happens when we move that beginning outside the body?

Japan helped us glimpse that possibility back in the 1990s, when researchers at Juntendo University sustained developing goat fetuses in an artificial placenta system for several weeks.

We’re not talking incubators.

Not neonatal care for premature infants. This is not a machine helping life along…it’s a machine starting life.

It wasn’t complete ectogenesis (the goat fetuses weren’t nurtured from fertilized eggs all the way to birth), but it was the closest step science had taken at the time toward that idea!

The closest modern analogue is the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) work in 2017, where extremely premature lambs were supported in a “biobag” system for about four weeks, with brain, lung, and organ development continuing during that period.

Together, the Juntendo and CHOP experiments don’t yet amount to full ectogenesis…but they mark solid progress toward it. Instead of imagining this only as a “last-resort safety net” for premature infants, researchers now see these advances as stepping stones toward a fundamentally new way of supporting early life.

Welcome to a future where the boundaries between biology and biotechnology are redrawn, and the very meaning of “mother” starts to stretch.

What Japan Did

Japanese scientists at Juntendo University developed an artificial placenta system in the 1990s and early 2000s that allowed goat fetuses at mid-gestation to survive for several weeks outside the womb!
The setup circulated oxygenated artificial amniotic fluid and provided nutrient and gas exchange through catheters connected to the umbilical vessels.

This was a breakthrough for its time: proof that mammals could continue to develop in a carefully engineered extra-uterine environment!
While it wasn’t from the very earliest embryonic stage, it extended survival significantly and helped establish the scientific foundation for modern artificial womb research.

Together, the Juntendo and CHOP experiments don’t yet amount to full ectogenesis…yet, but they mark real solid progress toward it.
Instead of imagining this only as a “last-resort safety net” for premature infants, researchers now see these advances as possible stepping stones toward a fundamentally new way of supporting early life.

Why This Matters (and Why It’s Wildly Controversial)

Let’s start with the obvious.

Benefits:

Saves the lives of extremely premature infants
Could revolutionize infertility treatments
Offers an alternative for people unable to carry pregnancies
Reduces health risks for mothers with life-threatening complications

But it also raises deeply personal, political, and philosophical questions.

What happens to parenthood when gestation is outsourced?
What are the implications for reproductive rights in a post-womb world?
Can this be used without consent to grow life for research, or worse…exploitation?

The science is real, but so are these ethical landmines.

A Machine That Mimics the Womb

The artificial womb system is, in essence, a high-tech substitute for the placenta and uterine environment.

It includes (or could in the future):

A fluid-filled, temperature-controlled biobag that simulates amniotic fluid
An oxygenation system that mimics umbilical cord blood exchange
A nutrient delivery circuit that supplies everything an embryo needs to grow
Sensors and AI regulators could monitor fetal movement, heartbeat, and development in real time

Think of it as a synthetic womb crossed with an ICU. But quiet, gentle…more like floating in a warm sea than lying in a hospital bed.

And yes, it will work eventually.

The Bigger Picture: Why Japan?

Japan has long been at the frontier of robotics and biomedical engineering. But there’s also a deeper cultural backdrop here: Japan’s declining birthrate and aging population are national concerns.

In 2024, Japan had fewer births than at any time in its recorded history.
Sadly, the fertility rate continues to drop despite government incentives.
As is most of the world at this point, honestly.

Artificial wombs aren’t just a medical innovation. In Japan, they’re a potential social solution…a way to support working parents, mitigate maternal health challenges, and even change how society views gender roles in parenting.

It’s no accident this happened there first.

How Close Are We to Human Application?

It won’t be tomorrow. It’s not going to be next year. But it’s not far either. I’m guessing less than 100 years from now.

Experts estimate that within 10 to 15 years, we could see artificial wombs approved for partial use in neonatal care (especially for extremely preterm infants).

Full gestational ectogenesis (starting life from fertilized egg to birth!) will take longer and require immense ethical oversight.

But the scaffolding is already in place.

And if history tells us anything, it’s that today’s unthinkable becomes tomorrow’s standard far faster than we expect.

What This Could Mean for Reproduction

One day far in the future, this could be the end of:

Dangerous pregnancies, gestational surrogacy, the biological clock as we know it (I’m in a race against this myself), and the assumption that only women can carry life.

And it could be the beginning of: fully elective womb-free pregnancies, new family structures (three-parent embryos maybe one day, and even dare I say solo parenthood?), a divide between natural and synthetic gestation, and the eventual commercialization of gestation!

Yes, that last one is chilling. But with biotech comes business, and with business comes…complications.

The Ethics We Can’t Ignore

Can a fetus consent to being grown in a lab?

Who decides when to end a pregnancy if there’s no body involved?

What rights does a gestating fetus have in a machine?

What happens if an artificial womb is hacked? Or fails?

While it is most likely too early to ask these questions, the moment you replace a human uterus with a programmable device, the framework of law, morality, and safety shifts.

And let’s not forget: reproductive injustice already exists. If artificial wombs become expensive, patented, and privatized, will only the wealthy have access to risk-free birth?

Technology changes biology, but ethics?
That’s the hard part.

What It All Means

We are standing on the threshold of something new. Not just for science, but for society.

For millennia, pregnancy has been an experience lived in flesh: messy, painful, miraculous, maternal. Now, for the first time in human history, that experience might be lived in silicone and circuitry.

It’s still early on into this, obviously.

But a future where embryos float in soft-lighted pods while parents watch on screens? It’s becoming more than just a fantasy, now it’s a prototype.

And whether you’re terrified or thrilled, one thing is clear:

Birth will never be the same again.

I’ve had several people reach out to me for more information about this article!

Japanese Research News (Original Language & Translated)

Several breakthroughs in Japan’s biomedical engineering community were covered in local-language reports, including NHK Japan and Nikkei. These articles aren’t always available in English, but translations show coverage of:

Artificial embryo growth experiments
Biobag/womb analog development
University-backed prototype devices

(Translations were aided by native speakers and online language tools…thank you ChatGPT!)

Related Scientific Research in English:
No uterus, no problem: Mouse embryos grown in bottles form organs and limbs - Science.org
Japan’s Artificial Womb and the Future of Reproduction - Kolapse
Japan develops world's first artificial womb - Graphic Online

I always strive to balance accessibility and accuracy, which sometimes means bridging the gap between language barriers, speculative breakthroughs, and established peer-reviewed sources.
Yes, Juntendo University has done research involving artificial womb / extra-uterine fetal incubation (EUFI) in goats. One of the experiments in 1996 by Prof. Yoshinori Kuwabara maintained goat fetuses in an artificial fluid (with oxygenation etc.) for about three weeks.

Also, there are more recent experiments (like from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) with lambs in “biobag”-type systems, which push forward how long premature animals can be supported outside a womb-like environment.

The post is meant to help readers become aware of scientific work in progress that may not yet be widely known in English-speaking media.

Michele Gargiulo http://michelegargiulo.com