Imagining the reproductive future

As part of our work with The Future of Human Reproduction project, we examined how people respond to visions of what human reproduction might look like in the future.

In doing this, we looked at a video about a fictional facility known as EctoLife – a video that went viral in 2022 when a number of viewers thought that the video might be real.

The futuristic EctoLife video depicts a scenario where human fetuses are grown in pods outside of the womb in a process known as ectogenesis.

At the time of the research, there were more than 15,000 comments below the video – many of which were extremely negative. In our research, we analysed the comments to find out just what people had to say about it, and what we might learn about how to communicate reproductive technologies in the future.

Science fiction is key

Our research is published in the journal Medical Humanities where we combine our expertise in science fiction literature (Mike) and corpus linguistics (Alex) by analysing 15,548 comments, totalling 382,057 words. To help us analyse these comments, we used techniques from the field of corpus linguistics to help us identify key themes and trends that characterised the dataset. Corpus linguistics is the computer-aided analysis of large datasets, where specialised software is used to carry out different kinds of searches and statistical tests.

From our investigation, we identified several trends and keywords that emerged across a significant number of the comments. These include references to genre (science fiction, horror and dystopian fiction), and specific fiction references to Star Wars, and the Aldous Huxley novel, Brave New World. Commenters used these words and fiction references to express fears about the technology such as the technology being used to create armies and to create a biologically-informed class system. They also critique elements of the technology itself such as the ability to select the ethnicity and intelligence of the infant, as well as the visuals in the video which shows row after row of EctoLife growth in an industrial factory setting.

While these results are in themselves quite interesting, we were struck by just how negative the vast majority of comments were, and how the video itself seemed to attract a number of conspiracy theories relating to new technology. This is undoubtedly reflecting how the EctoLife technology was presented in the original video.

Implications for social justice

Ectogenesis has the potential to be revolutionary for social justice. It has the potential to remove the risk – and pain – associated with childbirth, and this technology may give people who are unable to conceive the chance to have a child of their own.

Beyond what we covered in our research article, there are also possibilities to use artificial womb technology to help improve care outcomes for premature infants.

But with this new technology comes a great many challenges. Aside from the technological hurdles that need to be overcome, there is also the challenge of user acceptance. In other words, getting people to accept it as a way that babies may be produced (and incubated) in the future.

Therefore, gauging public opinion is a critical early step in understanding how the public might respond to such new technologies, should they become available in the near future.

What we learnt

While our analysis of EctoLife reveals strong negativity towards the way one vision of the reproductive future has been presented, it does give us insights into how similar technology might be communicated to the public in the future.

From our research, we found that any links at all to pre-existing popular science fiction, such as The Matrix film series, Star Wars Clone Wars, or the hatcheries of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World could prove difficult to overcome.

Therefore, scientists and science communicators need to be aware of long-established warnings from science fiction, as they play a powerful role in shaping how the public respond to new technologies.

Related Blogs

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  How can a child's development be shaped before birth?

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  What’s Literature Got to Do with It? How Literature Shapes Our View of Reproductive Technology

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  In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG) – What Issues Does It Raise? Video recording and transcript

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