All right, looks like we are ready to go. So good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to welcome you to Dalhousie's Health Law seminar. My name is Professor Joanna Erdman, and I would like to begin by acknowledging that I am hosting our seminar today from McMoggy, the traditional and ancestral territory of the McMough people. And I'd like to give this acknowledgement in the recognition that Canadian Health Law and policy has had and continues to have a direct impact on Indigenous communities as part of our colonial history, and that therefore our work on reproductive justice, which I share with our guests today, is inseparable from our commitment to reconciliation. Our guest today is Dr. Claire Horne, Killham Postdoctoral Fellow at the Schulich School of Law Dalhousie University. Dr. Horne completed her PhD in law at Birkbeck University of London. She also holds degrees from NYU and McGill and a fellowship from the Welcome Trust. Dr. Horne has published extensively on the subject she'll present today, Artificial Wounds, and her work is critical, caring, and engaging. And I very much invite you to read further into her scholarship. We are so very lucky that Claire has joined us this year as a fellow, and you are very lucky today to hear about her work on foregrounding justice in the use of novel artificial wound technologies. We'll have time for questions and conversation. Please use the question and answer function to ask your questions, as well, closed captioning is available for this seminar. So Claire, please welcome. Thank you so much for that introduction, Joanna. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna pull up my slide, so I'll go into screen sharing. Okay, so thank you to Adalina and Ashley and everyone involved in organizing this event. I started my postdoc, as you can imagine during a rather tumultuous time. So it's really exciting to be able to share a bit about what I'm what I'm now working on. As Joanna mentioned, my previous work during my PhD, and my postdoc position with the Welcome Trust in the UK was on artificial wound technology specifically focusing on the impact of this technology on abortion rights and abortion law. And I'm currently finalizing my book project, which explores a number of aspects of the social, legal and ethical implications of artificial wounds. But today I'm going to talk about the work that I'm initiating in my postdoc thorough research, which is very much a project in process. So just to give you an idea of where we're going to go, I'm going to start with talking you through a bit of a speculative rendering of artificial wounds. And then we're going to look at the scientific and social realities of this technology. And finally, I want to look at how we might reframe discussions of artificial wounds and their development by taking an approach to this technology that is informed by justice. This is very much the nature of my project. So how a justice informed approach to the design implementation and regulation of artificial wounds might alter the technology's use and impact, and how artificial wounds and reproductive technologies more broadly might be reshaped if they were disentangled from the spheres of both health care regulation and the commercial market. And before we set off, I want to emphasize that this isn't a normative project. It's a speculative one. So what I'm really hoping to do is open discussion about what alternative paths might be possible for artificial wounds. And this means that this is much more of a question finding process than an answer finding one. So when I speak about my work, I often lead with the scientific research that is happening right now. And we will get to that. But this time, I'd like to start us out with a bit of speculation. So I hope you'll bear with me. Artificial wounds are technologies that would allow part or all of gestation to occur externally. So another word that you'll hear is ectogenesis, which literally means external gestation. And to gestate means to carry. This is a term among all the euphemisms for pregnancy that I think is actually quite fitting because you're carrying a baby, but you're also carrying social and cultural expectations. You're carrying the weight of social ideals and ideas about how a pregnant person should and should not behave and who is a worthy parent. These are not experienced in the same way by all pregnant people. These are racialized, classed and gendered judgments. And although law and medical regulation, they're often talked about as abstract concepts. These are the things that bound the pregnant person's experience, whether their pregnancy begins with fertility treatments, whether the pregnancy ends in abortion, in miscarriage, or in birth. Regulation shapes whether and where a person receives prenatal care, where and how they undergo the processes of terminating, continuing the pregnancy, or of experiencing delivery and aftercare. So these experiences are all produced and delineated by law and regulation. So going back to that term to carry, when you're pregnant, when you're gestating, you're also carrying all of these realities with you inscribed on your body. Not every person gestates, but so far, everyone has been gestated by a person. So what artificial wombs invite us to ask is what happens if gestation could occur outside the human body? How does this change, if at all, how both babies and social and legal norms are carried? So on this slide are two images of speculative designs that imagine artificial womb technology, a means of gestating without pregnancy. At the bottom here, this image that kind of looks like giant red balloons, is an artificial womb created by designer Lisa Mandemaker. And she was in fact commissioned alongside her collaborators to do this work by an obstetrician in the Netherlands who's currently conducting very real scientific research toward a partial artificial womb that will be used in the neonatal intensive care unit. And I am going to get to that in a minute. Mandemaker, who I've spoken to on a number of occasions, she wanted to create something to prompt a public discussion. And she was inspired by the image of a pumpkin patch, which I think you can really see here in this picture. She was following this idea of babies sprouting in a garden of balloons, a tree nursery, if you will, for communal care. The other image that you see at the top here that's kind of this glowing pod is of a speculative project called the Perturient Pod, which designed students from Arthez University of the Arts in the Netherlands created as a way of imagining ectogenesis. Both of these projects are intended to invite debate. So speculation on what a future with gestation outside the human body might hold. And alongside these speculative designs, feminist thinkers have been speculating on artificial wombs for decades. So in the 1920s, socialist feminist Dora Russell imagined that ectogenesis could allow parents to better share the work of gestating and of mothering. And indeed she imagined that mothering could be something that could be better practiced by all with the use of ectogenesis. In the 1970s, the radical feminist Shula Myth Firestone speculates on artificial wombs in the hands of progressive feminist researchers. And she imagines that this technology could be a release from what she called the tyranny of social norms around pregnancy and motherhood. More recently in 2019, Sophie Lewis writes about artificial wombs to allow pregnant people to quote pause, share, transfer, redistribute and walk away from pregnancies. And the invitation from these speculative projects and from this feminist literature is to ask, what if we imagined artificial wombs as a tool of collective care? So what could or should artificial wombs mean or do then? Pregnancy and gestating demand so much of the person who does it, not just their physical body. So what if you wanted to have a child but you didn't want to gestate it? Could you decide to use an artificial womb instead? Could you transfer the responsibility for your pregnancy to someone else, to a partner or to a friend? Or could you donate it to someone who wanted to have a child but couldn't? In our contemporary world, people whose lives are threatened by their own pregnancies can have a therapeutic termination and some jurisdictions. So in this future, could you transfer gestation to an artificial womb instead? And this is really a project of speculating that emerges out of a very specific feminist discourse and tradition. One that imagines artificial wombs to redistribute the labor of care and as a means of caring for both the pregnant person and the neonate. Firestone and Lewis are both imagining the speculative possibilities of the artificial womb from within an affirmation of collective community care. And while ectogenesis is speculative, reproductive care occurring within communities and collectives where they root this project of speculation is neither speculative nor futuristic. It's very old practice. In both settings where access to abortion infertility treatments and control over one's birth have been the most and the least heavily regulated. It's always been the case that networks of care practitioners, so often midwives, communities and activists, have shared knowledge techniques and technologies to allow people to facilitate these practices on their own terms and in their own spaces. So what I'm really interested in in my project is engaging the speculative potential of the artificial womb to imagine a justice-oriented path for reproductive practices, technologies and policies and to orient toward a future for abortion, pregnancy, care and birth outside of restrictive regulatory frameworks. So there's an important caveat here. Despite often getting interpreted as a techno-positivist, Shula Ms. Firestone was very much awake to the fact that her dreams of how ectogenesis might be used in collective care were limited by the realities of the very unequal present. She specified in the hands of progressive feminist researchers, maybe then this technology could be empowering. But outside of this context, there is much better reason to believe that it would replicate existing inequity and injustice. And this brings me to the place where my work really starts, that the precondition for a world in which artificial wombs might mean and do something different is a world grounded in reproductive justice. So what might be possible for the uses of artificial wombs if justice was foregrounded in each stage of their design, development and implementation? And I'm going to get to how I understand and use justice. This is very much informed by a reproductive justice framework. And I'm also going to get to exploring some of the questions that this approach could foreground. But first I want to look at the realities of the present. So currently, research toward artificial wombs is in fact occurring and it is not led by collective care paradigms, nor is it informed by reproductive justice. So what's the reality of both the scientific research toward external gestation and the world in which it's arriving? So the reality is that scientists have achieved what we could call partial ectogenesis. So they've managed to reproduce part of gestation outside the body. In a well-resourced hospital today, the point when an extremely preterm baby has a chance of survival sits around 23 to 24 weeks. But before 28 weeks, morbidity remains extremely high because the organs of these neonates are not yet sufficiently developed to survive in the outside worlds. In 2017 though, research groups working in the United States and Australia and Japan separately created platforms in which they gestated lamb fetuses from the equivalent of around 23 weeks in a human for four weeks. So they managed to bridge this really important developmental period. And you see one of these technologies at the top of this slide. So these technologies replicate the environment of the uterus by submerging the fetus in continually circulated artificial amniotic fluid that's pumped by the fetus's own heartbeat. And they're paired with an artificial placenta that delivers nutrients and flushes toxins. There is differences between these platforms, which have been respectively named extend and eve, but they do share a similar approach. And there's now also a team in the Netherlands engaged in this work. So this is the obstetrician who collaborated the speculative designer, at least Amanda Maker. And what really makes these technologies different or distinct from existing neonatal care is that rather than acting as emergency interventions to redress the complications of preterm birth, they're intended to prevent these complications from arising to begin with by extending the period of gestation. So they allow the fetus to continue to develop as though it had not yet been born. And one of these groups, the group that's based across Australia and Japan, they aim to target neonates born as early as 21 weeks, which is quite remarkable. This is around the halfway point of an average full term human pregnancy. And while the extend team, so the image you see there is the extend platform, they have said that they don't intend to lower the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. However, in a patent they filed in 2014, they referenced that their target group may go as early as 20 weeks. So the immediate goal here is emergency life support and extending development into the point with a better chance of survival for extreme neonates. Concurrently with this work, research in embryology over the last several years has also occurred toward the further cultivation of embryos outside the body. So in 2016, research teams based at Rockefeller and Cambridge universities successfully grew embryos up to 13 days. And this was a pretty significant development because before this point, it had been believed that embryos would need maternal input to continue to develop. So this showed that they could actually self organize in the absence of maternal tissue. And it also showed that the implantation of embryos could occur outside of the uterus. These groups only stopped their work due to the 14 day limit, which is a law or a strict scientific guideline in a number of countries. But this is actually in the process of revision in some jurisdictions. So in 2021, the International Society for Stem Cell Research released new guidance, advising extending the 14 day limit on a case by case basis. And this now applies where the 14 day limit is not in legislation. So for instance, in the United States, where some of this work is occurring. More recently, also in 2021, scientists at the Weissman Institute of Science in Israel announced that they had successfully grown mice from embryos into fetuses with fully formed organs using an artificial womb. And this was the first time that mammals have been externally gestated in this way. They're now hoping to take mice to full term, and eventually to replicate this experiment with human embryos if ethics approval permits. Just a few weeks ago, as well, researchers in China released data on an experiment that was very similar to the Israeli experiment, where they created a platform to grow embryos long term in culture. And they've now completed this work using mice. With the addition of an online monitoring system, or what has been dubbed an AI nanny, with a view towards future use with humans. So while research toward artificial wombs to treat neonates, maybe embraces an intervention to save wanted preterm babies, research to study the development of embryos, and perhaps quickly fetuses outside the body, is likely to be met with a lot more controversy. And this has already proven to be the case. But what's significant is that research regulations differ across jurisdictions, and this work is now happening globally at either end of gestation. There's been much discussion about whether these achievements will effectively one day meet in the middle and will have achieved full ectogenesis. And I think there's significant scientific barriers to this. But right now, what is important for the purposes of this talk, is that artificial wombs are both real, as in something that's really happening and really being developed, and something that can be engaged as a provocation for thought. So my main interest is in external gestation that's occurring in the realm of neonatal technology. But when I use the terms artificial womb and ectogenesis, I also mean the possibilities for this technology occurring broadly speaking. So there's different ways in which this could move forward. But contemporary research speaks to the fact that progress toward some form of external gestation is ongoing. And there's absolutely many social implications regarding the embryo research that I've noted above. So for instance, how far will researchers be prone to go and who owns or is responsible for a fetus that's just stated from an embryo in a laboratory setting? With regard to both the embryo, embryological and the neonatal research, there is a plethora of ethical and legal concerns. But for just one example, I do want to think here specifically about the neonatal technologies like even extend, which are intended as forms of life support for extremely preterm fetuses. So the scientists who research these technologies intend them to alleviate the very real harms of extremely preterm birth. And as I noted, they could prevent complications from arising as early as 21 weeks if they work. They also have uses in care for pregnant people. So in situations where the later stages of gestation become life-threatening or dangerous to the pregnant person. And they might also be used to deliver treatments to the fetus without exposing the pregnant person to harmful substances. So to deliver things like stem cell or gene therapy. From well before the current developments, social scientists have extoll artificial wounds as revolutionary for their potential to ease the dangers of pregnancy. But the reality of these platforms is that they're costly. They're labor intensive. They require expert training and they're designed for very limited use in neonatal intensive care units. So as one of the EVE researchers, Matthew Kemp put it in a recent interview, quote, assuming for a moment that we're going to get this to work, it will be eye wateringly expensive and require an extraordinarily skilled team of people. So this is not the stuff of Lee Samantha maker's design. Each patented piece of this biotechnology is going to be very costly. And they're stakeholders from numerous private companies that that are involved in producing each of these parts. And the social conditions into which this technology arrives are also starkly inequitable. And they are that way for the groups that external gestation is intended to benefit. So for pregnant people and for neonates. Neonatal mortality and morbidity and both neonatal and perinatal death and serious complications are subject to vast global class and racialized inequity. So according to the World Health Organization, 94% of perinatal deaths globally occur in lower and lower to medium income countries. And infants in these regions are significantly more likely to be born preterm. 90% of extremely preterm babies that are born in low income countries die in the first few days of life compared to 10% in high income countries. And we know that these disparities are not down to a lack of highly advanced technology. They're down to an inequitable distribution of low cost resources, including antibiotics, steroids, and safe culturally sensitive and appropriate midwifery care. At the same time in wealthy nations, despite the broader availability of these resources, racialized inequity in care remains. So in Canada, care throughout pregnancy is publicly funded and yet black and indigenous women are more at risk of having preterm and stillborn babies. And indigenous women are more at risk of death and complications during the perinatal period. The limited data that we have suggests this is also true for black mothers in Canada. And these disparities are down to issues including racism, bias and insufficient care and inequitable distribution of birth centers and resources. We see similar racialized inequities in perinatal and neonatal outcomes mapped across other wealthy nations like Australia, the US, and the UK. So while artificial wombs are celebrated as a game changer, it's necessary that we ask for who. There's no current reason to believe that the technologies and development are likely to do anything other than increase existing stratification or leave it where it is. And I think there's very real questions to ask here about whether we should be creating these technologies at all. The physician and founder of the US-based National Birth Equity Collaborative, Dr. Joya Crew Perry, has noted that a consistent problem that perpetuates inequity in reproductive health is investments in biotechnologies rather than in people. So for instance, investing in programming to train and support midwives, opening birth centers in places with little access, support for traditional birth practices, and measures to understand the causes of and reduce preterm birth in the first instance. And these are extremely crucial questions to ask, but for the purposes of this talk and end of my work, research toward highly costly artificial womb platforms is occurring, right? It's already been granted substantive long-term funding, and it's taking place in the context of these striking inequities. So these are the realities of the contemporary limitations in which this technology is happening. And I think that they demand us to ask whether, with reference to this platform that does not yet exist, but is in development, it's possible for artificial looms to exist otherwise. So another aspect of the realities in which artificial looms are being developed, and which is a contributing factor to inequity of care and unstable quality of care, is the way in which reproductive care and technologies are shaped, limited, and delineated by their travel through commercial markets and through healthcare frameworks. So here I'm interested in what reproductive technologies are actually for, and I think it's fair to say that while it may not reflect the intent of creators, we might say that the current orientation of new reproductive technologies can be loosely understood as oriented towards commercial uses, so economic interests in creating and maintaining patients, or towards healthcare uses, towards interest in innovating new treatments to improve and manage health. And I say manage here, because I don't think that this healthcare orientation necessarily equates with care and practice, but rather with management of risk. And to the extent that contemporary projects or projects of reproductive technologies are oriented towards ends of commercial gain and towards the management of health and codification of risks, I think we should ask whether and how it might be possible to orient these technologies towards care. So some of the technologies that I'm looking at as parallels to kind of understand the possible trajectory of artificial wounds are medication abortion and fertility technologies. Medication abortion, this is the two pill abortion protocol, and many fertility treatments are technologies that have been limited within commercial and healthcare frameworks, but that also travel within networks of mutual aid and community care. So to give an example with regard to fertility treatments, in the United Kingdom, in vitro fertilization, and intrauterine insemination, are technologies that can be covered under the National Health Service, which allows broader access and creates legal protections for parents. But then under the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, there's a very strict regulations that create substantive limitations on use. So for instance, there are age limits for women accessing the service and restrictions that limit receiving services to very particular clinics. And in contrast in the United States, IVF is set to become a $36 billion industry by 2026. So fertility treatments are available to those who can pay and people are often encouraged to proceed with IVF where lower cost options might be just as effective. With regard to medication abortion, in some parts of the states, these pills are commercially available to people without medical insurance, but under those circumstances, they're often prohibitively expensive so they can run up to $600 per pill. And in places where medication abortion is available under a healthcare framework, like many provinces in Canada and some U.S. states, there are significant restrictions under this framework on things like timing and location of use. So in 15 U.S. states, for instance, the pills need to be taken in the presence of a physician at a clinic. And in the United Kingdom, pandemic regulations that allowed people to take both pills in the two-pill cycle at home have now been revoked and they must be, the second pill must be taken at a clinic. And these have a very real impact on people. So they create challenges of getting to an approved clinic, particularly affecting those without resources. And they can also lead to situations where people experience their termination in transit. So I'm interested in what happens to use to access and to quality of access and experience when a technology is brought into a regulatory framework. I think we can also think about how birth practices are regulated in many jurisdictions. So for instance, insurance restrictions on home births and regulations regarding where and how midwives are allowed to assist in care and in labor. There's a centering of hospitals and clinical spaces in commercial and health care regulation as the safe and appropriate location for reproductive technologies to be administered and for care to be practiced. So in each circumstance, technologies and practices that may initially be imagined to shift the status quo of access to use of and spaces of reproductive care, whether abortion, conception or birth, become mired in systems that might offer legal protection, but that often don't allow care to occur in a way that shifts experience. But also in each circumstance, so regarding abortion, fertility practices and birth, as I noted in the opening of this talk, it's always been the case that networks of care practitioners have shared knowledge techniques and technologies to allow people to facilitate these practices on their own terms and in their own spaces. So here I want to circle back to the content raised at the beginning of the presentation. Collective practices of care have always existed and they've always used technologies. So I'm looking for example at organizations like Women on Waves where abortion medication and information on safe use are provided to people in places where abortion is restricted. I'm also interested in activism in the United States where the cost of fertility treatment is prohibitive, where communities share information, materials and techniques for safe home use. So there was a recent story, for instance, of nurse practitioners who worked at a feminist clinic who taught groups of home birth midwives in their communities to wash sperm and practice intrauterine insemination safely at home. And to be clear, these processes of abortion, fertility and in future artificial or automated gestation, they differ in terms of the materials and skills required. But what I want to emphasize is that the construction of hospital spaces as the safe and appropriate locations for care are not neutral and care and practice outside these spaces does not mean unskilled care. So what lessons can be garnered from these practices that might inform our approach to artificial wombs? And how might the impact of artificial wombs and the projects toward which this technology is oriented be altered if they were created to be affordable, adaptable to numerous environments and designed for use within and outside hospital spaces? So what would it look like to center justice in exploring this question? My approach and understanding of justice is informed by a reproductive justice framework. Reproductive justice is a grassroots initiative founded by Black women in the United States. And the Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective defines the framework as quote, the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social and economic well-being of women and girls based on the full achievement and protection of women's human rights. And this framework emphasizes the importance of fighting equally for the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, the right to parent the children we have as well as to control our birthing options and the necessary conditions to realize these rights. As Kamala Price writes, the reproductive justice framework recognizes the importance of linking reproductive health and rights to other social justice issues. So for reproductive care to be granted to meet those necessary and enabling conditions, people must be provided with the resources to experience care in a way that is safe, affordable, accessible and acceptable to them on their own terms. To me, being informed by this framework means situating reproductive practices, care and technologies within their social contexts and understanding the way that race, class, gender, immigration status, sexuality, among other aspects of people's identities and experiences shape access to and quality of reproductive care. And understanding how a person's ability to act on reproductive choices is shaped by the conditions in their community and by social, structural and institutional factors. And it also means centering individuals and communities and understanding what it really means to enable access to all forms of reproductive care. So I'm thinking through how this praxis and an approach that emphasizes traditions of community care could inform the questions we ask of what artificial wombs should do and how they should be used. And at this stage I want to again reiterate that this is not intended as a normative project. I want to open questions and to reframe the conversation about artificial wombs. Because when we're thinking about this technology, we're thinking about something that does not yet exist, although it is in the process of development. So that gives us an opportunity to ask how could it exist? In seizing the means of reproduction, Michelle Murphy writes of technologies that were developed for early stage abortion, menstrual attraction in the 1960s, that the same bit of technology could, by being animated in different assemblages of technique, discourses and subject positions, be meaningfully said to be two different things. So how might an artificial womb, animated by attention to adaptability to different spaces and users, meaningfully differ from a technology constructed with the sole focus on functionality and would it? What happens if questions of accessibility, adaptable use in non-hospital environments by for instance midwives, doulas, pregnant people themselves are centralized at each stage of the technology's introduction? What if the focus is on capacity for use in low resource environments? And I'm interested in a broad range of issues here. So materials where they're sourced, what they cost to assemble them, what infrastructure is required, as well as stakeholders. So who is included as someone that has an essential perspective on how this technology should be used? And the purpose here is to show that by asking different questions of what this technology could mean and do and reexamining whose perspectives and skills are at the center of its design, we might remain open to alternative paths. So a platform that exists outside of the status quo of commercial and healthcare frameworks, it's importantly not inherently good. It would have its own contestations, limitations and challenges. And prompting discussion and investigation into what other forms the artificial womb might take from the materials to the environments it could be used in to the people that are trained in its use. That doesn't mean negating safety or functionality as a legitimate concern, but it does demand that we ask why safety has become so closely amalgamated with the hospital setting. So I think it allows us to reframe and ask what does safety actually require. Even where states undergo public consultation practices to assess concerns arising around the use of new reproductive technologies, it's not generally the case that frameworks are created in response to the actual ways in which the people most impacted by lack of access to the form of care that technology could facilitate wish to use them. And while a framework might be responsive to the interest of patients as consumers, so for instance, as in the design and marketing of contraceptives to young women, this attention is not interchangeable with engagement in community use and care. So what would a framework for artificial looms created in response to how people actually wish to use them on their own terms look like? If research toward an artificial loom is animated through questions of adaptability to safe use and under-resourced environments to use by midwiser community care practitioners, what kind of policy could be written to respond to these projects rather than inhibit undermine or monitor them? So such a framework might, for instance, regulate against costs that would direct the project of the technology toward economic gain rather than toward care. In contrast to contemporary regulations in some jurisdictions which strictly regulate the activities that may be performed by midwives, could a framework to facilitate training and safe practice with artificial looms be written in web by midwives and lay users? In analyzing the Dell M device for menstrual extraction, Michelle Murphy cautions that precisely the characteristics that made this technology an effective tool for feminist collective. So the fact that it was easily sourced and assembled and easily learned also made it a compelling tool for state-led projects of population control. And I think it's important to emphasize that characteristics that could make artificial looms usable in any environment or with limited infrastructure, they are what could make them communal and accessible. And they're also what could allow them to be co-optable for harm or unsafe use. So when we think about the role of regulation, there are uses of this technology that a workable framework might protect against. But I think what I want to sort of emphasize is that reimagining other paths for artificial looms and for reproductive technologies more broadly is as much a project of speculating on law as it is a project of speculating on care. So what are the questions that are responsive legal framework would ask? These are deliberately open questions. And I think it may be possible that no such project can be done with a tool, meaning law here, not technology, that's created quite literally to regulate and control. And it may also be the case that no consensus could occur in community-driven care as to by movement what ends external gestation should be used. But I think we can chart what paths forward might be found for ectogenesis if questions of how it could or should be used were driven not by bioethicists and scientists, but by pregnant people intending parents of all genders, nurses, stoolers, and midwives. So I'm going to wrap up there. I do have a references slide, but I'll leave it up for a moment in case anyone wants to screenshot it. Just in conclusion, I do want to say that scientific research towards some form of ectogenesis is happening. I myself remain skeptical about the possibility of a full platform for external gestation because I think that we know pregnancy is a relational process. So there's a real question here about whether we can actually fully replicate this. But I think we need to think seriously about directions for the work that is occurring. And I think with regard to the idea of full ectogenesis and promissory reproductive technologies in general, if we can imagine alternative futures for gestation, where part of this process could occur outside the human body, let's also imagine a future beyond the status quo of social norms around pregnancy and how reproductive bodies are regulated. So I am aware that I've posed a lot of questions here, and that's a reflection of where I am with the project, but also of the intention of the project as an opening for discussion, as opposed to a prescriptive document. So I will finish up there, and then hopefully we can move into any questions. Thanks so much. Excellent. Thanks so much, Claire, to you for a great presentation and a wonderful set of questions for us to think with. So I'm taking a look at the question and answer panel here, and not seeing any at the moment, wondering if maybe I'll start us off and give people a little bit of time to just throw their questions into that panel. So I think this is a wonderful project, and it really is a project sitting at the intersection of reproductive justice and design justice, because there's an entire field that asks these questions of technology, especially, and it is termed design justice and wonderful scholarship in that area. And so what holds these two fields together is the word justice, and you said that you have been thinking hard about what justice means as you use it in this work. So two ways that I was thinking about justice in listening to your talk. One is the sense of being able to survive unjust worlds. And I think you have a lot in there to try and think about it, and maybe it's the way in which the technology in its best form to date is meeting a justice framework, right, is trying to help people with difficult pregnancies or pregnancies in which there is the potential for loss, and that's one sense of justice. But another sense of justice is the justice of changing that unjust world. And how do you protect against the technology in some way becoming a bandaid for injustice? And I'll give you just an example. You talk about the artificial womb potentially as a part of collective care, so redistributing the burdens of reproductive labor. And it's interesting because that would mean we could potentially change the nature of pregnancy, right? But what we've been doing a lot of work on is trying to change the nature of work such that you can actually be pregnant, yeah, and not have such injustice in your working life. And so to what extent would this technology allow us to keep everything the same in the world? Especially the world around work life, around productive labor by indeed addressing and changing reproductive labor. So we are accommodating reproductive labor to the productive world, and we're making no change in that economic injustice. Little question to start. I love the little question. Yeah, this is so crucial because I think this is often a wall I come up against because, yes, how can we possibly, how is there a formulation for this in the contemporary world that we live in, where it does not further these existing problems? And that's such a great example that you raise because we've already seen that with things like egg freezing technologies, you have companies like Google offering to pay for women to use those technologies in order to continue working for longer, rather than having to develop better parental leave, or indeed any form of acknowledgement of the fact that being pregnant and working or being a parent and working is a challenge. So I don't think that there's an easy answer to that question. And I think, again, there is this kind of like back and forth pull to me between one part of me that says, well, there is no, there's no possibility for this technology to do anything different in the context that we live in. And then the other part of me that says, well, we should at least be having the conversations about how it could, how it could do something different. That's great. Thanks. Others, I see a great participant list here, some really smart, engaged people joining us today. Yeah, great. Thanks. I have a question here from Aris. I'll ask. So Aris asks, can you comment on the practitioners of this technology? Would they be part of existing medical training institutions or some new form of engineering? Could we predict that the relationships would be care provider and or indeed technician and client? So who operates these technologies? Yeah, great question. Thanks. That's such a great question. I mean, right now. So it's interesting. I've been looking at what each of the groups that is creating the neonatal external gestation, what their kinds of publicly announced plans are in terms of who they're going to engage in conversations about use. And the one group in the Netherlands is actually consulting with midwives and has begun or appears to have begun some conversations with parents as well. The other groups are very, very, very careful about what they publicly share. And so far seem to only be working with engineers and neonatologists. So I think in terms of the existing technology, the people that would be operating these platforms would be neonatologists in intensive care units. And then in terms of my kind of speculative question or nudge, the idea is that there could be some form of the technology or there could be a point with the technology where the person that was interfacing between the technology and the birthing person or the parents could be a midwife or another care practitioner. But this again is speculative at the moment. Excellent. So Alicia asks another little question. And this question is about affordability. So again, the affordability of the artificial womb will surely be a concern, especially upon the first release of the technology. With competing interests in mind, is there hope that this technology will become affordable over time, if at all? Is this something that can be speculated upon at this point? Yeah, great. I love all these little questions. So yeah, so right now, certainly with both the platform being developed in Australia and the one being developed in the Netherlands, there are these networks of multi-billion dollar biotech companies that are creating patent and parts. So they are going to be very costly. There are examples of neonatal technologies. So incubators, I'm thinking of an incubator technology that I think is called the embrace that were created in collaboration with nurses and midwives in low-income countries to be affordable. So they were designed so that each of the parts could be easily sourced and they could be used in the absence of infrastructure. That's not happening right now with these artificial wombs. But one thing that suggests the hope of the possibility that it could is that the biobag team, so the group that's making the technology now called Extend, they started their work without any significant grant funding. And so the very first prototype of their technology, they were using leftover pieces of tech from elsewhere in the hospital and they were also sourcing pieces from craft stores and from Home Depot. So this was in fact like a very low-cost prototype that they then built up once they received funding, which suggests that it is possible that there could be a lower-cost option. Excellent. And actually, Alicia's question leads me to think maybe in a larger way. Again, that great set of what if questions that you had, you know, what if we could shape the design process this way? What if we could regulate design development this way? And I wondered if the next stage of this project is the how. Do you know, so setting forward that idea as something to strive for and then asking, okay, what levers could you use to actually make that happen? And the reason I asked this question is I wonder if it is helpful of thinking of these as separate spheres. So as you said, the development in health systems versus the development in commercial markets versus the development in a justice or collective care practice. And maybe one of the difficulties is that we have these as separated spheres. You know, maybe it is a question of how do you introduce justice into what are inevitably going to be commercial markets because there is a commercial interest here? You know, I wonder because I think this was a big sense we can think most recently around vaccine development. Do you know of having this really strong justice narrative in the context of a clearly set up regulatory framework and a clearly set up commercial market oriented towards different values? And the idea that you could really jump spheres seemed unlikely. So instead you needed to try to in some way interrogate or move and intervene on spheres. And so I wondered if you had examples of where that's happened. You know, commercial actors that are alive to the justice concerns or justice actors who have become commercially active in some ways. But I think maybe some sense of the hybrid might be ways forward. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I love that kind of provocation because I think, yeah, the discussion around vaccines is such an excellent example, I think here, because and much of what has been going on during the pandemic in general, where you have action within the commercial sphere, action within sort of the healthcare and regulatory frameworks. And then you also have all of this mutual aid on the ground that was oriented by these concepts of justice and care, I think. And these kinds of contradictory places where each of those spheres came into contact with one another. And I do think that with fertility technologies, that is an interesting place to kind of look at those, the places where those spheres sometimes intersect and overlap. And then also how the very kind of like ideology that is that is the basis of each makes it really difficult for there to be meaningful collaboration. Great, so we have a few more comments and questions here. So I'll just note we have a comment, not a question, just a comment. I love that DIY approach, do it yourself. And yeah, maybe invite if you do have reflections about what would that mean? How did those technologies that moved from an expert to lay space, how did that happen? And was there something in the design of the technology at its outset that allowed for that transition? And let me share with you the other questions so you can pick them up too. So first question is, how do you think the artificial womb technology might interact with advances in genetics and the ability to test embryos genetically before implant implantation in a womb, as can already be done with IVF. So I won't, I won't put too many questions on you at the beginning and let you focus on that one first. Sure. So yeah, great question. I, I think that there should be a close watch on how that how partial ectogenesis starting from the growth of embryos outside the body and the testing of embryos for various genetic conditions, how those two situations are overlapping, because certainly I think that there are there are processes of genetic selection that some people would be very interested in whilst using artificial womb technology. And another point regarding genetics is that on the, on the other end with the, with the neonatal technologies, one of the things that the group in the States has spoken about is development of a platform to genetically track risk of, of both preterm birth and of which preterm babies from which pregnant people might be the most likely of dying if they were born early. So I think, and I, and there is a substantive body of literature around justice and genetic testing and how social ID ideals get mapped on to, to genetics. So I think that's a really important question to raise. And then the second question here, and I think it comes back to that DIY question, do it yourself. So this question is, you may have answered this with Eris's question, but if this technology is made affordable and may be available to lower income communities, what challenges may arise in terms of training people to use these technologies. So again, I think it's a question around democratizing use that that's, that's not just an issue of affordability, although of course cost is a major concern. But I think all other kinds of ideas about how do you ensure that people can use it, that people can use it safely. But I think also that people can use it to many diverse ends, right, they can use this technology in ways that make sense in their lives. And that's also a really big part of DIY in thinking about, you know, the bespoke quality of technology. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, I think that again, there is an interesting kind of tension here because do you develop, for instance, training requirements and guidance for use that could be used in any context. And if you do that, are you kind of undermining this idea of DIY again, flexibility of use as, as Joanna points out. And at the same time, if you don't have those kinds of guidebooks or requirements for use, how do you actually kind of support people to ensure that they're using it in a way that is safe and stable and effective? Because of course, we are talking about a technology in which you're gestating a baby. So I think I think that that is a really significant challenge. But there are one place that I'm interested in sort of looking to in terms of those practical questions, are the kinds of feminist DIY groups who have developed and use technology. So there's a collective called GynaPunk, for instance, who has created speculums and incubators for cells. And this is not necessarily in the absence of supporting people for training in use because indeed that's part of the practice of DIY. So I think there would have to be reflection on to what extent do you kind of centralize knowledge and to what extent is every aspect of knowledge about how to potentially use the technology made publicly available so that people can adapt it in their own contexts. And where does law fit in with DIY? That's a great question. I think that's a really big question because I don't know if it does. I think, again, there is space. I think what I'm suggesting is imagining something outside of the laws and regulations that we have formulated. And part of the problem is I don't know what that outside space looks like because it's also the it is the quality of the law and regulation that we have and the ideals that it's founded on that make it so difficult to imagine how do we adapt this for something like DIY use of an artificial womb and could we? And is the space that is the kind of beyond space one where law and regulation can't reach? And I'm wondering, Claire, is the home birth movement involved or interested at all in artificial wombs and indeed in thinking about sort of extending, yeah, if you like, the birth process in the sense of pre-birth also being very much in the home and imagining the potential possibility that again, this kind of care, which as you say has traditionally been facility based care being part of home care during pregnancy. Yeah, and I don't know in terms of I think it's interesting because I think that there's so many in terms of home birth and birth outside of hospital spaces, there are just so many different traditions in which that occurs. And so in some contexts where there's such a focus, where there's a real focus on natural birth, I don't know that a technology like the artificial womb is necessarily going to be compatible. But then there are other contexts where birth at home is done to support choices, including the use of technology. So perhaps in that context, there is this space for kind of extending that relationship as well. Excellent, I don't see any further. We have another question from Aris. So I'm going to ask it here. It's an interesting one. Aris was wondering about liability and negligence. So here you have the law question for you. Medical malpractice and neonatal injury obviously has the highest damages. Would DIY defend against that? Who owns the fetus adds to this? And if you no longer need to gestate, do damages drop dramatically? So I think this idea of would this entirely reframe the nature of really thinking about, I think in this case it's really about where responsibility lies, right? Because that's at the core of thinking through a negligence frame. Totally. Yeah, and I think there's also a question here of like in the current sort of contemporary discourse about the existing technology within the context of the neonatal intensive care unit, there's this bizarre assumption that happens that nothing will go wrong. There's going to be this platform and it could potentially be safer for the fetus than a human pregnancy.  Like in terms of this question of responsibility, you have the person that develops the technology, you have the neonatologist that is fundamentally in charge of running the technology, you might have doctors and nurses that are also involved in part of this process. So yes, there is significant scope for issues of negligence. And if we look to a kind of DIY context, it's not like those issues go away within our existing circumstances. So I don't know, Claire, there might be a product liability future for this work, because indeed, you know, really thinking about how you would bring this artificial womb to market, if you like, is I think a very different question than of course, the questions around how do you bring it into community use. And so just thinking of those two tracks, I think is a fascinating outcome of this seminar. So I want to thank everyone, Claire, unless you have any last thoughts for us moving forward, I think the only thing to do is really to thank you very much for a stimulating presentation, a really active seminar. And I think you've given people a lot to think about, and stay carry on on their Friday. So thanks so much, everyone, again, for joining us. Thank you for all of your questions. And thank you, Joanna, for moderating as well. Great. All right. Goodbye, everyone, and see you for the next seminar. Bye-bye. Thanks.


Log entry, the catch scarlet queen, Philip Conny master. Position four degrees five minutes north, 126 degrees 45 minutes east. Wind brisk, sky fair. Remarks the parted island of Caracallong on schedule after being boarded by armed pirates. Reason for trouble? King Ascot and the maid in waiting. It was toward noon during the best the tropics has to offer in fresh, sun drenched mornings that we raised the peaked outline of Caracallong to our starboard and stood in toward Beale Bay. The ripples danced and glimmered in the light. And in two more hours of the spanking breeze we picked up the creamy surf roaring in over the coral that fenced the bay. My chief mate Gallagher went forward with the heaving lead as I pointed the bow toward the swirling passage through the wreath. His soundings came rolling back. Four fathoms of depth as we closed on the opening. But shallowing the less as the swirl beneath us humped and got ready to break. Three and a half fathoms. The roar of water crashing on coral filled our ears and a sharp teeth of coral filled our minds. The heaving rollers from across the celibacy built and broke on our port at starboard felt the current grab reacted with the wheel. The coral teeth bled by on either side. More than 17 fathoms of crystal quiet water beneath us and I took time to look up from my work. The island in front of us was like a backdrop for a technicolor version of the more idyllic scenes and mutiny on the bounty. A mountain slope down which flowed a glacier of multicolored foliage. Arms, tree ferns, cassiourinas all of it laced and interlaced by rattan and flowering vines. It ended at a sugar white beach washed by blue-green water. And as we watched the final touch enter the picture. Not one but two. Blonde and brunette. Dressed in flower patterned cloth walked out onto the sand and waved as we worked into anchorage. Music So mutual continues the voyage of the Scarlet Queen written by Gildowd and Bob Talman and starring Elliott Lewis. The Scarlet Queen protest ship to plow the seas bound for uncharted adventure. Every week a complete entry in the log and every week a league further in the strange voyage of the Scarlet Queen. Music Five minutes after our hook was secured at the bottom Gallagher and I were stepping from our dinghy to meet the welcoming committee. The lighter one was short and bursting with herself. The darker, tall and well-contained.  Hello there. Good to have you drop in on us. Well thanks. We didn't expect to find you here. The charts call the island undeveloped and populated by a somewhat shy group of natives. And so it remains, except for our plantation. I'm Mrs. Briley and this is Mrs. Ascot. And Phil Kearney, how do you do? How do you do? This is Mr. Gallagher. I'm happy to know you. It's quite a surprise. How do you do, Mr. Gallagher? And now I do hope that both of you will join us at the cottage. I dare say our husbands are even more anxious to meet you than Jane and I were. Here's the path over here. They stepped out in front of Red and Me and led us up the path through a riot of vegetation. Primitive. Almost stifling with flower scents. Bright with colors. Noisy with shrill land birds. Up to the right we could see straight rows of young and neatly cultivated palm trees. To our front the rise of the mountain loomed abruptly. And from a point thirty or forty feet up a small stream flashed from the massive growth. Curved into space and fell, hissing and bubbling into a deep wide pool. Next to this pool is the bungalow. Shaded and pooled by ocean breeze. The husbands were introduced to us on the veranda. Briarly, well built, graying slightly. I bid you a heart. You're welcome, gentlemen. Well, thanks, Mr. Brown. Thanks a lot. Ascot was younger, slim and fair. Have you had a long voyage, Captain? Oh, not this particular leg. No, we're just up from Harmar-Harris. Oh, a beastly island. Well, short trick or no, you'll enjoy stretching your legs on Karakalong. Doris, would you mind showing Captain Carney about a bit? Of course not, my dear. And Mr. Gallagher will go with Jane when you return the Captain to us. Very well. Stranges are rare to us, Captain. I hope you'll understand. Shall we go? She led me through the park-like groves. The clearings where they dried their copra. The warehouses stacked with it. She showed me piles of oyster shell. Half dozen more examples of good commercial products they collected from the island. Then we stopped on a high point overlooking the Scarlet Queen resting in the blue-green bay below.  No, I think you've done a great job, Mrs. Brownlee. Oh, we've been very fortunate. It's Dutch territory, you know, but my husband's associates formed the Celebi's Development Company and we came here at the close of the war. You certainly seem to have everything. Yes, everything but the worry and turmoil of competitive life. And judging from what news we last heard in the condition of the world, I feel quite fortunate to be separated from it. It's in quite a state, isn't it, Captain? It was not as trouble-free as your island. It was talk even in the casser of a battle over short or long hemlines. Hemlines, really. Wouldn't you trade this for that kind of nonsense? No, I wouldn't, Mrs. Brownlee. I'm afraid I like competition and the rest of it. Tell me, don't you ever get lonesome? Lonely, I mean. Why should I? Find husband, good company? The time to enjoy both. Why should any of us want more than we have? By the time three days have passed, Rhett and I were almost ready to agree with her. Our sailing orders would await in the bay until one of Kang's luggers arrived. And this kind of relaxation was made to order for us after the last few weeks of short trips and troubled ports. We soaked up sunshine and rest. And every night when we returned to the Queen, we agreed that the Briarleys and the Ascotts were the most gracious hosts we've met since Singapore. We called it Paradise at least once a day. I was a little disappointed when the first thin wrapping fell off. I was alone in my cabin when Mr. King's lay Ascotts paid me a visit. He browsed through some English-language newspapers and suddenly came to the point. Connie, I hope you won't think me blunt. Your arrival here was the most unfortunate thing that could have happened. I think you're being plenty blunt, King. What are you driving at? You and your shipper, the first link we've had in our side world for over 10 months. How long are you going to stay? I don't know. But we can stay aboard ship from now on if that'll help. If we didn't push ourselves into your company, you know. Oh, no, no, no, it isn't that. Where are you going from here? I don't know. Why? Comey. Would it be possible to arrange passage to some port, any port with regular steamer connections? What? You've been as proud of your paradise as the rest, King. What goes? I'm sorry. Look, I'm sailing under charter orders and I can't take any passenger. Well, I had to ask you. It's not a charm. Not even a slim one, King. I'm sorry. I see. Connie. Connie, be sure that you don't buy word or look indicated Jane or the Briarly's that I've talked to you this way. Your promise, Connie? Sure, King.  I just hope you can settle down again. Yes, I suppose I can. I've been settled for a good many months. Well, thanks anyway, Connie. I'll meet you in the morning. Thought we might fish a bit from the reef at Ebtide. Sounds great. I'll be in early. Ascot didn't mention his visit all the next day. Once again, the island was an unmarred paradise. But that night brought another evasive visitor to my cabin on the Scarlet Queen. The next one to browse through the newspapers and then look up suddenly was Edward Briarly. Oi, Joe, Connie.  It's really been a lark having you. But I say, I believe in being outspoken. Has Ascot approached you regarding passage from here? What a waste of time if he had, Briarly. I can't take any passenger. I'm afraid that's a pity. Don't misunderstand me, Ascot's splendid chap. Bright and alert, smashing company. But this type of life is hard on some. I've been about on this estate and that, FMS, North Borneo and the like, and I know the signs. Poor Ascot's at the end of his tether. He needs a change. And I had hoped that you might supply him with a transportation. Yeah, well, it's out of the question, Briarly. I can't take a pity. Stubborn devil, holding it in the way he is. But, Connie, I must be sure of one thing. Say nothing to anyone about my visit. Joe, if he knew I was aware of his state his model would shatter. And that the rest soon would do likewise. Do you agree to silence? Yeah, sure, Briarly. I won't say a word to anybody. Come in for an early swim in the morning, Connie. We'll have breakfast and make a day of it. I saw him to his canoe. Went back to my cabin. But less than 15 minutes had passed before another visitor climbed the ladder over the side and joined me. Captain Connie, I hope you won't think it entirely unforgivable. My being here, I mean. Yes, Mrs. Briarly. Thank you. I'm so distressed. My husband was here. What did he want, Captain? Why, nothing? He didn't say so. I couldn't bear it if you did. Please, Captain, don't leave without me.  What are you handing me, Mrs. Briarly? I'm begging you. Why me? Because I'm a woman in your man desperately. He's toying with me now. I can feel the change in him. There's no limit to his cruelty. I beg of you, Captain. Give me my one chance. Take me away from here. I think you'd better go ashore now, Mrs. Briarly. I've never found much profit in taking misunderstood wives away from husbands. I'll do anything, Phil. I don't want anything. I just want you to go ashore. Come on, I'll help you out. I didn't have a cheery invitation for the following morning. I hit the sack with a bad taste in my mouth and my stock and paradise dropping by degrees. Jane Ascot's pitch was at least different because she chose daylight in the section of beach for the setting. And it was refreshing because she wore two dark red blossoms in her blonde hair. And the rest of her did nice things to a sarong-type swimsuit because her approach was straightforward. I've been watching your ship at night, Phil. You've had a lot of visitors. Oh, I have. Do you want to talk about them? Not especially. Except that for a paradise, nobody wastes much time trusting anybody else. What's paradise to you, Phil? Money, beautiful women, things like that? Well, brief periods of that type are all right. Why? Listening to me could mean lots of money for those brief periods. Is that an offer? I understand that the men who sail ships are susceptible to offers. Is that right? Oh, I've heard. Are you? I like your approach. Show me a man that wouldn't be susceptible to offers from you. You're very nice to make them, too. Thank you. But I'm not in a spot to accept. That's very foolish. Why? Because you're throwing away a thousand pounds sterling.  Paradise. I'll tell you just how idyllic our paradise is. Did you know that my husband, Indoris Brierly, are in love? You're really broken up about it, aren't you? They've been meeting under the tropic moon almost every night for months.  With Brierly now? Of course. You'll have to admit all of us have put on a great act. Brierly and I have given them complete freedom.  Sounds like a pleasant way to live. It's rotten. But we've had a reason. They want to go away together. And we want them to go. So you and Brierly can play games? Oh, not for any emotional reasons, Phil. When they disappear, as far as the world is concerned, every shilling of the Salabies Development Company's funds would disappear, too. Some ten thousand pounds by now. Which you and Brierly could then pocket, huh?  Oh, I'm sorry I'm spoiling the deal. Such a pretty one. Don't worry, Phil. I'm sure another possibility will present itself. It was after dark by the time I got away from her. I rode back to the ship and poured a couple of stiff drinks. Red was in his cabin asleep and he mumbled impolitely at me when I tried to prod him into conversation. So I went out on the afterdeck and sat there alone, trying to clean out my system with night air, smoke, and bonded disinfectant. What I had in mind slipped away when they stepped onto the deck and into the glow of our riding lights. I noticed the strained expressions on their faces and the small caliber revolvers in each of their right hands. Stand right there, Doris, and don't hesitate for a second if he attempts anything. Oh, right, King. What is all this, King? Things can't go on like this, Countie. Will you listen to reason if it'll save our lives? I don't care much about saving your life and to save your own. I mean it, Connie. We're both desperate and your life means little to us. Doris and I are in love. We have been for months. Congratulations. Oh, I know it doesn't sound as it should, but it's true nevertheless. We didn't mean to. We couldn't help it. Tonight, Briarly learned of it. He threatened to kill us both.  Your ship is the only possible way we can leave. I'm afraid it isn't, King. Well, you don't mean that. Oh, I tell you, Connie, your life is at stake. I swear I'll shoot you if you don't order this ship underway at once. Use your head, King.  Where would you be if you did shoot me? No, in no worse position than I am now. I'd know that I'd done everything in my power to save Doris and myself. Connie, order this ship underway. I can't. You've got a few hundred square miles of island. Go find yourself a hud someplace and hide in it. That wouldn't work. You're only hope, Bill. You've got to take us. But my whole voyage is at stake. That's as important to me as you are to Ascot. I warn you, Connie.  Once more, Connie. All right, but you better do it right, Ascot.  I can't believe that you did... Doris! Doris! Doris crumpled to the deck, raised her head loosely as King Rand and Neil beside her. I saw her push her shoulders rigidly against his hands as she died. Then I learned where the shots had come from. Move out of the way, Phil. Hurry or I won't wait. I'd started toward them, but I slid back against the cabin. King Ascot was still holding the sagging body when Jane fired again. He stiffened once, then relaxed as the second slug took him, then he rolled over on his side quietly. Jane's canoe coasted in toward the side. What's the devil's going on? Why don't you stay ashore to... What happened to them? Keep the crew in the focus, will you, Red? Go on up, tell them everything's all right. Sure, just as long as we got dead bodies all over the deck, everything's fine. I hope you didn't mind my saving your life, Phil. Yeah, that was very neatly and cold, bloodedly taken care of, wasn't it? Good heavens, it was no time for delicacy. They seemed so insistent about hurting you. Let's not kid each other. Why did you have to use my ship? Why didn't you take care of it ashore where you had more room? Well, I felt that would have been murder. It was, huh? What do you call less? Rescue. I suppose in a sense it was attempted piracy that I rescued you from, wasn't it? They were attempting to assume command of a vessel by use of arms or something like that. No? Rescue is a much nicer word than murder, don't you think? Well, it always has been. Up until now. Oh, Phil! Phil, my arm, you're hurting me. I'm done, gorgeous. I listen better without a gun in my face. If your point idea is about what is or isn't murder, it looks better in the stupor. All right, now make sense. Phil, this wasn't all my idea. Why are they convinced Doris and King that they could force you to take them away? So that you could come out and rescue me from pirates? But, Phil, for a thousand pounds sterling, I did rescue you. That's what I'm supposed to say? Not for half the cut that you and Brialy now have from the Celebi's development company. Now get off my ship. All right, Phil. But come in early in the morning, will you? We'll have breakfast and then swim and lie in the sun all day. After she left, I wondered how she'd explained to Brialy my lack of interest in the payoff. Just about the time she should have been facing him with the fact two evenly separated, well-placed shots echoed out from the island. We never did go ashore again. Just before dawn, a native canoe arrived to take the deceased pirates ashore. We moved out beyond the reef, raided over full reports of the Dutch officials. Later that morning, Kang's Lugger arrived with our sailing orders and we headed out across the Celebi's Sea. And bay to make sails! The reef, the mountain, and the memories of Karakalong lay off our stern and the crew jumped two of the wheels to rig us for our ride into the future. Watch it! Make sails! The mainsail boomed into its job. The gyps ran up, then the mizzen, and the Scarlet Queen winced under the pull, settled under the help I gave her from the helm, and then charged forward, slashing the rolling swells with a bow and leaving them churned and flattened in her wake.  Now, she'll do, Red. Hey, Skipper, those two shots we heard have still got me. Maybe we should have gone ashore to take a look see. Oh, no! There might have been two more for each of us. Yeah, you can't help but wonder, though. Who do you think got him? That's pretty much of a toss-up. I think it must have been Briarley. Well, how do you figure? Very simple, Red. With all her faults. The girl was very fond of me. Uh-huh. Well, at least she didn't kill you. Yeah, there's that if you must have proof. Besides, she invited me to breakfast, and I'm sure she wouldn't break that date just to die. Well, I know. Even I wouldn't do that. Of course, those slugs could have been going the other way. Or even both ways. Don't worry about it. Drink, Skipper. But it does pique a man's curiosity, Red. I wonder... Oh, well. After you, mate. After you. Log entry. The catch-scallot queen. 5.30 p.m. Miles traveled from San Francisco 20,433. Wind, brisk, sky overcast. Main cell reefed. Ship secure for night. Signed Phillip Conny. Master. Voyage of the Scarlet Queen stars Elliott Lewis as Phil Conny with Ed Max as Gallagher. Music scored and conducted by Richard O'Rod. The Scarlet Queen, produced by James Burton, is written by Gildowd and Bob Tolman.


To Benway State now, where government has refuted reports which claim that the World Health Organization has announced 25 cases of fresh coronavirus disease COVID-19 infections. Now, Dr. Yamrao speaking in his office at the Benway State Secretariat in Makodi cautioned journalists on misinformation, especially when reported health matters, and also advised them to be very objective in order not to cause panic in the society. To answer without missing words, we don't have any active case of COVID-19 in the state at the moment. And the last time we ever reported a case in Benway State was in April this year. So those 25 cases between January and April and they were asymptomatic, that means they were not presenting with symptoms and they had no issue. So you don't treat when they are not presenting with any signs and symptoms.


Hi everyone. Today we will be discussing a bit about transcriptomics and how to do early set data analysis using Galaxy. This is going to be a very short introduction on transcriptomics so that we can identify a few of the basic concepts before we move on to the hands-on parts of the day. Before going through the details here, which you can find in the Galaxy training page, it would be nice also to have an introduction to the Galaxy analysis, how it works, and also how to do overall sequence analysis. There are very good slides about quality control and mapping that you can find there. First and foremost, a key question to address is what is actually RNA sequencing? For this, we'll first do a quick introduction about what RNA is. This might be very familiar to a lot of you so I'll just give a very brief context here. If you look at the DNA at this level, what you actually have are a lot of different parts that comprise a gene. You might have enhancers, promoters, you have the main part of the gene and the open reading frame of the part, which actually leads to the protein, and you have additional elements on the right and left side of the gene. So the transcription transforms your DNA into the mRNA into the post-retion modification part, which actually comprises only of the axon parts and the internal parts of the gene. So the rest of the area around the gene is cut off, if you like, and the main part is left here, the red parts. The post-retion transcription modification of the mRNA leads to the mature mRNA, and this contains only the axon parts, the internal parts, the gray parts of the gene are being cut off, and only the protein code in region of the mRNA is being kept. This part is what can be causally translated into a protein, which does the whole process. In any case, RNA is in a nutshell the type of form of the DNA, and is what it can be used to produce a protein that will do the activities within yourself later on. When we talk about RNA sequencing, it's basically the part where we take the mRNA and we try to quantify it. What it achieves, it has a RNA quantification at a single base resolution. So starting from the whole DNAs we said earlier, and we have the pre-mRNA, when we're talking about the mRNA part, this is what is being retrieved during the individual process of RNA sequencing, doing the library prep. This is constantly fragmented into RNA fragments, reverse transcription takes place, and the cDNA that is produced is usually sequenced through high throughput sequences, and this is the part that you actually get at the end. So the RNA sequencing part, the RNA sequencing process is a cost-efficient way to analyze the whole of the transcriptome of a particular cell or a particular sample in a high throughput matter. So if you look at the process in a bit more detail in asking where your data is actually coming from, this is where you take yourselves, you extract the RNA, and depending on where you talk about the mRNA or the small RNA, you have different processes. In all those cases, eventually what you end up being is a library where you have the fragments of the RNA listed here, and these are going to be sequenced, and the sequence part is what you get as a semi-put-off of your data. So moving away from the biologists part and going direct to the RNA sequencing. So what is the main principle of RNA sequencing? This is one of my favorite comic strips, if you like. So you have the science here, so I wanted to do a transcript of everything that I have, all the different cells that I have in my samples, all different samples. So what it actually happens is you have the transcriptome, and you basically shred it. You have your mRNA fragmented into a million, literally, or even hundreds of millions, billions of different small pieces. And what you get from the machine, from the sequencing, is this whole mess of colored strips. The RNA sequencing by informatics approach, the computational approach here, is to take all those shredded pieces of paper and try to reconstruct the original red piece of paper. And as you can imagine, because it's definitely not an easy process, it might have a few mismatches here and there, which means that what you get at the end might have some inconsistency, some of these yellow and blue parts in the red area. So part of the computational process is also to ensure that such errors are identified and how to keep them in mind at least. So what are the actual challenges of RNA sequencing? So there are three main points. So the first is that when you do the sequencing, what you have as a sample might be completely different or have some very notable difference with what is the reference genome that we will be using to create the mapping and to quantify those RNA sequences. The second part might be noise. So in other words, you might not have a clean extraction of your RNA. You might have additional information here, fragments of pieces of information from RNA that are present when you do this process and are consequently sequenced. And finally, this is all a bit of a chemistry, which means that there might be some sequencing biases. So some PCR over amplification or errors or anything else that comes into place when doing the preparation part. So all those are challenges that need to be, one needs to be aware before doing the actual RNA seek analysis. But beyond the challenges, there are also a lot of benefits. And the main one is that I mentioned earlier, it's cost efficient and it's high throughput. And it allows us to identify a lot of to get a lot of information in a relatively short time and a bit with low enough cost. It allows us to have a very good understanding of the quantities of RNA that exist in a particular sample and to identify splicing points and novel transcripts, gym fusions and all in all to have a better understanding of what is happening at the molecular level. So if you look at the actual questions that are being addressed using RNA sec, you have two main applications if you like. So the one is addressing the question of what are the actual RNA molecules that I have in my particular sample. So this is the transcript discovery part. In this case, the primary goal of RNA sec is to identify novel isoforms, identify alternative splicing points, fusion genes, potential circular single nucleotide variations and so forth. So the main focus here is to identify and annotate the RNA molecules that you find. The second question is what are what is the concentration of the different RNA molecules in my sample. So here the particular point is to quantify our name and we either aim for an absolute expression. So if we look within the particular sample, we want to make to understand what are the differences in the gene expression in different genes, for example. Or if you're looking between different samples or different groups of samples, what is the differential expression of genes there. So these are the two main applications for RNA sec. What we are going to be doing, we're going to be seeing mostly the RNA quantification part. But at some times I'll be highlighting how the trans discovery can also be applied in the same context. So how to analyze RNA sec using aiming for RNA quantification. So roughly the process is as follows. What you get from the sequencing is basically a lot of fragments of the different molecules. And after you sequence those, you try to map them onto a particular genome. And you have those black lines here corresponding to extremes. And you might identify cases here that some part of a particular read is mapped into a particular gene or a particular hexome of a gene, and another part of the same read be mapped to a different part. I will be covering this in a moment. But eventually what you do is you map your reads onto a reference, a genome in this instance, and then you start counting. And you start to count how many reads or how many layers in this instance of a particular gene you find. So for example the purple gene here, you find basically one layer of that. In the yellow one you find one, two, three, or two if you see these straight lines. And this in the blue one here you have one, two, three. So quantifying how many layers of reads you have on the particular gene is one way of quantifying. There are different ways and I'll hopefully I'll address a few of them here. So the data processing pipeline is basically those five steps. So you have basically a set of reads, either single length, so only the forward part, or forward and reversal, you have parent, and you have multiple sets of reads for multiple samples for the control, for example, and for the treatment. And although there is no standardized workflow for RNA-SEQ, like a gold standard that everyone uses, there are different, there's a lot of best practices and some standard ideas that can be used for every dataset. And these are basically the steps that are corresponding to them. So after you get these files from the sequencing facility, the first thing is to do some basically quality control. This is already covered in a different lesson in Galaxy. You've already seen this on yesterday, on day one of this event. So I will not be covering this in more detail. And then after mapping into a reference genome, you get some annotation and given some information about how your transcripts are matching to a particular piece of formation, like genes, you can do a recounting. And eventually, from this process, what you get is for every one of those samples, you have a count table. Having those multiple tables at the end per group, for example, you can apply different questions. And one of them, one of the most common ones, is the differential expression analysis. If you look at the data preprocessing, so the part right here, this is a single step where you try to refine your data and to ensure that whatever information comes from there onwards, I'm sorry, is clear enough. And it minimizes the noise and n-particle errors that may come in from the sequencing part. So the first is to do some adapter clipping. So if there are any adapters from the sequence that are being left over, this is a good step to actually remove them. And also to do some quality assessment. So if there are any low quality reads or low quality bases, you can also remove them or trim them depending on the size that you're going to be using. The key part, and this is one that I will focus a bit more, is how to do the annotation of these RNA secretes. So you have a lot of different fragments, these small black lines. And the question is, okay, how can we figure out how those, where those came from our reference genome? So it's basically a mapping process, but it's not an always straightforward or easy approach. So keep in mind that what we have as input is basically fragments of this mRNA, of this whole orange piece of information. But if we try to map this onto the reference genome, you actually have a bit of blanks, if you like. So black areas, these introns that have been removed when sequencing the mRNA. So if we map those reads to the mRNA, you expect something like that, that everything is going to be mapped across the entire sequence of the transcript. However, if you try to do this onto your genome, you might have cases, those highlight like in red here, that are basically between two different axons, that if you map them on the genome level, they appear as to have a gap. So one part of that it is in one action, then you have a big gap, which corresponds to the intron. And the second part of the same rate is mapped to the next action. So this is a useful piece of information. This is a challenge. And one of the times that the aligners and different mappers need to address. But it's something to always consider, especially if you are thinking about identifying novel transcripts, alternative splicing points, fusion genes and so forth. This is one way that those things can be identified. So if you look at the mapping and going back to this particular process, there are three main ways of dealing with that. So the first approach is to map directly to the transcriptome. So having this particular piece of information itself, we map our reads directly here. So this is straightforward. The second strategy is to map to the genome. So if we don't have or we don't want to use a transcriptome, the second way is to map those reads into the genome itself, again, with the chance that we've identified earlier. A third strategy is to do a denovable assembly. So trade the streets and try to reconstruct a transcriptome and try to use this one as a means of counting. I'll go through those in a bit, also a bit more detailed. Going for the transcriptome mapping, this is the easiest one to achieve because this is what you have a transcript. You have basically x1, x2, x3 for a particular transcript. And what you do, you take your reads, you clearly align them to the transcriptome. And even if it's a parent, you can see how they can be aligned to different parts. So this is easy enough to achieve, but it has two main disadvantages, if you like. The one is that you really need to have reliable gene models. So what you use as a reference for a transcriptome need to be reliable enough. There exists for a lot of the reference organs, different species out there. But if you're working with a not so common species, that might be something a bit more difficult to achieve. Also, if you want to detect novel genes, this is not possible to do because what you're doing here is you are aligning your reads to your existing transcriptome. So known, already known transcripts of genes. So novel genes, novel isoforms are not going to be identified through this process. The second strategy, as I said, was to use genome mapping. So in this case, this is a bit more difficult to achieve, more challenging. And as I said, if you have a parent read, the first one would be easy, for example, to align this instance, because it's completely mapped on the axon side, on x and one. But the second read actually spans three axons. It's a bit of x and one, the entire of x and two, and a little bit of x and three. So this one would be a bit harder to align. But it has a very distinct abundance that you are able to identify splicing points and also to detect potentially new genes and new isoforms. So this is the advantage of genome mapping. So both of them, as you can understand, have a very common theme. In both cases, you require a high quality reference genome or reference transcriptome, ideally in a faster format. And in order to have a good annotation of the regions of this reference genome or transcriptome, you need to have also the annotation of these known genes, again, usually in a GTF file format. But there are additional formats that are equally compatible here.  And some sort of, some projects and organizations that actually produce and maintain annotations on that include AMBL, MBI, UCSC, RAFSEC, and Sembal, and so forth. So you can look into these projects and organizations and retrieve those files. And so if none of those two strategies work for you, or if you don't have a reference genome or you don't need one, then the third strategy is the one that is the one that might work. So in this case, what you do is you assemble your agent transfer, you do a de novo assembly into the transcript, and then whatever is produced, you use this as a reference to map your reads back and actually do the quantification. If you aim only at identifying the transcript, so putting together the list of the individual molecules that you found, this step one is sufficient. But if you want to do a quantification as well, which is our goal here for this particular introduction, then you need to map your original reads back to your transcript so you can have a quantification of its read to the transcript itself. So these are the strategies of the mapping part. The next step if you've done the mapping is to actually do the quantification, which is again addressing the question of what is the expression level of the genomic features that we're looking for. So if we want to count the number of reads per feature that is relatively easy, if we have the features and we have them mapped, we count them depending on how they're structured. But there are also few challenges. So the first is the one that we have already touched upon a few times. If we have reads that are mapped into multiple cases, what will happen in this case? So if you have, for example, repeat regions, you might have a read that is aligned into multiple cases. So you expect a read to be coming from multiple different regions. So the aligner, the mapper itself, will propose that this particular read can be mapped here and here and here. So how to address this is a question that needs to be decided upon during the analysis. Also, a different question is if we want to do a quantification of features, how do we want to distinguish the different isopropyls, for example? Are we going to do this at the gene level? Are we using the different types or are we going to do this at the exon level? So all those are different questions that need to be addressed before doing the quantification itself. So given that we have the quantification done and we're going to be seeing a few tools in the hands-on later in this tutorial, we need to move on to the differential expression. So we've done the quantification in a single sample, but we may want to identify what are the differences in the numbers, in the concentrations of RNA across different groups, different conditions of different samples. So essentially, what we are going to be producing per sample is the sort of a distribution, if you like, across the same reference. But then, if we want to do this differential expression analysis, we need to account for the variability of expression across both the biological replicates as well as different technical replicates, again, with the help of accounts. The first step usually is to do normalization. In other words, try to make the expression levels comparable across the different groups. And there are different ways of doing that. You can do it by features and you do this at the gene level, the aziform level, for example. You should do it by samples so that you ensure that all the samples are comparable. And there are multiple methods that achieve that. And every method usually corresponds to a different tool that actually implements this. So there are the FPKM and RPKM methods of normalization across different samples. There is the TMM method that is evident in EDSAR packets. And there is also the DC2 method available through the same named packets in R, which is the most commonly used approach. It's important to highlight that so far, the ones that are shown to be the most robust are the DC2 and TMM ones, because they are more efficient and more robust when you're discussing about different library sizes and different compositions of the library. So if you're describing different sets of samples, then you might, TMM and DC2 are the most relevant ones. And in closing, it might be also important to keep in mind that the number of replicates used in differential gene expression, as well as the secrecy depth of its individual sample, are critical aspects and have an effect on which genes and how many of those genes are identified as differentially expressed. This is significantly expressed. As you can see, this is a study done by Conessa and Tall in 2016. And you see how the number of replicates per group and the sequencing depth actually has an impact on the probability of detecting a differential expression at the individual levels of 5%. And as you can see, by increasing the number of replicates, you significantly increase the effect size. And also by having a significant depth of sequencing also increases the probability of identifying those differential expression genes. So the rule of thumb basically is to have at least three biological replicates per group in order to have a sufficient enough power of the statistical analysis that is done at the end when you identify the differentially expressed genes. In closing, and after doing the differential expression, the next step is usually to do some visualization. And there are different visualizations for different parts of the process. So for example, if you're looking at the aligned reads using the BAM files, which we've seen earlier, you can use the IGV or trucksters to visualize those aligned reads. And you can also do the sesame plots again through the IGV or other tools to see how the read coverage along axons and splice points, splice junctions look like and how they work. At the end, after having the count, you can also do a more efficient visualization of the counts and their differential and the full change, for example, using packages like Cameraband, which was designed to connect with cufflinks as part of the Daxindo pipeline a few years ago. So there are a lot of tutorials that are available to do that. We will be seeing now the RNA-seq pipeline reference-based RNA-seq pipeline leading up until the R part, how to do the analysis of counts using R. And I would like to acknowledge the GALAX training network, and particularly Bernice, Anika, and Marcus for putting together this particular tutorial. And thank you for listening to this.


So, as you know, every month we have a Khatmah of Quran, so we recite the whole Quran, and then we come here. We meet together, and we recite the last surahs of Quran, and also we recite the beginning of Quran, as like we have the intention to start another Khatmah, insha'Allah. Then we make a dua for ourselves, for our Masjid, for our community, for our Ummah, insha'Allah. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you with your beautiful names, and with your high attributes, and with your great name, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate. We ask you, O Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.