Original story

Compumedia Article Digest, 11.4.2017

First batch of aquanaut children celebrate second birthday

Mankind’s first real step into a new element is now two years of age. Two years ago, the world witnessed the birth of the first human children designed to live and breathe in water. Now there are some forty such aquanaut babies still alive, despite early problems with feeding and communication.

Since these babies are incapable of surviving outside of their aquatic environment, considerable difficulties emerged in the early stages over feeding and communication. These have, however, been overcome with a mixture of old-fashioned ingenuity and the latest technological advances. Feeding has been possible by the manufacture of a kind of artificial nipple, which gives the infant a solution corresponding to mother’s milk as necessary, and by energy packs containing the required proteins and antibodies. Communication, on the other hand, has been achieved using divers equipped with ultrasound speech synthesisers, altered to take account of the children’s nervous system and larynx muscles.

Psychologists are nevertheless still concerned that these “waterbabies” will be unable to receive models from their parents with which to learn important emotions and skills to allow their further development.

50% loss-rate

What has happened in the last four or five years? In 2012 a total of 82 embryos were selected for modification, and the structure of their respiratory organs and muscles was altered by gene manipulation to correspond to conditions of breathing under water. At the same time the dermatological structure was adapted to allow the passage of oxygen through the epidermis and dermis, in other words, to make the skin breathe. This was in fact even more successful than had been hoped, as even under normal conditions the foetus develops in the womb for a good period of time in its “aquatic” evolutionary form. The children’s organs and other parts were adapted to operate maximally at a body temperature of 24oC.

Now the infants have extremely strong respiratory muscles, by means of which they are able to breathe an adequate supply of oxygen with their lungs and through the skin. In addition, they apparently require less oxygen intake than normal humans breathing the atmosphere. This is in part due to their lower body temperature, which does not require as much energy as in a warmer-blooded creature. And because the aquanauts do not breathe air, there is no likelihood of nitrogen intake that would cause the sort of complaints felt by deep-sea divers - caisson disease or the so-called “bends”.

A total of 71 children remained alive until their “birth”, when they were placed in warm tanks and cared for by divers. Gradually the temperature of their natural habitat was lowered. At this point nine children died showing symptoms of something like a common cold, and five more succumbed to respiratory infections. A further seven children picked up an eye infection and were blinded. These specimens also died shortly afterwards. In the wake of these losses, the surviving children’s immune defences were strengthened using antibodies derived from dolphins. This clearly helped, but ten more children died after eating rotten food or other unsuitable items that had sunk to the bottom of their tanks.

Over the last six months, however, indications have been that all the surviving aquanauts have been almost completely healthy. Researchers say that it is unlikely any major setbacks will occur in the future, but “pioneers in the first generation will always have a higher loss-rate than those that come after them”, as the Nursery Tank Director Jonathan Seal observed at the 2-years “birthday party”.

UN gives go-ahead for more experiments

Invited guests and dignitaries were able to admire the children through the glass walls of their tanks and to talk with them using speech synthesisers. The children’s speech is naturally still only in the early stages of development, but their vocabulary already embraces an average of around 60 words. In time, scientists hope that the aquanauts may provide valuable help in the study of the oceans, and the exploitation of submarine mineral and other riches. The children’s education will for this reason involve many years of training in the understanding of the marine environment and its creatures.

On the strength of the encouraging results so far, the UN yesterday announced that it was granting the research team permission to launch gene adaptation on a further 100 new embryos.

According to members of Jonathan Seal’s team, the first theoretical calculations on whether humans could be adapted to living and breathing in water were carried out as early as in the 1980s. At that stage, however, gene technology was in its infancy and the means did not exist to create the necessary changes in our bodies and breathing mechanisms.

Toteuma-arvio 2026

Toteuma lyhyesti

  • Ilmiön toteuma: 0/5
  • Toteuma viiden vuoden tarkkuudella: ei; arviointi-ikkuna on 2012–2022
  • Toteuma väljemmällä aikahorisontilla: ei
  • Ilmiön ydin: ihmislapsia muokataan geneettisesti niin, että he hengittävät vedessä eivätkä voi elää maalla.

Ihmisen anatomiaa näin perusteellisesti muuttavaa geenimuokkausta ei ole tehty eikä sille ole realistista kliinistä polkua. Alkioiden geenimuokkaus on herättänyt eettisen kriisin, mutta se ei toteuta vesielämään suunniteltujen lasten ydinilmiötä.

Johtopäätös: ennusteen varsinainen ydin ei ole toteutunut lainkaan.