Oleg Zabluda's blog
Thursday, March 29, 2012
 
There is a very persistent misconception that a baby gestated and born in some kind of artificial womb will not have...
There is a very persistent misconception that a baby gestated and born in some kind of artificial womb will not have a belly button (пупок). For example, Rammstein in the song "Mutter (mother)" sings

und wünsch mir, dass ich eine Mutter hätte - and wish that I had a mother
niemand gab mir einen Namen - no one gave me a name
Hab keinen Nabel auf dem Bauch - I have no navel on my stomach

Or Нийя from the Soviet Sci-Fi film "Через тернии к звёздам (Per aspera ad astra)" doesn't have belly button either. Or countless others, everybody, undoubtedly remembers.

Now, that's just silly. Let's briefly review where navel is coming from.

A fetus is an organism, completely separate from it's mother, having a separate and complete set of genes (may even be a boy), who produces its own blood and who had it's own heart, which pumps said blood, not to lungs (that would be stupid, baby would just drown), but through the umbilical cord (пуповина) to the placenta [1]. Placenta is attached to the uterus wall, and serves the same function as lungs after birth - add O2 to and remove CO2 from the blood. Just like blood and air do not mix in the lungs, fetus' blood and mother's blood do not mix in the placenta. That would be stupid.

Now that we [re]established basic sanity, it should be obvious that the umbilical (and the placenta) are not grown by the mother. Just like the baby's lungs, heart, blood vessels, the umbilical and the placenta are grown by the fetus, artificial womb or natural.

There is also a fascinating story behind the mechanism how placenta is not rejected by the mother (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_tolerance_in_pregnancy) Mammals, or more precisely, Placentals, apparently picked up lots of genes horizontally from all kinds of parasites, who hide from the immune system.

[1] To stress how a fetus is a separate organism, it pees right into the womb (a liter per day), but has no need to crap, because, normally, it simply does not ingest enough to need to.

Rammstein Mutter HD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7n8QVMNlSk

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