First baby born after deceased womb transplant
bbc.com
bbc.com
So not only the woman got an uterus, it was used specifically to get pregnant and was removed afterwards, so that the mother now doesn't need to get immunosuppressive drugs.
It's amazing because, in the end, it wasn't the common approach to take material from the father, mother, implant in somebody's else body... it was somebody's else uterus, but this time it was implanted inside the mother.
Amazing how much progress is done combining surgeries and drugs, until a new medical protocol is developed.
And that's coming from a Brit. I have no horse in the Democrat-vs-Republican fight.
I totally understand him tho, being from South America as well, allow me to reiterate: violence is rampant. more than ever. And we wish things would just get better down here, but the situation imho is getting worse.
I congratulate the professionals involved in this and I feel kinda 'proud' even tho it's not my feat. you go humanity!
I wonder about the placenta and umbilical cord though.
Edit: I'm curious if people are downvoting this because they're anti-trans, or because they think I'm somehow anti-trans.
Essentially, it's likely possible, but even womb transplantation into women is highly experimental and may prove to be unsafe, without the added limitations of male anatomy and hormones.
Adoption has its own place in the world but everything which allows women to give birth (especially in the West, where this is starting to be a problem) should be ok from this perspective. If you want to talk about wasted medical resources, just take a look at the plastic surgery market.
Do not underestimate effort adoptive families, kids and parents, do.
You seem to be unaware of how difficult it is to adopt children in most countries: it's years of paperwork and bureaucracy and you never know if and when it's going to work.
A: implant womb in person, implant fertile egg in womb, carry baby, c-section deliver baby, remove womb.
B: implant fertile egg in surrogate, carry baby, c-section or give birth to baby.
Or: it's just surrogacy with extra steps.
Background
Uterus transplantation from live donors became a reality to treat infertility following a successful Swedish 2014 series, inspiring uterus transplantation centres and programmes worldwide. However, no case of livebirth via deceased donor uterus has, to our knowledge, been successfully achieved, raising doubts about its feasibility and viability, including whether the womb remains viable after prolonged ischaemia.
Methods
In September, 2016, a 32-year-old woman with congenital uterine absence (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser [MRKH] syndrome) underwent uterine transplantation in Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo, Brazil, from a donor who died of subarachnoid haemorrhage. The donor was 45 years old and had three previous vaginal deliveries. The recipient had one in-vitro fertilisation cycle 4 months before transplant, which yielded eight cryopreserved blastocysts.
Findings
The recipient showed satisfactory postoperative recovery and was discharged after 8 days' observation in hospital. Immunosuppression was induced with prednisolone and thymoglobulin and continued via tacrolimus and mycophenalate mofetil (MMF), until 5 months post-transplantation, at which time azathioprine replaced MMF. First menstruation occurred 37 days post-transplantation, and regularly (every 26–32 days) thereafter. Pregnancy occurred after the first single embryo transfer 7 months post-transplantation. No blood flow velocity waveform abnormalities were detected by Doppler ultrasound of uterine arteries, fetal umbilical, or middle cerebral arteries, nor any fetal growth impairments during pregnancy. No rejection episodes occurred after transplantation or during gestation. Caesarean delivery occurred on Dec 15, 2017, near gestational week 36. The female baby weighed 2550 g at birth, appropriate for gestational age, with Apgar scores of 9 at 1 min, 10 at 5 min, and 10 at 10 min, and along with the mother remains healthy and developing normally 7 months post partum. The uterus was removed in the same surgical procedure as the livebirth and immunosuppressive therapy was suspended.
Interpretation
We describe, to our knowledge, the first case worldwide of livebirth following uterine transplantation from a deceased donor in a patient with MRKH syndrome. The results establish proof-of-concept for treating uterine infertility by transplantation from a deceased donor, opening a path to healthy pregnancy for all women with uterine factor infertility, without need of living donors or live donor surgery.
Would you rather ask someone else to take a 0.026% chance of dying or take a (say) 5% chance of dying yourself?
Given that we're getting better at growing body parts from stem cells, you could easily imagine in the nearish future being able to gestate an embryo in a womb grown from an individuals own stem cells and enough attached organs to provide the full environment.
Whales have the right body temperature. There is enough room to do dozens of babies at once.
Cows are close enough. A cow can probably handle a half dozen babies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interspecific_pregnancy#Causes...
We can suppress the immune response, one way or another. If the animal is unable to clear the placenta after the birth, we lose the animal, but we still get a baby.
I bet there’s a market for a sci fi book in which a generation of test tube babies simultaneously develop a fetishization for some low quality diet supplement that happens to be present in the natal feeding fluid they were exposed to for their formative years.
In most developed countries, very, very few.
The possibility of men carrying children is scientifically interesting, but again the human race is not struggling for kids. We are a growing population. I'd rather the resources spent on these procedures go towards vaccinations or the basic medical treatments that so many people lack on this planet.
Similarly, I have no issue with some of the so-called "vampire" experiments, blood transfusions between young and old (ie moving blood both ways). Much can be learned through this (liver functions, immune cells etc). But I would very much against such a thing becoming a standard therapy beyond the lab.
Surrogacy is fraught with its own problems. Whomever you choose to be the surrogate has to carry the baby to term for 9 months. And they connect with the child while carrying it. If you ask a friend to do it, it puts a strain on the relationship regardless of whether they agree.
Society works better when everyone is allowed, to the maximum extent reasonably possible, to draw this line on their own. The entirety of art, for example, could be categorized as either.