Follow on thread III - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

Wouldn't the first person who did it who produced a dead baby be vilified across the board?
I guess it will be dead baby monkeys first. And that's much more palatable

A friend of mine did their PhD in the mechanisms of maintaining a pregnancy and they are so delicate, especially in the early months

I have been pregnant 3 times and each time the physiological changes have been amazing, really. My rib cage expanding to make space (I went up a back size in bras), things like cravings to ensure you get the right nutrition, the amount of fluid I wee'd and sweated out for weeks. There must be 1000s of tiny little changes going on on a second-by-second basis, I just don't see how they could be recreated successfully in a male body - remember male bodies experience heart attacks (for eg) differently from female and we don't fully understand why.

However I have no doubt it will be attempted and agree we will not hear of the failures, or they certainly won't be anywhere near as widely covered as, say, the "Elephant Man" trials.

To transplant a uterus into a male body, you would have to first make the physical space, then find somewhere suitable blood vessels, cut them off from whatever they are currently feeding, and move them to the new organ?

That's not a barrier. Lots of surgery involves moving and repurposing blood vessels- coronary artery bypass grafts for example. And a male abdomen has more space than the average woman's.

The risk of killing babies is sadly not a barrier either. Think of the incredibly dodgy and unsafe surrogate market in India.

I am not claiming that any of this is easy or will happen overnight, but I think it's naive to think it could never happen. And, even if it never succeeds, it's infuriating that millions of dollars and millions of research hours that could have been used for good will be wasted in the attempt.

It's a bit like cloning. I don't believe for one minute that some doctors somewhere aren't cloning babies. They may be legally doing it for embryos up to the age they can survive in vitro, but don't tell me there isn't some (rogue or progressive, you choose) clinic somewhere that isn't going a step further.

There will be desperate couples who have had children who died who will want to try it. And given enough money I bet there are doctors who will have a go.

This is no different.

Wouldn't the first person who did it who produced a dead baby be vilified across the board?

It is likely to be done somewhere where it won't be publicised and likely where many babies and children die anyway. Participants are likely to be lured with cash that they are desperate for or coerced.

The real tragedy for me is that babies do die (and so do their mothers) in many parts of the world anyway and yet these are invisible ...

Datun, we would never hear of the dead babies. Only the "successful" transplants.

That is a horrifying thought. As though these experiments would be carried out in secret? Adhering to no ethical guidelines, whatsoever?

Even if one was successful and subsequently publicised. The very next one that wasn't successful would surely produce horror and outrage?

Surely, though, if you transplant a heart or lungs or a pancreas, you are attaching it to the blood vessels etc that already fed a heart/lung/pancreas.

To transplant a uterus into a male body, you would have to first make the physical space, then find somewhere suitable blood vessels, cut them off from whatever they are currently feeding, and move them to the new organ?

It must surely be many, many times more complicated.

Datun, we would never hear of the dead babies. Only the "successful" transplants.

The first obstetrician to manage this would be instantly world-famous and very rich. Doctors are just as susceptible to glory and cash as anyone else.

Isn't the key here that they have to be successful?

Wouldn't the first person who did it who produced a dead baby be vilified across the board?

Humanity is so fucked up. Seriously fucked up. I despair, I really do.

, surely, surely, it's a step too far for almost every medic and scientist to impregnate a man with a womb transplant, given the huge risk to the baby?

I'm afraid you have an overly optimistic view of my profession. The first obstetrician to manage this would be instantly world-famous and very rich. Doctors are just as susceptible to glory and cash as anyone else.

IVF is arguably a more complex process than maintaining a male pregnancy, yet we have managed that for 40 years. Surgically, transplanting a womb would be much easier than transplanting a heart or pancreas.

I'm not saying it will happen - there will be many unanticipated difficulties on top of the obvious ones. But I bet you that serious animal experiments are already happening- certainly in China and very possibly in the US.

There is no way that a male person will be carrying a child in our lifetime, or ever.

I'm not so sure (I'm a doctor). With implantable, slow release hormones or a pump, I think you could reproduce the hormonal environment of pregnancy, and the immunosuppressants you'd need to support the uterine transplant would help damp down an immune response to the fetus. Whether it would be enough to get a human pregnancy to term is anyone's guess, but you can be sure that many researchers would love to manage it and they won't lack for funds.

I think it's naive to believe it will never happen. It's telling that Robert Winston - who is certainly no TRA - thinks that it will.

miscarriage, fertility, pregnancy, gynaecological care (amongst other women specific specialities) are in dire need of improvement but yeah, sure lets make sure men can have babies.

The entitlement is astounding.

I think we were on the same twitter thread earlier today LangCleg

I think we may well have been! I got myself a (very welcome) education (and breathed a sigh of relief).

Well yes, because the groups included in clinical trials are women, the ones who want in are men pretending to be women, which means that they won't be physiologically capable of maintaining a pregnancy. A friend of mine did their PhD in the mechanisms of maintaining a pregnancy and they are so delicate, especially in the early months that it is nigh on impossible to perform the hormonal juggling act when giving fake hormones.

What irks me slightly is that the money these 'other patient groups' want spent on their personal clinical trials could be better spent making the process easier for actual women. Just like the only group with pretty much automatic access to plastic surgery are trans women, while actual women are told that they can't have reconstructive surgery after mastectomy unless they live in the right area.

But hey... men.

It's totally unethical to give a very young and disturbed individual hormones which could render them sterile and unable to have any sexual function in adult life. However, surely, surely, it's a step too far for almost every medic and scientist to impregnate a man with a womb transplant, given the huge risk to the baby? What about his pelvis, which would be far narrower than a woman's - how are they going to fix that so he can give birth? Or would it be CS from the off?

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/ryan-terry-torn-between-all-of-envy-lust-and-hatred/ Here's another grim item too. You'll need a strong stomach for this one. I see from Twitter that the appropriate authorities in the US have been notified, and a good job too.

I think we were on the same twitter thread earlier today LangCleg 😉
This is an interesting read
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5371630/

I found this on the website of the International Society of Uterus Transplantation >>

“To this date only MRKH patients and hysterectomized women have been included in clinical UTx trial. New patient groups are demanding access to participation in clinical trials and in future clinical activities. The topic of possible future expansion of patients groups suitable for UTx was covered in symposium entitled “Future”. Moreover, the concept and research around bioengineered uterus was covered in a talk.”

I wonder which ‘demanding’ group this could be ? Answers on a postcard please 🙄

There is no way that a male person will be carrying a child in our lifetime, or ever. Pregnancy is a calibrated process with incredibly complicated hormonal variations that are sex based. We might one day be able to gestate a foetus in an artificial uterus. And if we manage that, the rich TIMs will go that route. But we are decades upon decades from even thinking about this as a possibility.

"Has anyone noticed that transwomen make the news for success in business, sport, the arts and politics, while transmen make the news for having babies?" anon
The Feminazgûl

ffs, that article has the following quote: "In July this year a British man made history by becoming the first to give birth. Hayden Cross, who was born a woman, gave birth to a baby girl after falling pregnant thanks to a sperm donor, however he had put a full sex change on hold."

So he wasn't a man. More Kool-Aid swallowing.

The ethics alone will stop it happening

I wish I could agree, but we are already sterilising & castrating healthy teenagers, which is ethically even more dubious, IMO.

A womb transplant is certainly possible. Much more complicated will be maintaining the pregnancy by inducing the right hormonal & immune environment. But it's doable (in theory anyway) and, if the medical establishment's capitulation to the trans lobby is anything to go by, it will probably be prioritised over improving obstetric care for women. There will be huge pressure from TRAs to do this, with millions of dollars thrown at the research.

Outlandish claims in newspapers don’t make things true, if they did, we would be living on the moon right now. Unfortunately there are people who believe that humans can actually change sex - ignorance and stupidity have full reign over the internet.
If successful uterine transplants and pregnancies in Male bodies happen in my lifetime (I’m 52) I will eat my hat, coat and Shoes. The ethics alone will stop it happening.
They really do think that Womens’ bodies are just a receptacle , never mind the millenia of evolution of our reproductive systems, they can just cut and paste our wombs into male bodies. No, just No.

I agree he is winding people up - same with the lesbian comment. But it will peak-trans lots of Labour supporters and make it harder for idiots MPs like Angela Rayner to back him, so I hope he carries on!

LM posted about a man becoming pregnant either to encourage a discussion about the expanding boundaries of biological science or because it would really wind up some women.

Maybe LM was posting in good faith and has untapped scientific knowledge. On balance I reckon not.

Anyone read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishuguro? Maybe that's what will happen to women, we will just become hosts to grow wombs for men

No TIM has been pregnant and it remains to be seen whether they even could be pregnant with a transplanted womb.

It is annoying me that there are calls for this untried surgery to be funded at the same time as millions of women are being impacted by cuts to IVF funding.