U.K. first womb transplant

[VestaTilley]

The BBC has reported today that the first womb transplant has taken place in a hospital in England. A 40 year old woman donated her womb to her sister, hopefully enabling her to have children.

AIBU to be concerned about a potential dystopian future where women’s reproductive organs are harvested like car parts?

Journalists are treating this like it’s a positive, with few questions being asked about how the donor is recovering, how the foetus (if the recipient does conceive) will fare if the woman has to continue taking immuno suppressive drugs? Whether there is increased miscarriage risk?

Transplants are supposed to be life saving, not about wish fulfilment. Apparently 10 brain dead women are being lined up for future donation!

To me this all seems part of a bigger picture of surrogacy, synthetic embryo creation (reported earlier this year) and a drive to disassociate women from reproduction and the biology of our sex.

Am I alone in being bothered by this? I wish journalists would look more at the bigger societal picture.

Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66514270

Apparently the number one cause of civilisation ending right now (according to Elon Musk) is low birth rate. Sounds completely plausible to me to have a baby making factory down the line. Genetically modified of course.

All these pp worry about pregnant men. Do you really believe its just a case of "wiring" up a womb then bang is bun in the oven time? I really struggle to believe people can believe this!

I don't see a problem. OP, is it just female reproductive organs you have a problem with them harvesting? Or you are against organ donation generally?

how does a hand transplant keep you from dying? It doesn't. It's cosmetic as most prosthesis work better than a transplanted hand these days.

All this hysteria is strange to me, because this type of transplant has already been carried out for several years. I'm not aware of women being snatched off the streets and killed for their wombs, but admittedly I'm not that close to the news.

How can infertile women have a child another way, exactly? Adoption isn't possible for everybody, and certainly isn't right for everybody. Surrogacy is risky, difficult and very improbable.

The sister may not have wanted to be pregnant. She might have difficult pregnancies, hate being pregnant or felt her age was an obstacle to having a healthy pregnancy.

If I'm going to die, I hope they strip out every part of me that could be used to improve someone else's life.

No it's not stupid! If it's a lucrative business then criminals will try and profit of it.

Such a reliable source!!!

Oh, I do however believe this surgery shouldn't be offered on the NHS. But I feel the same about infertility treatments generally.

for someone who has no idea what they’re on about, you have a real attitude problem 😂

Organ harvesting and kidnapping people to harvest their organs is a real issue. And it’s increasing.

“The incidence of forced organ harvesting is rising worldwide. The World Health Organisation predicts that more than one illegal organ transaction is made every hour worldwide.”

Do some research.

@Stormydayagain But fear not there won't be any illegal womb harvesting from white western women.

Exactly.

Why is it that science pushed ahead and doesn’t stop to think about the moral and ethical issues first.

I am also concerned that people who need operations e.g. hips and knee replacements are waiting years for surgery. This not only removes pain but enables younger people to return to work. Look at how a hip replacement has worked for Andy Murray. There are others his age who can’t afford to pay but would be able to return to work.

There is also a thread on the FWR thread about men receiving womb transplants.

Do you think the surgeons doing organ transplants are the same ones helping someone’s knee?

KimberleyClark · Today 11:14
Butritobaby · Today 11:12

Skin transplants?

face transplants?

hand transplant?

do you not know these exist?

“But they are treatments for disabilities and disfigurements. Not being able to have children is neither of those things.

You keep ignoring this point”

Exactly. Being childless is neither. I would argue that cranioplasty is potentially life-saving.

So can we solve this by stopping all transplants? Let’s do that then!

Well, seeing as women have been receiving transplants for decades...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306731/#:~:text=Some%20immunosuppressive%20drugs%20are%20teratogenic,prematurity%2C%20and%20low%20birth%20weight.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3994991/

https://academic.oup.com/ckj/article/14/8/1871/6157850

https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/47/suppl_3/iii32/1784441

https://ojrd.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13023-015-0332-8

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2217/WHE.10.24?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.1

Is that enough to get you started? I can continue...

I too find this deeply worrying and fear for the procedures use in the future. Like with many scientific 'developments', just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done.

I felt that it must have been very hard on the elder sister’s children and partner to have her go through very serious surgery with all the risks that entails.

Then any pregnancy with the transplanted womb is going to be extremely high risk for the younger sister (if the IVF even works). Surely it would have been much less risky to have found a surrogate or surrogates? People have mentioned the older sister doing it but that was not the only option as the younger sister had her own eggs harvested, so it was’t a case of needing a genetically close egg donor.

I mean, I can see that carrying a child and giving birth to them seems like a huge part of motherhood, but all things considered, it’s a very short time that soon becomes a distant memory. And for this woman the pregnancy would not be easy.

Very odd choice indeed.

Obviously not but to say that the same thing could never happen with wombs is what's absurd.

What? Don’t be hyperbolic.

A previous poster said organ harvesting doesn’t exist. I am letting them know it very much does. I have no idea what you’re on about or why you think that would be anything like what I’m suggesting.

I was pointing out that the non life saving transplants currently being done are for good medical reasons, to treat serious disfigurement and disability. Not to satisfy a want. The mere fact that these transplants exist is not a justification to transplant wombs so that women can have babies. That is a want not a need.

But if you are not interested in addressing that point then there’s not much I can do.

@Butritobaby

i suppose you are not aware of this ( quite famous) case of forced organ transplant? It was in the news quite recently.

From the CPS website:

‘This case came to light when the victim entered Staines Police Station on 5 May 2022 reporting that he had been trafficked from Nigeria into the UK and that someone was trying to transplant his kidney. He stated that he had kidney screening at The Royal Free Hospital in London with a consultant. However, the consultant became suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the proposed transplant and decided the transplant could not go ahead.
The prosecution has been able to demonstrate that the conspirators took steps to create a false impression that the victim and Sonia Ekweremadu were cousins. This was necessary to justify the victim’s temporary visa to travel to the UK, and once here, the victim was coached to provide false answers to the Royal Free medical team.
Joanne Jakymec, Chief Crown Prosecutor, said: “This was an horrific plot to exploit a vulnerable victim by trafficking him to the UK for the purpose of transplanting his kidney.
“The convicted defendants showed utter disregard for the victim’s welfare, health and well-being and used their considerable influence to a high degree of control throughout, with the victim having limited understanding of what was really going on here.”

It’s big business in The Middle East , according to Arab News.

ABU DHABI: From Libya in the west to Yemen in the east, as conflicts wrack parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the growing population of the displaced and dispossessed are proving easy prey for traffickers in human body parts.
More than 5 million refugees in the Middle East are potential targets for this illicit trade.
Known as the “red market,” the global human organ trade generated between $600 million and $1.2 billion annually before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic hit, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based think tank that produces analyses of illegal financial flows.

Why do you think that uterus harvesting and sale will be any different?

This. And I agree with the poster who said it’s no different to other organ transplants. I also can’t fathom why anyone cares what happens to their organs once they’re dead. Any healthcare or scientific interventions to nature can be “playing god” if you think about it like that.

KimberlyClark

“the poster I was actually replying to said it was life saving “

I said potentially life saving. Cranioplasty is.

This might surprise you

But I actually don’t care what you’re pointing out, as I wasn’t replying to your comment or referencing your comment.

it doesn’t matter what you think.

I was replying to someone who claimed organ donation was for life saving treatment only.

Jesus wept

Is being born without a hand more or a ‘disfigurement’ than a woman being born without a womb? Why? A womb is a body part just as much as a hand, yes it’s possible for a woman to live without one but I would argue that for some it would be as significant to be a woman born without a womb as it would be to be born without a hand. I expect there are many people struggling to have children who would happily give a hand in exchange for being able to carry a healthy baby to term. I don’t think it’s for you to decide which body parts being missing do and don’t count as a disfigurement, a womb is a vital organ in as much as that if every woman was born without one the human race would quickly die out. Wombs being transferred into men would be a completely different scenario, but I would argue that a woman born without a womb is as significant as a human born without a hand in terms of it being an expected body part that is missing and that will impact on their life.