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

Oh wow, that’s horrific, those poor rats! What a waste of research time and funding (re the rats), it makes me so frustrated.

When I had a complete hysterectomy with a full incision last year, if they asked at the time if they could use any bits in a transplant I would have said yes. Would I have agreed to a slightly longer operation time to make this possible, yes as long as it was reasonable and didn’t increase complications for me. My womb ovaries etc were of no further use to me. I’m also of the opinion that once I’m certified brain dead they can take whatever they want.

You said @Butritobaby that anyone who said it could happen were stupid and wearing tin foil hats.

Just own it.

It makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's unnecessary, for one thing. And there seems to be very little consideration of the donor. Studies show that across the board, women who have hysterectomies die younger, regardless of the reason for the surgery (so it doesn't matter whether it was cancer or a benign condition). If they are premenopausal, they tend to go into menopause fairly quickly as the surgery seems to lead to ovarian failure. It's not clear why. It also impacts bladder, bowel, and sexual function. Oh, and leaves you irreversibly infertile. I think it's a surgery that is carried out very casually and everyone treats it that way when they shouldn't. (I had to have one in my 30's, BTW). I want to see that side of it talked about bluntly and openly when people are waffling on about if the woman consents to the donation what's the problem she doesn't need her uterus anyway.

What? Women who have received transplants (other transplants I mean, not wombs) have babies. The effects (or not) of anti rejection drugs is probably fairly well known.

Would you do your paid job for free then?

I'm a bit confused. I had 2 C sections with my last 2 children, and was told very firmly after the last that my uterus wouldn't hold through another pregnancy. The surgeon explained it was like a giant balloon, and once you'd cut through it twice, it just wouldn't hold and blow up again. So surely when they do a transplant, it has a cut somewhere even if at the base of the uterus? I don't understand how it then be safe to carry a term pregnancy.

I'm also horrified by the 9 hours it took to remove the uterus and then 8 hours to transplant it.... then it only lasts for 5 years?! How on earth can this be provided on the NHS if done. I don't agree with that at all. No one has the right to carry a child, sorry.

That's me off the donor list.

It's grotesque.

They were discussing it on Jeremy Vine this morning too. Again all raving about how amazing it is, I disagree.

There is absolutely nothing there to suggest a problem - live donors have clearly consented and the 10 deceased will be organ donors and the families will have agreed also. Plus it’s not like this is all happening imminently and someone has gone out hunting for 10 brain dead women. As with any organ donation you’ll need a recipient first, who will go through testing and counselling, and then be on a waiting list should a donor come up. There is an implication on this thread that some people seem to think these 10 dead women are bodies that have been acquired in some nefarious manner rather than the lengthy and careful process it no doubt will be.

If transplants are only supposed to be life-saving then I guess we'll have to stop transplanting corneas, limbs, hands etc.

Cannot believe this post. So you're okay to accept medical advances and NHS resource when it benefits you (without the C section presumably you and/or the babies would have died), but not when it benefits an infertile woman? Speaking from your position of privilege. I find this post disgusting actually.

Also you can be confused all you like, you're not the operating surgeon, you don't need to understand!

Great that the adult gets what she wants, less great for the children who have been exposed to large amounts of immune-suppressing druge in utero.

So your against hand transplants for kids who have lost their hands? Face transplants for the completely disfigured? You want to ban research into eye transplants for blind people? None of this 'saves lives'.

The woman was born with Type 1 Mayer -Rokitansky , she had no uterus, if you deny her a chance to be a mum, I'm guessing you're against all forms of IVF.

Yours isn't a rational argument. Trying to replace a hand for a child who has had it severed or repairing disfigurements are absolutely not the same as removing an organ from one person to place inside another in order that that person, who could have lived a perfectly fine and normal life without it, achieves their wishes.

Some women who want children can't have them. I'm one of them. You can't always get what you want in life. No one has the right to a child. To extrapolate from this that anyone opposing a uterine transplant must be anti-IVF makes no sense at all. It's possible to support IVF and be very firmly against uterus transplants.

I agree with you @VestaTilley

I hate the way that having a baby is so commoditised these days:

Partner - tick
Home - tick
Fancy holidays - tick
nice car - tick
Baby (with or without a partner) - tick

I'm uneasy about anything that puts the potential baby's health and welfare below that of the mother's desires and those articles posted by a pp definitely show that there are risks to a foetus from transplant organ anti rejection drugs. It seems like the baby is an after thought in the story. I could never ask my sister to undergo major surgery for something like this.

Like a pp I've just gone onto the organ donation site and registered that I don't want to donate 'tissue' because that sounds like it could mean anything.

Yes anything that enables a woman to have a baby is seen as an unalloyed Good Thing. Ethics seem to have gone out the window as far as reproductive technology is concerned. Even when it’s women in their 60s and beyond, it’s “yay brilliant”.

I took myself completely off the donor list when they changed it to forcibly taking your body parts if you don't opt out (& still trying to emotionally blackmail relatives to override your wishes even if you do opt out because they are that disgusting.)

The govt is treating the bodies of citizens/subjects as a commodity.

If anyone thinks one woman getting a womb transplant means any other donations will be used to help women, they are a fool too.

That would be discrimination against men who want to use your body parts to have an abortion, as they crave that experience.

Being on the donor list means your womb could eventually be used to help a man murder an unborn child.

Are potential donors okay with that?
You don't get to chose which person gets your body parts or what they do with them.

This will age well. Once we actually do start implanting it into men.

I have been on the organ donation register since I was about 18 and I doubt anyone would want my peri-menopausal uterus so I won't change anything - as someone says, once I'm dead I don't care who uses what.

But I do make a distinction between I "need" (corneas to save sight) and I "want" (a womb to grow a baby). Nobody "needs" to have a child, but eyesight is pretty important!

This is partly why the NHS is screwed. It was never intended for non-life saving treatments, and as a nation we can’t afford it as it stands. It’s why I’m also against NHS-funded IVF or trans surgeries (there are also other reasons for the latter).

I took myself completely off the donor list when they changed it to forcibly taking your body parts if you don't opt out (& still trying to emotionally blackmail relatives to override your wishes even if you do opt out because they are that disgusting

This is a completely different point in my view. I don't agree with opt out, but I don't think relatives should be able to override your wishes - if you are on the register, that should be that.

Agreed on all counts. I couldn’t have children either.

This was my first thought.

I wonder how many of these comments are from non-infertile women who easily conceived?