Womb transplant - I think we know where this will go don't we?

[OhHolyJesus]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46438396

After claiming our pronouns and our genitals I suspect they'll be after our wombs next.

I hope medical rules prevent it and they only transplant them to women with fertility issues.

Would it even work in a male body?

Just supposing really...

Didn't Lili Elbe (the Danish Girl) die after an unsuccessful womb implant?

Yes - but I'm not sure that at that time any transplants (let alone implants) had been successfully performed. Grossly unethical - but, apart from the insufficient medical knowledge I'm not sure ethics committees were a thing back then.

Is anyone actually doing the sort of the research which would surely be required nowadays before embarking on this experiment (the desired outcome of which is, presumably, healthy offspring)? Implant from male to female animal for instance. Would an y ethics committee sanction those in a higher primate, for instance?

Would an y ethics committee sanction those in a higher primate, for instance?

It is very unlikely an ethics committee would greenlight that imo. For what benefit would it have compared to gestating the embryo in a female who has had an implant, where you basically just 'plug' in the uterus into a biochemical environment that is designed for pregnancy? Surely the offspring's wellbeingwill be paramount here for a bioethics committee, not self validation.

None I have come across at the moment but the point is if sex and gender become interchangeable ( in law) then how can ethics committee not approve research?

None I have come across at the moment but the point is if sex and gender become interchangeable ( in law) then how can ethics committee not approve research?

Bioethics committees make their judgements based on material reality. (At least that was the case in the bioethics lecture I took part in, taught by a US Professor). The risks for foetus and a male 'host' organism are great, considering how complex a pregnancy is and how much can go wrong (hormone levels, immune response...), and would need to be specifically tuned in a male body, in stark contrast to a female body. These risks remain the same irrespective of any laws. Now you anticipate a lot of death and suffering here, for the organisms involved.
And now weigh that against the benefit. What possible benefit can there be to expose a mammal to these high risk experiments. What scenario can you specifically come up with that would ever make it necessary to gestate the embryo in a male and not a female? Self vaildation won't cut it.
I can't see it. And I am certain, whoever wrote that article introduction just wanted to 'sell the article' as 'relevant' to the reviewers and has no concept of how bioethics committees work.

Something to add:
What would be much more likely to get approved, for example, is gestation in an artificial uterus or an uterus taken out of an animal (pregnant or not pregnant).
The risks for the donor animal are well predicatable (and the animal will usually survive). As for the embryo, the experiments can be broken off any time (without involement of the host), so you could at least make the case 'well. we'll break it off, before the embryo develops nerves...' or so.
And the benefit of such research would be that you might develop technology where you can save an embryo in a dying mother.

Still not a clear cut case (should embryos of dying mothers survive, would the mother need to consent to that... is such experimentation on embryos and animals justified...) , but a way, way, way more persuasive case.

Good Lord. If nothing else this would involve experimenting on a foetus up to full term. There's also a nasty little thought that the way to resolve the self-evident problems of male pelvic morphology would be to start giving female hormones to transgender boys as early as possible.

If nothing else this would involve experimenting on a foetus up to full term.

Isn't that alone enough to stop this? This is all very Brave New World. That and the inducing 'lactation' and feeding the white fluid produced to a new born. Just wrong.

Thanks deepwatersolo, my experience of bioethics committees is zilch so good to read your views. The authors was a BJones - not THAT B Jones though 😂 I’ve read an article that suggests theoretically transgenders have a right to uterine transplants under procreative liberties from a law and bioethics lecturer at Liverpool Uni academic.oup.com/jlb/article/5/2/301/5051211 . I have no idea how this would pan out in real life. I find it all rather fascinating in a Frankenstein kind of way and am spending way too much time on this!
Aethelthryth, I had the same thought as you about child male transitioners ☹️

Being discussed on R4 now.

No mention of males, sensibly enough. The final point of the specialist who was interviewed is that the womb transplant is temporary- it is removed after one or two births because of the issues with taking immunosuppressants.

If it did become possible to gestate a child outside of a woman's body can you imagine the pro life reaction? Instead of abortion you would likely to be forced to have an operation to remove the fetus so that it could be artificially kept alive. Apart from anything else, in countries where you pay for medical care who would be financially culpable? Presumably an adopter once the child is "born," but until that point? And psychologically....

This could have fantastic implications but also horrific ones.

With regard to if an ethics committee would approve trials with higher primates or people I don't see it being a problem. There are some places where anything can be approved with money, and that's certainly something trans orgs appear to have.

It’s not going to go anywhere.
Pregnancy is maintained by a delicate balance of hormones not just a uterus.
Babies would have been grown
In a tank by now if that were possible.

A quotation from the BJOG article Uterine transplantation in transgender women linked in this thread: "Transgender women have AUFI, and therefore they cannot experience gestation, which may play an integral role in the expression and consolidation of a female identity".

This is just another example of the validation of gender identity motivation behind transgenderism's political ideology.

I would not describe a transgender person, who does not have a uterus but who wants to experience pregnancy and childbirth, as having AUFI (absolute uterine factor infertility). This transgender person has a different problem.

Only infertile transgender people are infertile. Many, perhaps even most, transgender people have perfectly-functioning fertility and many transgender people are biological parents. It seems that some transgender people don't want a cure for infertility, they want male fertility followed by female fertility.

All the patients taking part in the UK womb transplant trial have MRKH - where women (adult human females) were born without a womb. Most women with MRKH have ovaries but no womb, although some women have neither.

I know two women with MRKH - one of whom has ovaries, one doesn't. Their vaginas weren't fully formed so both had to have surgery to create a full vagina to enable penetrative sex. They are females, of the class that produces ova and bears children - but suffer from a congenital defect that affects their ability to do one of both of these.

They've both spoken about their conditions publicly in the media to raise awareness of MRKH

Independent interview (Andreia):

I was born without a vagina or womb – and motherhood doesn’t define me as a woman

Grazia interview (Tasha):

The Story Of How One Girl's Scary Diagnosis Created An Inspiring Feminist Not-For-Profit

I believe those women taking part in the studies have ovaries and underwent IVF in exactly the same way as any other infertile woman (eggs retrieved and fertilised in vitro).

A PP mentioned the number of embryos wasted in these trials - IVF in general is more likely to fail than it is to succeed, and many cycles will fail due to uterine factors in women who have their own uterus (clotting disorders, uterine nk cells, endometriosis, fibroids, ashermans syndrome, uterine anomalies like a septum). My miscarriages were due to problems with my uterine lining, for example. I know couples who've had 11 miscarriages, or over 20 IVF cycles - so there are many many more embryos 'wasted' in the broader infertile population (of which I'm one). There's also many surplus frozen embryos which are donated to research, or discarded, so embryo 'wastage' is a much broader issue than womb transplantation trials. (For example - we have several embryos on ice, but my womb is now too damaged to sustain a pregnancy - in 8 years time at the end of the storage limit we will have to either donate the embryos to another couple, donate them to medical research or discard them.)

Apologies - the UK trial participants are mostly women with MRKH - they do also include women who had hysterectomies as part of their cancer treatment.

What male organs
I vote for the brain.

Do you consider the brain to be a male organ, Materialist? Does that mean you consider women to be brainless?

I really don’t know how I feel about this. Can science ever go too far.

Is there fear women will no longer exist?

Fear?
I rather get the impression some males are actively working towards it.

It's the womb envy. They don't just want there to be children, they also want absolute power over children. Which they won't get as long as children still get birthed by women who want to have a say.

In theory this should never get past an ethics committee, but in the current climate I'm almost sure some fool will try it (and will try to write off the inevitable harm to the fetus as worthwhile in the name of knowledge of some such shite).

The attempts to induce breastfeeding in males are a more urgent concern though I think in that that's already happened in at least one reported case, with no apparent regard for the fact that the purpose of breastfeeding is to benefit the baby. Are the drugs given to make that happen ending up in the "milk"? What will that then do to the baby? Is it remotely reasonable to proceed not knowing the answer to that question when women who're actually breastfeeding are supposed to carefully monitor their food intake in order to avoid harm to the breastfeeding infant?

Lily Elbe, the transwoman whose story is (sort of) told in "The Danish Girl" film, died from botched attempts to implant a womb in their body. It's incredibly sad that doctors suggested that it might be possible

Also, bullshit that the donor uteri would come from young women in the same country who just happened to meet an untimely end. If they did this it would end in organs being harvested in India etc in the same way kidneys are already.

Hasn’t already happened in Brazil.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-46438396

Fear not. If in the 100% unlikely event they get a doctor in a country which is not the UK to agree to attempt this procedure we can all rest assured that it won't work and they will probably die from infection or some such other complication.