Indian surgeon plans to transplant a womb into a transwomen

[kieronsmum]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10796849/Indian-surgeon-plans-transplant-womb-TRANS-woman-pregnant-world-op.html

lost for words

I read this and what comes to mind is the novel Frankenstein. It is genuinely horrific how far the science that claims to help humans has strayed into such arrogance and hubris. And yes where are the medical ethicists speaking out. I despair.

God why don't we first try and put some science into fixing some of the problems women suffer? Endometriosis etc?
I'm not even going to get into the what is a woman? debate.
Just turn your science and surgical expertise to sorting out problems women have - millions of women!

Yes but not successfully - it was rejected which led to infection and then Lili’s death.

No. Wegener had a vaginoplasty using tissue from the stomach area and died when that wound got infected. There's much misinformation out there about this case, but it was the surgeon who persuaded Wegener to have this wholly experimental surgery and then abandoned his patient when the inevitable happened.

Wegener was not at all convinced that this surgery was a good idea and so felt particularly betrayed about being used as a guinea pig and then discarded no better than one when things went wrong.

(Neither the details of the operation nor the risks were adequately explained to the patient, but that was in keeping with patient-doctor relationships at that time.)

So when it fails perhaps we can categorically say men are not women?

If this isn't just pure PR (to get a narrative out there that soon male bodies will be able to give birth), then I think the achievable goal will be to get a uterus implanted into a male body where it will be non-functional but not rejected, at least for a period of time, and this will prove something.

And what if the baby comes out disabled aascba result. Will they look after it for life??

The article by a surgeon i read that was very pro this idea said that transwomen were exactly like women with Absolute Uterine Infertility Syndrome, some of whom have had live births following transplant, and that for a successful outcome they'd probably need the vagina implanted too as the vaginal mucosae have antibacterial properties that protect the foetus.

Birth would be by caesarean section and I should think the used implanted organs would be removed afterwards to reduce the need to suppress immunity.

The law was dealt with in a single sentence; ethics weren't mentioned.

I do feel like in 100 years they are going to look back on this time period and think "what the fuck did they think they were doing, it's barbaric ?" Similarly to us looking back on the likes of Walter Freeman and his icepick lobotomies.

It's not possible.

The only apparent success has so far been achieved in experiments with rats. But only under the following conditions:

1. Produce a generation of seriously inbred rats.

1. Take a sibling pair of one male and one female rat. Immobilise them. Conjoin their bodies so that they share the same cardiovascular circulation. (Think conjoined twins) This is done to reduce rejection risk.

1. Remove the womb from the another female rat and implant it into the male.

1. Create embryos and implant them in both the male and the female rats now conjoined. (The experiment failed completely without the blood supply from a pregnant female.)

Results:

Main result: abnormal dead fetuses.

Several sibling pairs dead.

Only 9% of embryos implanted in the male rats developed normally. Only a third of those survived to delivery (in total that was 10 out of 280 embryos.)

In other words, this is a complete fantasy. Even after creating ideal conditions, which are not going to recreated in humans, the main outcome was failure.

Here's an article about the experiment (which I think is unethical to the extreme):

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9696597/Chinese-scientists-force-male-rats-BIRTH.html

And a link to the study:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.09.447686v2

I don't believe this is anything other than a cosmetic implant, or ethical, and thats before the experiment on a on a human fetus.
This just isnt how pregnancy works, a womans body is not a passive incubator. Gestation is an interactive process, the womans body is involved in the process. Men can't even lactate, despite having breast tissue.

Monstrous. That poor baby. There seems no limit to which other non consenting humans can't be exploited in the name of male people's never ending desires. And total lack of conscience.

Implant, not transplant.

Fucking hell - the shit we put animals through for no good reason at all. The rats experiments are like something from a horror movie. Have to wonder about the psychopathic tendencies of the people who come up with this shit.

As for fiddling in humans and involving babies - unbelievably horrific.

Ethicists are addressing some controversies in the area. It's not implausible that this will be framed as part of reproductive justice.

Womb UK mentions that there are current human studies in London. They mention MRKH or any type of womb-related infertility and invite people to contact them.

wombtransplantuk.org/research/current-research-programme

[The current] set of criteria is emblematic of how fast scientific innovation can outpace fundamental bioethics standards, and may itself be already outdated, in that it requires the recipient to be a "genetic female", whereas research on the possibility to perform UTx on transgender women is already in progress. That future scenario goes to the heart of UTx and its fundamental purpose: not life-saving but, as far as transgender women are concerned, life-enhancing.

Research has clarified the primary motivation for which transgender women would opt for UTx. Findings from a recent survey unequivocally reflect the "life-enhancing" purpose: an overwhelming 90% majority of respondents expressed the belief that having a transplanted, functioning uterus and vagina would benefit their sex life and perceived sense of femininity, improving quality of life overall (4). Such findings are rather similar to those regarding the perceptions of biological women with [absolute uterine factor infertility] AUFI: 95% of respondents in a UK study exploring the attitudes of women toward uterus transplant stated that, despite the additional risks posed, they would choose uterus transplant over surrogacy and adoption (5).

Hence, it is not unreasonable to assume that in transgender women, UTx may go a long way towards the achievement of reproductive aspirations, benefit quality of life overall, and be effective in allaying dysphoric symptoms. After all, gender dysphoria entails discomfort and even distress with one's biological sex. It has the potential to severely affect quality of life overall. Treating gender dysphoria in transgender women relies on a multidisciplinary approach involving medical, psychological, and surgical specialists.

Psychological input, hormonal therapy, or gender affirmation surgery are all potential options according to a highly individualized assessment for each patient. Nonetheless, UTx intended as a means for transgender women to foster their sense of femininity does present considerable contraindications. UTx is in fact ephemeral in nature: following childbirth, the graft has to be removed in order to eliminate the need for immunosuppressive medications. If on the other hand UTx were performed for reasons other than reproduction, i.e. to improve dysphoric symptoms, the duration of the graft would have to be significantly longer, hence a worse risk-benefit ratio.

From a merely reproductive perspective, however, it is worth bearing in mind that transgender women may deem pregnancy as the final and conclusive stage in the process of reconfiguring their life aspirations according to the gender with which they psychologically identify. Certainly, the safety of the procedure into a biologically male body will likely be more complicated and risky than performing UTx in a female body.

One of the pioneer scientists who first mastered UTx has acknowledged that transgendered pregnancy may be feasible, but in addition to the anatomical barriers, he has expressed ethical concerns (6). The fundamental ethical question that needs an answer is: if UTx becomes mainstream, safe and effective for biological women with AUFI, would there be any morally tenable grounds as to why transgender women should be denied such an opportunity for gestation? In countries where transgendered women who have transitioned are granted the same legal rights as their female counterparts, this will become a relevant question if UTx is offered as clinical treatment in women.

Arguably, UTx and ever more innovative MAP procedures pose ethical quandaries bound to grow as such practices become available on a large scale (7). Already, in vitro fertilization entails the separation between sexuality and procreation, which has made it possible for same-sex couples and singles to have children through heterologous fertilization (8). Such practices are governed with varying degrees of restrictions by each country, which reflects the diversity of approaches in terms of ethical acceptability (9).…Ultimately, we feel it may all go down to whether procreative liberty ought to be deemed as entailing an absolute right to gestate, and whether transgender women can be denied such a right without infringing upon ethical precepts of equality and non-discrimination. Current bioethics approaches need to undergo a radical update if we are to successfully meet the challenges posed by fast-growing scientific advances, set to shape and mold our lives ever more dramatically.

Umani Ronchi F, Napoletano G. Uterus Transplantation and the redefinition of core bioethics precepts. Acta Biomed. 2021 Nov 3;92(5):e2021435. doi: 10.23750/abm.v92i5.12257. PMID: 34738555; PMCID: PMC8689330.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34738555/

Reproductive justice merely means pissed off at females being able to do something males can't. That's it. That's all.

Reality's a thing. I'm sorry about that. Get over it like a bloody adult.

FFS this is the stuff you'd expect to see in Criminal Minds.

Those poor rats. What they were subjected to sounds like modern day Frankenstein experiments.

This much medical tinkering for the vanity of some man?

At the expense of the actual child?

When we're made to feel guilt for taking a rennie?

The DM's "scientific diagram" labels Step 3: "Donated womb is implanted into patient in a 6-hour operation. She is put on powerful immunosuppressant drugs to stop the transplanted womb being rejected." and Step 4 "A year later ... one of her embryos is thawed and placed in her new womb."

Honestly, it sounds like the most natural thing in the world doesn't it!

It reminds me of Mengele's experiments with sewing twin amputees together to see what happened next. It's about the same level of fuckwit crazy.

As though a womb just sort of gets on with it, like a slow cooker, entirely independent of the endocrine system and everything else! Utterly bizarre.

I can only guess that the surgeon keeps his fingers tightly crossed when making wild promises, and then laughs all the way to the bank.

an absolute right to gestate
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is that like the absolute right to photosynthesize, should we choose to identify as plants?

What will it prove?

If you manage to successfully graft horses hooves onto human ankles, it still doesn't make them a horse.

Stealing bits of dead womens bodies will not ever make any man who wants them sewn into himself even a woman.

Reproductive justice is expanded to cover pregnancy in same sex couples as well as single people who want children.

There can be, so to speak, social rather than actual infertility in a same sex female couple. You may recall this from 2021.

A married lesbian couple are launching a landmark legal test case against a branch of the NHS fertility sector in England, claiming it discriminates against LGBT+ families.

Influencers Megan Bacon-Evans, 34, and her wife Whitney, 33, from Windsor in Berkshire, have accused their clinical commissioning group (CCG), Frimley, of penalising them financially because of their sexuality.

The couple, known to their 220,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok as “Wegan”, shot to fame as bloggers and LGBT+ role models in 2009, featuring on the BBC’s Britain’s Relationship Secrets documentary and the reality bridal show Say Yes to the Dress.

They started a petition for equal treatment in November last year after being “shocked and devastated” at the barriers to starting their family under the current rules, which are often dubbed a “gay tax”.

Frimley states that same-sex female couples, and single women and people with wombs, must pay for 12 intrauterine insemination (IUI) or IVF treatments to “prove” medical infertility, costing an estimated £30,000 or more, before receiving NHS help.

By contrast, the majority of cisgendered heterosexual couples, including Megan’s sister, are required only to try to conceive for two years.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/07/married-lesbian-couple-launch-discrimination-action-against-nhs