Pitts Children’s Hospital looking into transplant of vagina/uterus from live donors

[RichardBarrister]

The Gender and Sexual Development programme at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh has been researching and presenting on transplant of female reproductive organs such as vagina and uterus from live donors into tw.

The ‘study’ carried out asked 182 tw if they would like to have female body parts transplanted so that they could experience menstruation, pregnancy and child birth. 94% of respondents said yes.

I know this has been discussed as a desire in various forums for some time but seeing a Children’s Hospital that also treats gender dysphoric children with puberty blockers and x sex hormones was still a surprise.

Apart from the fact that it seems medically impossible when you consider the complexities of a female body and how brilliantly designed we are, does this sound rather concerning when a hospital that also treats vulnerable young girls is looking to source organs and carry out transplants?

What do the donors do without a vagina?
An ovary transplant would also be necessary as this is involved in menstruating but how would you make ovaries function in a male body?

Modern science is still a long way behind on women’s health and understanding of our bodies - how do they think they know enough to replicate our reproductive capability in a male body?

I means it's either medically possible and safe or not and the only way to fund out is a study. I suspect that the outcome of this one will be that its not feasible.

Time for the asteroid.

Apparently the (hypothetical and fictional) plan is to get the relevant reproductive organs from transmen. The story is that transmen are keen for these non-useful parts of their bodies to be put to good use.

From...children?

I've been expecting this for a long time. #bekind meets Brave New World. Doesn't the US medical system have any frame of ethics at all? Surely they must have some legislative constraints on related matters, e.g. banning cloning?

Why a children's hospital?

Gotta make sure non conforming girls don't grow up to reproduce I guess.

Any tinkering with gametes and reproduction has a whole layer of ethics concerned with the embryo. Given we barely test medications that would relieve some horrible symptoms in pregnancy, the idea an embryo could be exposed to this level of experimentation is barbaric.

People can't even see their internal organs, this is so so stupid.

From...children?

I assume from totally consenting adult human females. Who will have spent years of their time under the care of the Children's Hospital hearing about what a noble thing it would be for their body parts to be used in such a way.

Taking body parts from young girls and women and transplanting them into older males?

Apart from the fact that this just wouldn't work, as the body they're transplanting into doesn't have the endocrine system etc to support a uterus / vagina-

A CHILDREN'S hospital?!

I have no words for how terrible an idea that is. Please say it's a hoax.

Please say it's a hoax.

A search in Twitter for UPMC Children’s Hospital will disabuse you of that notion.

Well, TW want it so it must be ok 😱😱😱

Aren't there enough actual problems to solve in the world, without making up new ones and spending $$$$ trying to fix them? How about using that money to tackle homelessness or mental health issues? Both big problems in the US. I’m sure any self-respecting, compassionate TW would prefer this route if they were offered the choice - no?

Still won't make them a fucking woman!
It's bonkers and ludicrous that they are thinking about doing this

Funny how this hasn’t been mooted for infertile women who might want a transplanted womb so they can bear biological children. And whose hormones might be better placed to support such a transplant. You’d think they’d be the obvious first candidates above TW.

Makes me think of this Jurassic Park quote:

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should

Funny how this hasn’t been mooted for infertile women who might want a transplanted womb so they can bear biological children.

It's actually been done: www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/woman-s-womb-does-double-duty-first-daughter-then-grandson-n661746

In the right circumstances it does work for female people. It also serves a reasonable purpose.

Children’s hospitals in the US routinely treat patients up to age 21; & those with gender clinics often seem to be running adult clinics as well, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not utterly reprehensible for them to be suggesting this is going to be possible any time before we have the technology to alter the human body at a molecular level. At which stage transplants as we understand them will be old hat; because once bodies have been altered so a sex change is an actual sex change it’ll be an endless supply of lab-grown/3D-printed absolutely flawless body parts that are an absolute genetic match (so no anti-rejection drugs, no failed transplants, no organs wearing out) being put into people.

It is horrifically cruel to suggest to trans women that any such thing will be possible within their lifetime, let alone that it is a medical advance within reach.

nauticant that’s amazing! Didn’t know about that. I note that the transplant came from her own mother rather than third party which does remove some of the ethical concerns around donation from live donors. Wonder how many mothers would give their adult TW children their womb and ovaries.

That’s already been a thing since 2014 (albeit on a very small scale) although the donors are not children and the uteruses have been transplanted into women with their own ovaries so any babies born are their biological children.

The first (Swedish) donors were the recipients own mothers:

www.gu.se/en/research/research-on-uterus-transplant

More recently a deceased woman’s uterus was transplanted for the first time:

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67361831766-5/fulltext

Recipients generally have had MRKH syndrome which results in an otherwise healthy female baby being born without a uterus (and sometimes also without a cervix or with a shortened vaginal canal).

(Obvs operations on female patients have not been remotely comparable to removing organs from a living female child and transplanting them into a male, which is on a completely different moral plane to a menopausal aged mother donating to her own daughter!)

Yes minipie, a very particular set of circumstances where it's easy to see the benefits for all involved. That contrasts hugely with the gruesome thought experiment being suggested by Pitts Children’s Hospital.

@minipie well, quite.

Time to start a #FWAW (Frankenwomen are women)

If they want to harvest female reproductive systems from their own patients, would this mean that these gender-distressed girls would be kept safe from chemical maltreatment? After all, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments damage these organs and render them useless.

Not that it would keep them safe from the brain-washing.

Agree this all seems very Frankenstein to me.