[HN Gopher] First baby born in UK to woman with transplanted womb
___________________________________________________________________
First baby born in UK to woman with transplanted womb
Author : gmays
Score : 151 points
Date : 2025-04-17 14:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| sebazzz wrote:
| Pretty amazing. I suppose that the effects of immunosuppressants
| on pregnancy and the unborn child are already well understood.
| dleeftink wrote:
| I stopped and looked at the natal photo for a while. It is a
| feeling I have not had before. This new life, chanced not only by
| lineage but multiple family members and a host of research and
| medical staff.
|
| The image shows very little technology, but to me, is the epitome
| of how life and progress can unite.
| mbonnet wrote:
| I was deeply moved looking at it as well.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This is incredible technology. But I am crying in American at
| "Each transplant costs around PS30,000, he says."
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| Completely dwarfed by the total cost of raising a child. It's a
| surprisingly expensive hobby.
| tough wrote:
| Yea but in america such a transplant probably costs 300k just
| to go to the hospital ez
|
| prob also raising a child way expensier if you factor uni and
| such into it vs UK
| trollbridge wrote:
| I don't think anyone in America is actually paying a bill
| for $300,000 for a transplant. It's either paid for by
| insurance, or if someone doesn't have insurance, via
| hospital charity or a state medical aid plan. The only
| exception would be an absurdly rich person who doesn't have
| insurance.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Why would insurance cover a womb transplant?
| breppp wrote:
| Presumably if the need is due to illness
| Retr0id wrote:
| Insurance often covers IVF
| WalterGR wrote:
| Only in some states, under some circumstances, and not
| necessarily completely.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Would insurance cover a transplant that isn't necessary
| for survival?
| lawn wrote:
| Don't forget the people who don't have insurance and are
| too poor to pay for the treatment, those suckers.
| wat10000 wrote:
| "American health care is incredibly expensive."
|
| "That's ok, other people bear the enormous cost."
|
| Not really a win, that.
| thehappypm wrote:
| That's not how it works! The bill of $300k gets
| negotiated down to like $20k.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The negotiated rate is still super high. There are
| procedures where it costs less to fly overseas and get it
| done self-pay than the out-of-pocket cost with insurance
| in the US.
| chrisrodrigue wrote:
| That seems extraordinarily affordable for a permanent, life-
| altering operation that needs 30 medics and takes 17 hours.
|
| For a comparison, check out what a 1-month supply of a biologic
| drug costs: https://www.goodrx.com/stelara
| clort wrote:
| It will not be permanent, she can have two babies but they
| will remove the womb afterwards
| morcus wrote:
| The think that was the point, it's unimaginable that
| something like that could only cost 30k in the US.
| scythe wrote:
| I'll raise you for the cost of a single dose of Pluvicto:
|
| https://www.drugs.com/price-guide/pluvicto
| morkalork wrote:
| Only a low multiple of IVF treatment, remarkable!
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It's part of a clinical trial, and the staff donated their
| time, so I don't think that number tells you anything
| meaningful about what it would normally cost.
| amelius wrote:
| This is great news, but I wonder how that ever got approved given
| the safety implications for mother and child.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Wondering the same. Surrogacy would seem like a much safer
| option. Just use the working womb without transplanting it. Why
| put two people through major surgery, plus additional risks for
| the baby?
| lloeki wrote:
| > Surrogacy would seem like a much safer option. Just use the
| working womb without transplanting it.
|
| In some jurisdictions the former could be illegal while the
| latter would be legal.
| romaaeterna wrote:
| "Grace was born with a rare condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-
| Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, where the womb is missing or
| underdeveloped, but with functioning ovaries"
|
| A rare, congenital, condition.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| It's incredible and Inwish long life and happiness to the newborn
| and her family
|
| I would like to reflect on the timing of this - the UK Supreme
| Court just ruled something about a woman is a "biological"
| definition - and I am willing to put a lot of money on many
| people on both sides of that contentious debate struggling with
| the idea that "someone born without a womb is a woman" and "hey
| we can transplant wombs now"
|
| Thousands of scientists and medical practitioners have taken
| thousands of baby steps to get to this point. We should fund
| every single one of them - we never know where research will take
| us.
| basisword wrote:
| The Supreme Court wasn't deciding anything other than the
| intention of an existing law and the meaning of the words in
| that law (which were unclear enough to require clarification).
| BOTH sides of the debate claiming that the Supreme Court has
| now defined what constitutes a "woman" are wrong and doing
| nothing but polarising people for their own selfish gain.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Unfortunately when you try to explain this to people, the
| most common response (regardless of which side they're on) is
| to express that "Yes, but OUR side is right, so
| misrepresenting the ruling in our favor is right too."
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| The same kind of people where if you're not on their
| extreme, you're on the opposite extreme and might as well
| be Satan himself.
|
| You're not allowed to be in the middle anymore.
| clort wrote:
| As I understand it, the court ruled that specifically within
| the text of the 2010 Equality Act, where it says 'woman' with
| no qualifier, that refers only to biological females. I do not
| know how many such places there are, but other parts of the act
| do apparently refer to other women and that they should not be
| discriminated against in the same way.
|
| The court is really saying that the lawmakers did not specify
| properly what they meant in certain cases and that they should
| probably modify those sections (they are carefully not to tell
| Parliament what to do), which can be done and does sometimes
| get done when such things crop up.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > but other parts of the act do apparently refer to other
| women and that they should not be discriminated against in
| the same way
|
| Yes, the act (as it should) protects people from
| discrimination based on gender reassignment, e.g. you can't
| fire someone for their gender identity or deny them from a
| service.
|
| The act makes it illegal to discriminate against someone due
| to their "sex", but a portion of the act allowed for "single
| sex" spaces where there is reasonable grounds to have them,
| but the act (reasonably at the time) did not define what sex
| was.
|
| A piece of Scottish legislation referred to "woman as defined
| by the Equality Act", but the Equality Act never said if it
| was referring to biological sex or gender identity, the
| Scottish government said it would include people with gender
| reassignment certificates, a "woman's rights" charity
| disagreed. Hence the court got involved and found the
| original intention was to refer to biological sex, which was
| confirmed by the politician that introduced the Equality Act
| (Harriet Harman).
| blippitybleep wrote:
| _On the important issue of discrimination, Clause 9 makes
| it clear that a transsexual person would have protection
| under the Sex Discrimination Act as a person of the
| acquired sex or gender. Once recognition has been granted,
| they will be able to claim the rights appropriate to that
| gender._
|
| - Lord Filkin, the Minister who introduced the Gender
| Recognition Bill in the House of Lords in 2003 (18th
| December)
| ck2 wrote:
| One of the biggest lies ever told by conservatives is that sex
| is binary.
|
| Physical "sex" is never only binary.
|
| 1 in 1500 births is DSD and not binary (aka intersex but that
| term is outdated)
|
| The woman in this example is DSD
|
| There are dozens of different types of women who are DSD
|
| Some women who are DSD would most definitely fail most genetics
| tests to prove "women" (like the SRY test that some sports
| federations use)
|
| Yet some of the women who "fail" SRY tests can give birth,
| typically using a donated egg or in this case other organs
| because their organs are either damaged or cancerous from
| partially activated SRY, etc.
|
| 1 in 1500 is a LOT of people
|
| Every time you hear a "bathroom assigned at birth" harassment,
| realize they are also oppressing millions of women who are DSD,
| not just transgender
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, no one is born with both sets of working
| reproductive organs and in most cases there is still a
| "dominant" gene expression, and only some extremely rare
| cases where current tests fall short.
|
| So I don't see 1 in 1500 people being oppressed by the court
| ruling.
| macintux wrote:
| For anyone like me who's unfamiliar with the acronym.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development
| froh wrote:
| thanks for the link. and the section in controversy is
| really worth reading for nuance and thoughtful
| conversation.
|
| the humans with intersex conditions themselves object the
| term, as it tags them as sick, a "disease". their personal
| experience based political interventions have lead to the
| prohibition of cosmetic surgeries on genitals of minors, or
| forced hormonal sex assignment on minors, in several
| European countries that is. so they can decide on their own
| when they are old enough. that's all the personally
| affected humans ask for, for the next generation: let them
| be as they are and allow them to decide on their own.
| dubiousdabbler wrote:
| It's really offensive to tell people with DSDs they aren't
| their sex. Sex is binary. People with DSDs are female or
| male, except for extremely rare cases.
| seethedeaduu wrote:
| Indeed, and same goes for trans people.
| megaloblasto wrote:
| The point is sex is a spectrum, we don't have to put
| everyone in little boxes then get upset when things aren't
| so clearly defined.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| Expressed sexual characteristics are a spectrum when
| there are mutations in the genes involved in the binary
| system of sex.
| froh wrote:
| not sure what you mean, but there are disturbances in the
| development of sex, indeed. do you agree to that medical
| fact?
| mattmanser wrote:
| Saying it's a spectrum implies to most people there's
| some sort of Gaussian distribution and there's not.
|
| There's not like 20% of humans with mammary glands and a
| scrotum, right? Or 10% with no reproductive organs. Or
| 15% with both sets.
|
| The obvious flip side of 1 in 1500 is that 1499 out of
| 1500 are binary.
|
| So there's not really a spectrum as most people would
| understand that word.
| froh wrote:
| The word you're looking for is "bimodal distribution".
|
| The spectrum of sex characteristics is a bimodal
| distribution with two peaks. and the vast majority of all
| humans fall close to one of the two peaks peaks. however,
| they indeed exist medically classified circumstances for
| bodily sexual expression that is not on one of the peaks
| but somewhere in between.
|
| and the percentage of those not close to the peaks is
| heavily contested and varies between 1 in 15000 ( putting
| extremely high bars on "uh wen can't tell") to 17 in 1000
| (counting for example a larger clit as a penis-y
| ambiguous thing)
|
| bimodal distribution with distinct peaks and a low but
| non-zero density between the peaks.
| ck2 wrote:
| Some people who are DSD consider themselves binary.
|
| Some people who are DSD take great pride in being non-
| binary.
|
| People who are DSD have been documented for CENTURIES
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_people_in_history
|
| But that's my whole point, "sex" a spectrum and it's one of
| the big lies perpetuated by people who insist everything
| was known and set in stone, when their bible was invented,
| despite never having microscopes or telescopes or even
| eyeglasses
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "when their bible was invented"
|
| I can tell you that in Czechia and former East Germany,
| two most atheist places in the Western world, the concept
| of sex as a spectrum isn't especially popular either.
| People can be somewhat socially conservative without
| believing in the bible.
| remarkEon wrote:
| You do not need microscopes, telescopes, or even
| eyeglasses to determine sex differences. The existence of
| chromosomal abnormalities does not mean we need to change
| the meaning of words.
| froh wrote:
| and you can tell with the naked eye that an intersex baby
| is intersex, and neither "properly" male or female.
| except when the baby looks very female but is genetically
| male due to androgen insensitivity syndrome. then you
| need that microscope again...
|
| kindergarten level logic fails at physiological sex
| ambiguity.
|
| and it fails even more so at gender identity issues.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| People routinely can't tell I'm trans. The differences
| are a lot more subtle than people realize.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >But that's my whole point, "sex" a spectrum and it's one
| of the big lies perpetuated by people who insist
| everything was known
|
| Yes I know it's a spectrum, and all 'intelligent' people
| I know this (the spectrum is unevenly distributed with 2
| peaks).
|
| Of all the things in the world that people understand or
| misunderstand, why, to you, is this particular subject
| even an issue?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| >it's really offensive to tell people with DSDs they aren't
| their sex.
|
| Not really true. Some people maybe.
|
| >Sex is binary
|
| Sex is complicated. Traits cluster bimodally, but it would
| be reductive, scientifically inaccurate, to say it's a
| simple binary.
|
| >People with DSDs are female or male
|
| That depends on how female and male are categorized. The
| line between in the trait cluster and outside of the trait
| cluster is arbitrary. So it depends where you draw that
| line.
| belorn wrote:
| Sex is binary to a similar degree that humans are born with
| 10 fingers and 10 toes. Nothing in nature is fixed 100% of
| the times, but rather exist on a line of probabilities.
| crypteur wrote:
| Nothing in nature can ever be described with 100% accuracy by
| any model. But that doesn't mean models are useless. So
| imagine why we would use the binary sex model instead of
| three or a spectrum or what have you.
| ck2 wrote:
| Random but nature related: some birds have four sexes
| aaaja wrote:
| You may be thinking of species like the white-throated
| sparrow. These have two morphs with distinct behaviours
| which lead to there being four mating combinations. Still
| two sexes though.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Simple models are useful, but they shouldn't determine who
| is allowed to live a normal, productive, life without some
| very compelling justification. Like the "binary sex model"
| is handy, but nothing about it makes it obvious that we
| should definitely and always lock gender (another non-
| binary model often simplified usefully into a binary)
| directly to biological sex.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| There are only two elements in the universe: hydrogen and
| helium. The binary element model is 98% accurate.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Is a bimodal distribution, or a somewhat reductive "typical
| male, typical female, intersex" model, so difficult to
| understand that we can't use it? I don't think people are
| stupid.
| aaaja wrote:
| The woman in the article has a DSD that only affects female
| sex development. Plus she has working ovaries. From either of
| these facts one can conclude that she is female.
|
| I don't know why you think this is a conservative lie. It is
| not.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| >1 in 1500 births is DSD and not binary (aka intersex but
| that term is outdated)
|
| about 1 in 2000 births have less than 4 limbs but i don't see
| anybody claiming its a spectrum.
| wat10000 wrote:
| You don't hear about it because everybody understands that
| disabled people exist and the broad consensus is that we
| should accept them, and assist them to a reasonable degree.
| There's little reason to discuss it. If people born with
| less than 4 limbs were subjected to the same treatment
| trans people get, you'd better believe we'd be out here
| talking about how not everybody has 4 limbs and we should
| accept that.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > You don't hear about it because everybody understands
| that disabled people exist and the broad consensus is
| that we should accept them, and assist them to a
| reasonable degree. There's little reason to discuss it.
| If people born with less than 4 limbs were subjected to
| the same treatment trans people get, you'd better believe
| we'd be out here talking about how not everybody has 4
| limbs and we should accept that.
|
| Not intending to debate the ethics of abortion, but one
| of the reasons foetuses are aborted is due to disability,
| down syndrome being a notable example.
| wat10000 wrote:
| You'll note that the people who oppose abortion generally
| also oppose aborting fetuses with disabilities. And among
| people who support abortion, a decent proportion also
| oppose aborting fetuses because of disabilities.
| trallnag wrote:
| That's plain wrong. For example, the overwhelming
| majority of people in Iceland supports abortion rights
| AND abortion of pregnancies where there is the potential
| for down syndrom and other larger disabilities. Same goes
| for me, in general.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't understand how that makes me wrong.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I mean, congenital limb differences are quite literally a
| spectrum. An entire limb can be absent, or just part(s) of
| it, or most of the limb can be present but irregularly
| formed...
|
| You can even mix and match with which parts are present vs
| absent. I know someone with an arm that stops just above
| the elbow but still has several (usable!) fingers extending
| from it. So no joint, but sorta-yes hand.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's not that confusing. "Has a womb" is not a common
| definition of "woman". Women don't stop being women after
| having a hysterectomy.
|
| The woman in question is a woman because her sexual
| differentiation followed the female pathway. Just because in
| her case that pathway led to a DSD variant doesn't undo the
| rest of her female development or make her a little bit less of
| a woman, or male, or a third sex.
| ben_w wrote:
| There's at least four common definitions of "woman", and I
| have in fact seen people use "has a womb" as one of them
| despite, as you may guess, all the people piling on
| immediately with a reply along the lines of what you yourself
| say -- that this would exclude women who have had a
| hysterectomy.
|
| The other three I've commonly seen are:
|
| (1) as you suggest, developmental pathway -- which tends to
| trip people up over androgen insensitivity, and is also why
| puberty blockers are part of the public debate
|
| (2) chromosomes -- which has the problem of 0.6-1.0% of the
| population doing something else besides the normal XX/XY
|
| and (3) current external physical appearance -- which tends
| to lead to confusion by both transvestites in public, and
| also in private by anyone who has had top surgery but not
| bottom surgery.
| crooked-v wrote:
| US Republicans have literally passed laws defining "woman"
| based on having a functioning womb
| (https://kansasreflector.com/2023/07/05/what-is-a-woman-
| heres...).
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > US Republicans have literally passed laws defining
| "woman" based on having a functioning womb
|
| The bill referenced makes no direct mention of womb, nor
| functioning. You're using "literally" a bit unfaithfully
| there.
|
| from the law
|
| > a "female" is an individual whose biological reproductive
| system is developed to produce ova,
| aaaja wrote:
| > _I would like to reflect on the timing of this - the UK
| Supreme Court just ruled something about a woman is a
| "biological" definition - and I am willing to put a lot of
| money on many people on both sides of that contentious debate
| struggling with the idea that "someone born without a womb is a
| woman" and "hey we can transplant wombs now"_
|
| MRKH syndrome is a disorder of female sex development, and if
| you look at this from the perspective of developmental biology
| it's clear that anyone affected by this must be a woman. I feel
| it shouldn't be too hard an idea to struggle with.
|
| That they have a working womb transplant technique is
| impressive from a medical technology point of view but I think
| not enough has been said about the ethics of this
| experimentation.
|
| Personally I wouldn't risk exposing my baby to transplant anti-
| rejection drugs. We don't know how this may impact the short-
| term or long-term health of the baby.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This is not actually a struggle whatsoever, it only is if you
| pretend it is thus. Humans have 2 legs and 2 arms. It I was
| born without legs, am I still a human?
| contravariant wrote:
| That's a gross oversimplification. Virilisation is a complex
| process with many factors.
|
| If you're still human if you're born without legs then
| clearly neither genetic or developmental traits determine
| someone's humanity.
|
| So at what point do we call someone a woman born without a
| uterus? When a 'normal' pregnancy would have resulted in them
| having a uterus? When _different genetics_ would have
| resulted in them having a uterus? Or when she herself
| complains that she lacks a uterus?
| ben_w wrote:
| I was born as a baby, but I sure 'aint one now.
|
| Here's another one for you, given how many people care about
| XX/XY as a distinction of gender: Humans have 46 chromosomes,
| but by this definition, about 0.6-1.0% of live births from
| human mothers are of individuals who aren't human.
|
| Language is a tool we use to create categories, don't let
| language use you. Insisting that everything in reality must
| conform to the categories that language already has, is
| mistaking the map for the territory.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| If you're writing laws, your choice of language matters quite
| a lot. "Humans have 2 legs and 2 arms" alongside "humans are
| entitled to unalienable rights" could lead to foreseeable
| problems, so specifying in your writing that "humans
| typically have two legs and two arms" would be a smarter bet.
| It's not important in a hacker news comment, but is important
| in law.
| Teever wrote:
| This is really cool but it's ultimately a stop-gap measure.
|
| Where we want to end up is with artificial wombs because that
| will ultimately give individuals much more control over their
| reproduction and will do away with the onerous physiological and
| psychological stresses that pregnancy puts on women.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| brave new world
| TrnsltLife wrote:
| My baby banting Soon you'll need decanting
| sitkack wrote:
| I could see this being combined with pigs, to place human
| embryos in pigs to carry humans to term.
|
| An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme
| premature lamb https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14194422
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| Note this is currently not possible without the use of In vitro
| fertilization
| gbin wrote:
| So if they do a DNA test, her sister is the actual biological
| mother I guess.
| astura wrote:
| No, That's not how any of this works... The DNA comes from the
| egg, the uterus (aka womb) is just an incubation chamber.
|
| Would only have the sister's DNA if it was an ovary transplant.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Would only have the sister's DNA if it was an ovary
| transplant.
|
| Fun fact: fetal cells transmit back to the mother and can be
| spotted in virtually every organ afterwards - it's called
| "Fetomaternal cell microchimerism" [1].
|
| It's not a far stretch to assume the transfer works also the
| other way around and you can detect maternal DNA in the
| fetus/child, but I'm not aware if there has been research
| around that.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138357
| 422...
| veidr wrote:
| Yep, mom-fetus/child is "maternal microchimerism" and it is
| also widely studied (though less so than the reverse) and
| seemingly confirmed.
| amarant wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if there is any hope of this working for
| trans persons in the future?
|
| Could someone born as a man have a transplanted womb and get
| pregnant through in-vitro fertilization, in theory? anyone here
| with more medical knowledge who can comment on how likely that is
| to work at some point in the future?
| jagger27 wrote:
| It might work with a C-section. Reassignment surgery isn't
| stretchy enough for a live birth. For trans girls who start
| before male puberty they might get enough pelvic rotation for
| there to be enough room for it, though.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Not transfem myself, but considering the risk of tears and
| other unpleasantness from a vaginal birth I know I'd probably
| opt for a C-section if I were in that position regardless...
| recovering from bottom surgery once is tough enough without
| the miracle of life wreaking havoc on the place after :P
| jagger27 wrote:
| Yeah exactly.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Considering how many trans people who are assigned female at
| birth get hysterectomies (tissue that would otherwise be
| discarded), maybe there could be a "give a uterus, take a
| uterus" matching program...
| tredre3 wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing the point you're trying to make but people
| who get hysterectomies aren't doing it for fun, they're doing
| it because the organ is diseased so giving it to someone else
| wouldn't work.
| thrance wrote:
| Apparently [1], it's not completely out of the question, but
| more research is needed before it can be safely attempted on a
| trans woman.
|
| However, I fear the largest hurdle will be a political one,
| with so many nutjobs [2] so hell-bent on imposing their
| dogmatic definition of gender on everyone.
|
| [1] https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/08/23/uterus-
| transplant...
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/18/jk-rowling-
| har...
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I can't help but wonder if there is any hope of this working
| for trans persons in the future?
|
| why just trans? it would work on any male regardless of what
| they identify as if it were possible. No need for penis removal
| either, C-section would work.
| thrance wrote:
| I guess trans women would have more of a desire to give birth
| than men. As one of the latter, I don't particularly seek
| experiencing child-bearing.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I guess trans women would have more of a desire to give
| birth than men.
|
| No, since plenty of trans men have babies. All these
| considerations would be completely irrelevant.
| drooby wrote:
| I would suspect this is extremely dangerous. The female genome
| is intricately evolved to handle the hormone war of pregnancy.
| thrance wrote:
| Are you an expert in the field? All I've read so far on the
| subject induicates that it should be doable in the near
| future.
| aaaja wrote:
| What would be the point of that? I'd be surprised if it got
| past an ethics committee.
|
| Aside from this, the male pelvis isn't shaped to accommodate a
| womb, and males don't have the hormonal milieu to enable
| pregnancy.
|
| The closest that researchers have come to having a male gestate
| a foetus was in rats. But they had to connect the bloodstream
| of the male rat to a pregnant female rat, where both were
| implanted with embryos at the same time. Even then, it worked
| less than 5% of the time.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| "You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your
| comprehension."
| veidr wrote:
| Glad for this family, but also:
|
| This is interesting to me at the margins, because one of the
| things I learned when my wife got pregnant the first time was
| that the womb is not exactly the warm cradle of nurturing that I
| had always (without thinking much about it) imagined, but in many
| ways a blast door or containment vessel to protect the mother
| (host) from the fetus (roughly, xenomorph) that would otherwise
| explode like an aggressive parasite (killing them both).
|
| So I mean, you probably don't want to have any leaks or weak
| stitches in your uterus transplant...
|
| Keywords: fetal microchimerism, placental barrier, trophoblast
| invasion
| hinkley wrote:
| They also check the blood type of the baby and the mother and I
| believe this is to make sure the mother won't throw clots, and
| to take precautions if there's a mismatch.
| tommica wrote:
| This is at the same time the most horrible description of what
| is going on, and the most hilarious :D "roughly, xenomorph"
| really got me!
| ben_w wrote:
| There is, famously, an alternative reading of the Alien
| franchise where it's about a non-consensual pregnancy in a
| society that forbids abortions.
| anvandare wrote:
| Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war.
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...
|
| Red in tooth and claw at every layer, from the smallest cell to
| the entire biosphere.
| sitkack wrote:
| > It's no accident that many of the same genes active in
| embryonic development have been implicated in cancer.
| Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit.
|
| Amazing article. Another reason that hardshelled laid eggs
| are such a great invention. The offspring can do its thing
| from a safe distance.
| andai wrote:
| The article suggests the external egg also limits the
| creature to a small brain.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| The baby probably does not benefit from the death of the
| mother.
| tgv wrote:
| But some form of evolution might make it a local optimum.
| It would at least require 3 or more offspring per
| pregnancy, and could not happen in mammals, though.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Much harder than that. All mammals drink milk.
| worik wrote:
| > All mammals drink milk.
|
| I don't
| ben_w wrote:
| If that was true when you were an infant, you're part of
| an extreme minority.
|
| You would not have survived more than a few weeks past
| birth in the absence of modern medical interventions --
| well, that part at least was true for most of us -- but
| specifically an inability to process milk as an infant is
| very rare, precisely because "mammary" is what puts the
| "mam" in "mammal".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > precisely because "mammary" is what puts the "mam" in
| "mammal"
|
| It puts the "mamm" in; that second _m_ is also part of
| the root.
| echelon wrote:
| I was adopted as an only child at birth, so formula was
| the only option. No IgA exposure, which probably over-
| taxed my early immune system.
|
| Being adopted, I have very nontraditional feelings about
| cloning, artificial birth, etc. I knew about my adoption
| from an early age, and my peers bullied and called me a
| bastard. It really shaped how I feel about human biology
| and reproduction.
|
| If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick
| factor, perhaps we could one day clone MHC-negative,
| O-negative, etc. monoclonal human bodies in artificial
| wombs. Use genetic engineering to de-encephalize the
| brain, and artificially innervate the spine and
| musculature. We'd have a perfect platform for every kind
| of organ and tissue transplant, large scale controlled in
| situ studies, human knockouts, and potentially crazy
| things like whole head transplants to effectively cure
| all cancers and aging diseases except brain cancers and
| neurodegeneration.
|
| I don't think I'd be capable of having these thoughts
| comfortably if I didn't feel like something of a clone or
| genetic reject growing up. Without having a genetic
| mother or father or siblings growing up, these thoughts
| came comfortably and naturally. I'm totally perplexed
| that other people find this disgusting or horrifying. It
| feels wholly natural to me.
| spwa4 wrote:
| That depends. Look it up. You will find there is a point
| where it switches. Normally the body (of both baby and
| mother) will protect the mother. Something goes wrong or
| just gets too far "out of spec"? Miscarriage. After a few
| months, the body goes so far as to sedate the mother and
| child before terminating the pregnancy. There is research
| claiming it actually shuts down the baby's nervous system
| before decoupling.
|
| But about a month before birth things switch around. The
| womb partially disconnects from control systems of the
| mother's body and ... there's an extremely scary way of
| pointing this out I once heard from a medical professor:
| "you know just about the only thing a human body can still
| do when it's decapitated? It can give birth"
|
| In less extreme circumstances, you actually have a switch
| in your circulatory system ... when pregnancy gets to this
| point and the mother's body loses power, it will initiate a
| rapid birthing process, and start shutting down organ after
| organ to give birth with the remaining power. That
| includes, eventually, the brain. Only the heart, lungs,
| liver and womb will remain operational. The body will shut
| down blood flow to the brain to continue giving birth. Once
| shut down it cannot be turned back on. So this kills the
| mother, despite the body remaining functional, in some
| reported cases, for over an hour, and is something
| gynaecologists get trained to prevent from happening.
|
| Given how common it was even a century ago for women to die
| giving birth, one wonders how often this mechanism was
| involved.
| andai wrote:
| Ah, a bit of light bedtime reading... I should really
| turn off my phone before going to bed.
| andai wrote:
| My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to
| Rome: Homo homini lupus.
|
| The article says it goes back a lot further than Rome!
|
| > So if it's a fight, what started it? The original bone of
| contention is this: you and your nearest relatives are not
| genetically identical. In the nature of things, this means
| that you are in competition. And because you live in the same
| environment, your closest relations are actually your most
| immediate rivals.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back
| to Rome: Homo homini lupus.
|
| What's "homini" supposed to mean?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| _Homini_ is the dative of _homo_ , meaning roughly "to
| (a) man".
|
| The phrase is a latin proverb meaning, roughly, "A man is
| a wolf to another man".
| azmodeus wrote:
| Man man's wolf Homo homini lupus
| n3storm wrote:
| Homo homini lupus is the latin for "Man is wolf for man",
| famous quote from Plautus.
|
| Homini is the declination of Homo, is dative case. I
| don't know how to properly translate dative to english,
| something like "to give".
|
| I know this from Philosophy and Latin (separate) in
| Highschool around the nineties in Spain. They both were
| compulsory global subjects. I think Latin is not
| compulsory this days.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > containment vessel to protect the mother (host) from the
| fetus (roughly, xenomorph) that would otherwise explode like an
| aggressive parasite (killing them both).
|
| You can also flip the perspective the fetus is trying to
| survive in a hostile environment designed to strangle it. If it
| isn't clawing for every ounce of food and air it will become a
| miscarriage. It must interface with a system built for millenia
| designed to kill anything that doesn't have its code.
|
| In truth, it is the equilibrium that evolution has achieved.
| Placenta must account for the most vicious fetus, and fetus
| must account for most vicious placenta.
| treve wrote:
| I think in this metaphor the placenta is actually on the
| fetus' side and also had the baby's DNA.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's not. It's somewhat fighting
| against it. Plus immune system would see baby's DNA as
| corrupted, since half of it is just wrong.
| diggan wrote:
| Not to mention when multiple fetuses are involved. It's a
| miracle there are as many twins+ as there are.
| gwerbret wrote:
| > So I mean, you probably don't want to have any leaks or weak
| stitches in your uterus transplant...
|
| With this sort of surgery, they wouldn't be cutting into the
| uterus (womb) itself when extracting it from the donor, but
| instead will cut around it to remove it, along with some very
| essential plumbing. The receiving mum will also be on
| industrial-strength immune suppressants anyway.
|
| Where you DO have to worry about leaks and weak stitches is
| with said plumbing (uterine arteries and veins) -- they have to
| support virtual firehoses of blood through the duration of
| pregnancy, and their damage is one reason why a delivery can go
| south very, very quickly. Obstetric medicine is definitely a
| high-risk sport, which is why their malpractice insurance rates
| are head and shoulders above any other medical specialty. But I
| digress...
| dwroberts wrote:
| > fetal microchimerism
|
| This is just a fact of reality for any women that have children
| though.
|
| Eg male chromosomes from fetuses being found in women's brains:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3458919/
|
| (I don't think this is believed to be unusual or an example of
| 'containment failure' of the womb)
| mcv wrote:
| Absolutely. From what I understand, there's been an
| evolutionary war for resources between the womb and the
| placenta, which is a big part of why human pregnancies are so
| complicated and invasive compared to other mammals (because no
| other mammal has this anywhere near as extreme as we do).
|
| Why us and not other mammals? No idea.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Your list of keywords is missing "ectopic pregnancy", which
| seems like exactly the kind of issue your comment contemplates.
| casey2 wrote:
| Whose baby is it? If I get a transplanted womb and have hundreds
| of kids are they mine of the original owners? I would assume the
| current owner, but Anglo laws tend to be completely backwards
| when it relates to sex.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't think there is any womb out there that is going to
| produce 100 kids for you.
| timthorn wrote:
| In the UK, whoever gives birth to the child is the mother.
| remarkEon wrote:
| MRKH is inherited, which adds an additional ethnical layer to
| this.
| gadders wrote:
| Apparently so are most of the male conditions that require ICSI
| IVF.
| sneak wrote:
| If everything scientific inquiry accomplishes is a "miracle",
| then nothing is.
|
| Is it a miracle I can go to JFK and fly through the air and be in
| Europe for dinner?
|
| It's a surgical procedure. It's cool that it worked. We don't
| need to invoke the supernatural here, especially given the oodles
| of hard work that went into this by very real and natural human
| beings.
| nick238 wrote:
| Just for clarity, "in UK" is qualifying the whole thing, not that
| she just happened to be in the UK. A woman in Alabama had a child
| via a uterus transplant, among other places.
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