[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 : 291 points
Date : 2025-04-17 14:36 UTC (3 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?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| They cover cornea transplants, which are necessary for
| sight.
|
| But they tend not to cover fertility stuff.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Don't worry, our current President promises to be the
| "fertilisation President" and is pushing to cover IVF and
| other fertility treatments mandatory on isursnfr.
| lawn wrote:
| Don't forget the people who don't have insurance and are
| too poor to pay for the treatment, those suckers.
| trollbridge wrote:
| If someone is low income and doesn't have insurance, they
| should apply for state Medicaid or other assistance
| programs. These programs exist and are very helpful.
| AngryData wrote:
| While yes they should, that is still going to be minimal
| coverage that doesn't cover tons of stuff, especially
| something like voluntary uterus transplant.
| trollbridge wrote:
| It varies by state, but in some Medicaid is some of the
| best coverage you can get. (I have a personal mission to
| dispel the myth that poor Americans can't access health
| care, because often they can - and spreading the idea
| they can't leads to adverse health outcomes.)
| Specifically, patients aren't ever charged for anything.
|
| Uterus transplants are still experimental. The only ones
| I could find in the U.S. are in clinical trials and are
| being paid for by the institution to people accepted into
| the program, such as the one at John Hopkins.
|
| There are not gynecologists (yet) charging $200,000 for
| uterus transplants in America.
| 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
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Is this permanent? I thought transplanted uteruses were
| usually removed after birth.
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| People are rightly judged for saying they're "in the
| middle" because too often their "middle" is just whatever
| they perceptually decided the position of the left and
| right was and then they picked their position in reaction
| to that, rather then out of any consideration of the
| issue.
|
| People _love_ to be "in the middle" and thus
| "reasonable".
| vacuity wrote:
| You're both right. We don't distinguish between the
| reasonable middle grounders and the unreasonable ones.
| More broadly, we don't distinguish between reasonable and
| unreasonable arguments. We never have. Truth as
| determined by humans is basically a popularity contest.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| This is why the entire exercise of finding a place on a
| political spectrum is a trap and a scam, the only thing
| that really matters:
|
| Are you an extremist or a moderate? Because I can get
| along with a moderate person on the left, right, or
| anywhere in between. By the same token extremists
| regardless of stripe are unbearable.
| qingcharles wrote:
| This ^. It was your standard run-of-the-mill statutory
| interpretation case. Limited to a single badly defined
| statute, written somewhat carelessly. This is common for
| statutes.
|
| What often happens is that a "supreme" court like this will
| file an opinion attempting to clarify the meaning as best
| they can, but it really requires a statutory amendment by the
| legislators to fix it. Often that is what happens next.
| 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)
| 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.
| aisenik wrote:
| Why do you use the the Nazi demographic term
| "transvestite?"
|
| (also, you should just not talk about trans people as you
| display immense ignorance in a very short time, you clearly
| have a concept of trans bodies that is rooted in fascist
| propaganda: trans women on HRT develop breasts without
| surgery).
| ben_w wrote:
| The word "transvestite" predates the Nazis by a few
| decades, coined by someone the Nazis hated because he was
| gay and Jewish:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld
|
| > trans women on HRT develop breasts without surgery).
|
| Transgender people go both directions, not only AMAB but
| also AFAB.
| aisenik wrote:
| I did intend to type "Nazi era", though I find the
| clarification is meaningless to the point. I'm all for
| reclaiming words, but I am unaware of any significant
| efforts to reclaim and promote the word in question. It
| is anachronistic and inextricably connected to 20th
| century transphobia and violence against trans women in
| particular
|
| Re: your second point, a closer reading of the comments
| will show that this thread is discussing "women."
|
| e: The far more interesting discussion is whether the
| revival of eugenics-era language is justifiable. This is
| hardly the first example on this site of arrogant
| commentators casually reviving language that came to be
| understood as hateful in the 20th century.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I am unaware of any significant efforts to reclaim and
| promote the word in question. It is anachronistic and
| inextricably connected to 20th century transphobia and
| violence against trans women in particular
|
| It's the primary term I grew up with in the UK
| specifically about what is also called cross-dressing.
|
| It's also used by one of my favourite comedians, Suzy
| Eddie Izzard, as self-description ("executive
| transvestite") before she identified as transgender: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_to_Kill_(Eddie_Izzard)
|
| > Re: your second point, a closer reading of the comments
| will show that this thread is discussing "women."
|
| 1) Quite a lot of transphobes focus entirely on women,
| thus ignoring how their own rules end up forcing trans
| men to end up in women's-only spaces.
|
| 2) I am informed that many trans women have implants
| before hormones. In fact, one woman I know openly
| discussed face surgery as part of her transition.
|
| Also: cis women have breast surgery. I'm told most often
| as a reduction. Facebook, in its complete uselessness,
| has advertised the surgery to me along with dick pills.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I promise I'm asking this question in good faith because
| I would genuinely love to understand your reasoning: why
| does the term "transvestite" have anything to do with
| Nazism?
|
| From what I remember, that word was common and acceptable
| when I was growing up in the 90s, and I don't remember
| any Nazis using it. Nor did anyone tell me that the word
| "transvestite" was derogatory or offensive, although if
| social mores have shifted then fine, I won't say it.
|
| What did I miss?
| gcr wrote:
| no worries, people typically use "transgender" or "trans"
| as an umbrella term these days
|
| I have heard of folks who claim the label "transveatite"
| for themselves. Others see it as derogatory.
| ben_w wrote:
| I suspect there may have been a misunderstanding of my
| earlier comment that led to this chain.
|
| Where I wrote above:
|
| > current external physical appearance -- which tends to
| lead to confusion by both transvestites in public
|
| That wasn't a statement about being transgender. I was
| saying that people judge clothing, and are confused by
| that clothing. "Public" being about clothing, because
| there aren't many public places where you're going to see
| enough skin for anything else to cause confusion.
|
| ("vest" as in vestments, clothing).
| 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,
| gcr wrote:
| isn't having a functioning uterus a hard prerequisite to
| the ability to produce ova?
|
| "is developed to produce ova" is a statement about
| current capability. If they meant to include women with
| hysterectomies, they would have worded it differently,
| like "is or once was developed to produce ova;" if they
| meant to include women with non-functioning wombs, they
| would have written more broadly, like "is of the type
| that usually produces ova" or something.
| rkomorn wrote:
| The uterus itself doesn't have much to do with ova
| production.
|
| Are you including ovary removal in your definition of
| hysterectomy?
|
| Or are you defining "ova production" as including
| fertilization/implantation?
| belorn wrote:
| The answer is a yes, as in, the ovaries can still ovulate
| even without a uterus. The ovaries also continue to
| produce hormones, through there are a feedback loop
| between the uterus and ovaries which get disrupted
| without a uterus.
|
| It is somewhat similar to how men with vasectomy still
| produce sperm.
| tomlockwood wrote:
| What tests with what results would conclusively show which
| individuals went down which pathway?
| googlryas wrote:
| Why do you suppose such a test could even exist?
| jl6 wrote:
| Depends why you need to know and with what level of
| accuracy. Just looking at their face is about 96%-98%
| accurate[0], and becomes even more accurate when other cues
| are available such as voice, gait, and build. For casual
| purposes, humans are incredibly good at predicting sex,
| without any technology or scientific understanding. One
| might speculate that being able to accurately find a mate
| is an evolutionary advantage.
|
| For the last few fractions of a percent accuracy, a SRY
| cheek swab test is a simple non-invasive screening test
| that can flag individuals for further investigation. World
| Athletics have just implemented this test, stating it is "a
| highly accurate proxy for biological sex".[1] A positive
| result in this screening test could be combined with a
| finger prick test for testosterone level to provide further
| information, and at this point we're into methods of
| medical diagnosis of DSDs. About 1 in 5000 individuals will
| have a DSD, some of which are still unambiguously male or
| female (e.g. XXY Klinefelter syndrome), and some of which
| are almost unique individuals that defy categorization.
|
| At this point, it is popular to seize on those rare
| individuals and declare "aha! So sex isn't binary then! So
| it must be a spectrum!", and while this is surely well-
| intentioned, it is scientifically illiterate.[2] I suspect
| part of the confusion is interpreting "binary" as a
| mathematical Boolean value (where exceptions cannot, by
| definition, exist) rather than as a scientific
| classification, where exceptions can and do exist and
| "prove the rule".
|
| [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042
| 69892...
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/articles/cj91dr17d1
| no.am...
|
| [2] https://richarddawkins.com/articles/article/race-is-a-
| spectr...
| tomlockwood wrote:
| So the SRY cheek swab test that the IOC ruled ineffective
| before the 2000 Olympics is what you think is accurate?
| Interesting.
| jl6 wrote:
| It is a _screening_ test, not a _diagnostic_ test. False
| positives are possible, but so are followup tests for
| those cases.
| tomlockwood wrote:
| I guess it doesn't answer my question then.
| bryan_w wrote:
| The question was:
|
| >What tests with what results would conclusively show
| which individuals went down which pathway?
|
| You've managed to provide 0 tests that conclusively
| answer the question.
| gcr wrote:
| A friend of mine takes estrogen and has breasts, feminine
| voice, etc. Her body's arguably taken both sexual
| differentiation pathways over the years. I think even this
| definition isn't so clear-cut.
| jl6 wrote:
| Body modification through technology doesn't really
| encroach on the scientific classification of the natural
| world. The Vacanti mouse which had an apparent human ear
| grown on its back was an amazing thing in its own right,
| but its existence doesn't mean we need to update our
| understanding of what a mouse is.
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| The same could've been said about IVF - the technology is
| _not_ old, the first person born to it was only in 1978.
| 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?
| remarkEon wrote:
| I'm applying the same logic, I'm not simplifying anything.
| You are using the word "humanity" to mean something
| different from what the rest of the thread is talking
| about. To address what I think your point is, many wish to
| expand the malleability of basic biological concepts based
| on edge cases. Edge cases for which we already have
| definitions and categories. You are doing so now, by
| attempting to entrench ambiguity on the entire concept of
| "woman" by observing that the woman in TFA was born with a
| specific, heritable, abnormality that prevented the nominal
| development of 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.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Language is more than a tool, though. It's how we
| understand reality. My native language is English, I speak
| a little Spanish, more than a little German, and used to
| speak some other stuff (the use it or lose it kind). And in
| every effort to learn those language you, well, learn
| things about how to structure your thought and
| understanding of things. I think you're mistaking my point
| for something else.
| ben_w wrote:
| In learning German as an adult, one thing I keep noticing
| is how a single word in one language is several in the
| other.
|
| English: Times, German: Mal or Zeiten.
|
| "Every time" is "jedes Mal", but "good times" is "gute
| Zeiten". "Three times four" uses "mal".
|
| And every time a new thing gets invented, found, or
| imported, neologisms pop up, or words get borrowed from
| other cultures. In English, robins are said to have "red
| breasts", because the colour orange had not yet been
| coined when the bird needed a name, because the fruit
| after which the colour is named had not yet arrived.
|
| People also argue about if "vegetarian hamburgers" is a
| sensible term, as if the "ham" implies meat, even though
| (1) the meat varieties usually use beef, and (2) it's
| named after the place Hamburg.
|
| Before the development of hormonal and surgical
| solutions, the only thing trans people could do was
| change their clothes. At some point, the medical options
| are so capable that any given previous definition of
| gender becomes malleable. A womb implant is one such
| option.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Sure, but Mal and Zeit intentionally elicit different
| contextual meanings. The literal word is the same in
| English but it's quite obvious that the context is
| different, and in German the context calls for a
| different word. English, while being within the Germanic
| language family, isn't as particular in many ways as
| German can be or is. If you can speak multiple languages
| surely you understand what I am getting at. Vegetarian
| "hamburgers" is a poor example because, well, the point
| of calling something a "vegetarian hamburger" is that it
| resembles a _real_ hamburger, which would contain meat.
| Thus, you now understand my point about changing language
| in this regard.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Thus, you now understand my point about changing
| language in this regard.
|
| I really don't.
|
| As I say in such discussions, "you're only allowed to
| call them 'hamburgers' if they're from the Hamburg
| region, otherwise it's just a sparkling fried patty".
|
| See also: https://xkcd.com/3075/
| 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.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| This is just fudging to justify some trans based delusion. It's
| all pretty straightforward.
| noosphr wrote:
| The biotech coming down the line will make our current culture
| wars seem like a disagreement between two best friends.
|
| All of the following are nearly possible today:
|
| + A man implanted with a womb giving birth.
|
| + A woman stealing genetic material and creating a baby, the
| gender of the second parent is irrelevant here.
|
| + A woman wanting an abortion, instead having the fetus removed
| and placed in an artificial womb under the care of the father.
|
| And one that I was working on:
|
| + Farm animals grown with their brains shut off, used as
| compute substrate for biological neural networks, while their
| biological functions are controlled remotely.
| lukemercado wrote:
| > Farm animals grown with their brains shut off, used as
| compute substrate for biological neural networks, while their
| biological functions are controlled remotely.
|
| I'm sorry, you were working on what? Where does one learn
| more about this concept?
| noosphr wrote:
| >Where does one learn more about this concept?
|
| One does not.
|
| One builds the tools to run the experiments to discover the
| rules.
|
| The closest are FinalSpark and CorticalLabs, but they both
| are only using in vitro neurons as the computational
| substrate.
|
| Neuralink et al. are working in vivo, but they are only
| doing output and don't have any plans to do input, let
| alone to actively disrupt normal neural activity and take
| control of bodily processes.
|
| If you're very interested feel free to drop me a line.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I don't think anyone struggles with "someone born without a
| womb is a woman."
|
| When a woman is born without a womb, the doctors should
| investigate and figure out why that is. Is something else
| missing? Could there be other issues? A diagnosis should be
| made.
|
| No such investigation is necessary when a man is born without a
| womb.
| astura wrote:
| You can't tell if a newborn girl has a womb or not. Not
| without ultrasounds or scans.
| 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
| TheBlight wrote:
| Perhaps there's benefit to pregnancy for both the mother and
| baby and fully detaching them from the experience might have
| negative consequences.
| 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.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Among those "trans people who are assigned female at birth"
| who "get hysterectomies" how many would you say are doing
| it because the organ is diseased. (Not that the proposal is
| practical, of course.)
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| This is not true; trans men get hysterectomies for
| different reasons than that it is diseased.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Yep, and many cis women will remove completely non-
| diseased uteruses as a form of permanent birth control :P
| ben_w wrote:
| One woman has told me she kept asking for this, but the
| doctors kept refusing "in case [she] want[s] kids later".
|
| As you may imagine, she was not happy with such
| responses.
| 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...
| Thorentis wrote:
| Ah yes, the nut jobs are the ones opposing what for almost
| all of human history, is something so far beyond the
| imagination as to be bordering on the grotesque.
| thrance wrote:
| What historical "truth" are you defending? Flat earth?
| Racism? You're being a bit vague.
|
| If you couldn't tell, that was a jab at your appeal to
| tradition.
| Spivak wrote:
| I always find it fascinating where people draw off the
| line at natural given modern life is closer to "life in
| plastic" than anything resembling nature. We stole fire
| from the gods, domesticated ourselves via agriculture,
| reshaped the world in our image, and have literally slain
| two of the four horsemen.
| thrance wrote:
| Thank you, you worded an idea I carried in my head for a
| while. Our world can hardly be considered "natural"
| anymore.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| > what for almost all of human history, is something so far
| beyond the imagination as to be bordering on the grotesque.
|
| Citation needed
| LadyCailin wrote:
| You mean grotesque things like artificial insulin for
| making type 1 diabetes not a death sentence? Don't confuse
| your own personal bigotry and small mindedness with what
| should be considered "grotesque".
| Thorentis wrote:
| Artificial insulin is akin to medicine, potions, etc, I
| don't think anybody would consider this grotesque at any
| point in time
| thrance wrote:
| Jehovah's Witnesses?
|
| Transition is also a medical treatment, it is used to
| treat gender dysphoria, as the only remedy we know to be
| effective.
|
| If you feel like documenting yourself out of your
| ignorance (I doubt you will but who knows), here are some
| pointers. You can check each claim I make against the
| numerous studies and metastudies on the subject.
|
| * Gender dysphoria is real and touches a non-trivial part
| of the population.
|
| * Gender dysphoria poses significant hazard to mental
| health and can lead to suicide.
|
| * Gender dysphoria almost never goes away, and when it
| does, it's mostly from external pressures on the
| individual (religious, political). In which cases, the
| individual keeps most symptoms (depression...).
|
| * Transition effectively cures gender dysphoria.
|
| * Very few people regret transitioning (<1%).
| 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.
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| Trans men having babies is not strong evidence for cis
| men having less of a desire to give birth than trans
| women. If you have the equipment for it, it's going to
| happen some percent of the time.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Trans men having babies is not strong evidence for cis
| men having less of a desire to give birth than trans
| women. If you have the equipment for it, it's going to
| happen some percent of the time.
|
| It's strong evidence that the desire to birth child has
| nothing to do with gender identity, which latter will be
| pretty much pointless by the time science allows human
| foetus gestation outside the human female body.
| aisenik wrote:
| Unless the procedure has changed dramatically, it requires a
| functional vagina. Neovaginas are qualified but I would not
| expect most male-identified people to opt for vaginoplasty.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Unless the procedure has changed dramatically, it
| requires a functional vagina. Neovaginas are qualified but
| I would not expect most male-identified people to opt for
| vaginoplasty.
|
| First, male-identified people can be born biological
| female. It's an identity.
|
| Second, the procedure doesn't exist for biological males to
| begin with right now, neovagina or not. A neovagina is
| physiologically not a biological female vagina to begin
| with anyway so I wouldn't help at all with the gestation.
| Birth can be done via C-Section.
| aisenik wrote:
| You'll be surprised to learn that neovaginas are also
| possessed by cis women. Trans men requiring vaginoplasty
| and receiving a uterine transplant are the nichest
| possible edge case, your "gotcha" is pure distraction.
|
| Trans women will receive the modern* uterine transplant
| operation, this I can state with certainty. Birth _is_
| done via C-section as a requirement of the UTx operation,
| the vagina is required for discharge. I haven 't been
| able to pay attention to the operation for a few years,
| but it is clear that you are operating from uninformed
| conjecture.
|
| *The first uterine transplant was performed on a trans
| woman in Germany in 1930, Lili Elbe. This pioneering
| surgery lead to her death, as transplantation medicine
| was not adequately developed at that point in time.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > You'll be surprised to learn that neovaginas are also
| possessed by cis women. Trans men requiring vaginoplasty
| and receiving a uterine transplant are the nichest
| possible edge case, your "gotcha" is pure distraction.
|
| > Trans women will receive the modern* uterine transplant
| operation, this I can state with certainty. Birth is done
| via C-section as a requirement of the UTx operation, the
| vagina is required for discharge. I haven't been able to
| pay attention to the operation for a few years, but it is
| clear that you are operating from uninformed conjecture.
|
| > *The first uterine transplant was performed on a trans
| woman in Germany in 1930, Lili Elbe. This pioneering
| surgery lead to her death, as transplantation medicine
| was not adequately developed at that point in time.
|
| Not all transmen require a vaginoplasty, not all
| transwomen have had a vaginoplasty or even have the
| desire to do so.
|
| No biological male has ever birthed a child so far, so
| all that's speculation about what is or isn't needed from
| you is just that, speculation, based on nothing since
| it's technically not possible for now.
|
| The desire to birth a child doesn't depends on anybody's
| gender identity nor anatomy.
|
| Now stop trying to put people in boxes and keep an open
| mind.
| 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.
| staunton wrote:
| Any sources you would recommend?
| 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.
| derektank wrote:
| Presumably, the point would be that a trans woman wanted to
| have kids without using a surrogate (which some people have
| ethical qualms with)
| bobsmooth wrote:
| "You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your
| comprehension."
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| That's a very negative attitude. Think about how happy these
| women must be to have this procedure done. Just because
| something isn't natural doesn't mean it's horrible.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| I'm all for giving nature the middle finger but maybe we've
| gone too far.
| Krssst wrote:
| Harmful divergence from nature: man-made climate change.
|
| Harmless divergence from nature: helping women have
| children.
| rrgok wrote:
| Harmless is yet to be seen, right?
| Melonai wrote:
| It's interesting how something that seems both incredible to
| me and genuinely gives me hope for the future of myself and
| many others can be viewed by others as horrific and a
| perversion, although I am a bit saddened to think about it.
|
| People's perspectives give wildly different views on things.
| aisenik wrote:
| I can totally comprehend trans women having babies. Heck, I
| can comprehend cis men having babies: Arnold Schwarzenegger
| did it in the 90s.
|
| I can't truly comprehend the mass data collection and
| surveillance system, how it interplays with intelligence and
| law enforcement, and what the impact of connecting a global
| constellation of privatized armed satellites and a
| constellation of advanced phased array antennas & sdrs to
| either end of the system will be, however. I believe there
| are bigger threats to humanity than bodily autonomy.
| aisenik wrote:
| I've had my eye on the UTx op for the better part of the
| decade. It is my understanding that there's no medical reason
| to expect it would not be successful in a trans woman. I don't
| have recent numbers but we passed >100 uterine transplants a
| while back. The most complicated physical requirement is a
| functional vagina for discharge (which is generally on the
| roadmap for trans women interested in carrying a child).
|
| I am unaware of trans women having received this operation yet,
| but Lili Elbe died after the first uterine transplant nearly
| 100 years ago, before the Nazi regime destroyed trans medicine
| and eradicated contemporary trans existence. Given the global
| climate, I don't expect any trans recipients to be eager for
| publicity. It will happen, and soon.
| 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.
| CPLX wrote:
| Pretty sure that's not some fringe theory. Didn't the
| director and visual designers consciously use rape as the
| model for how to depict the Alien attacks?
| 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.
| nine_k wrote:
| Birds, the inheritors of the venerable Dinosaur brand,
| managed to both produce very large eggs (e.g. ostriches),
| and impressively capable brains, rivaling those of larger
| mammalians (e.g. parrots, corvids), interestingly,
| without the use of very large eggs.
| c22 wrote:
| Okay, crows are impressive. But I'm not going to let one
| do my taxes.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| The crow wouldn't let you build its nest either
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| mort96 wrote:
| No, but humans would be capable of making something which
| could serve as a crow's nest, while a crow wouldn't be
| able to do taxes if we let it...
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Are you sure? I would be very surprised if a human could
| build a nest that a crow would accept unaltered.
|
| Most birds' nests are built much more intricately than
| just a pile of sticks thrown together! Usually built from
| layers of different materials, sometimes weaved or
| plastered with mud/clay/bird-spit.
|
| E.g. sparrows pick up lavender in my garden, because the
| oils repel some pests etc.
| thih9 wrote:
| Not doing taxes is a plus for corvids in my book.
| Seriously, you picked one of the least impressive human
| activities. Makes me think about my potential
| reincarnation choices.
|
| Crows fly, mate for life and are considered positive for
| the ecosystem. Humans do taxes.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Still nothing remotely close to a human brain.
| alganet wrote:
| That seems about right according to research.
|
| There are many articles about bird intelligence available
| from multiple sources.
|
| A more open minded perspective would instead try to look
| to what is "remotely close" to a human brain.
|
| Although primates can't quite communicate like humans,
| they are known for being our closest relatives in
| scientific biological terms.
|
| I know I am deviating from the birds subject a little,
| but stick with me. I need to address the "remotely close"
| expression you used.
|
| Primates can display what humans would recognize as human
| behavior. Work in groups, social dynamics, use of simple
| tools.
|
| The "looks like human" effect could be explained by
| anthropomorphization performed by those very humans (to
| put it simply: an effect where humans see human features
| in non human things). In fact, some behaviors considered
| as human are not commonly displayed by primates, like the
| ability to keep a pet. There is no clear definitive
| answer to it, and any dismissal of such behaviors could
| be also used to dismiss humans themselves, therefore I
| must refrain from entertaining them too much.
|
| Birds also show a lot of human like behavior. Like the
| ability to gather objects (to construct a nest and to
| attract a partner are common examples).
|
| Remember, the closest thing to humans in anatomy and
| biology (primates) is not very much different from birds
| in terms of "how it presents human-like" behavior.
|
| So, as a counter argument, I would ask: what makes the
| difference of thinking between a primate and a bird so
| different to you? Is it their anatomy that prevents you
| from anthropomorphizing it so readily? Or do you also
| think primate brains are "nothing remotely close to a
| human brain"?
|
| It cannot be denied that "closeness" is a loose
| definition and could generate endless discussion. I tried
| to concede a little bit to find a reasonable common
| ground that is both based on rational thinking and a
| little bit of open mindedness.
|
| Under such criteria, I can assert that birds might be
| much more intelligent than previously assumed.
| disqard wrote:
| Thoughtful (and thought-provoking) comments like yours
| are why I frequent this site.
|
| Thank you, stranger!
|
| For my part, I'll add that "Humans are visual creatures",
| which biases every aspect of our culture -- and might
| help explain why many would consider other primates
| "closer" to us than birds.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Thanks for your answer. Let me elaborate a little bit.
| What diffentiates humans from most animals is not about
| solving complex puzzles (some birds are able to do that)
| or be able to learn things (birds and primates can do
| that as well) but in the ability of humans to plan for
| the future. As far as I know (but do correct me if you
| have better information) there is no animal that
| exhibits:
|
| 1) the ability to plan ahead of time 2) in a non innate
| way
|
| The consequence is that humans actually build stuff by
| investing time and energy by visualizing a future benefit
| without immediate gratification. I believe this is unique
| in the realm of animals, at least for now.
| alganet wrote:
| Primates do display acquired learning. Like the knowledge
| to hunt ants with sticks. A non innate ability that
| requires planning and is passed along to members of the
| same social group.
|
| It has been reported that some eagles and hawks spread
| fire to drive out prey from dense vegetation. Whether
| that is learned behavior and planning for the future, a
| previously undiscovered innate behavior, or just a myth,
| depends on results of further research.
|
| Whales wearing salmon hats is a story that, if happens to
| be true, would also be a non-innate behavior, whose
| purpose we don't know, that could point to something
| close to what you described.
|
| Humans are different, I cannot disagree.
|
| My play was to challenge our assumptions of what that
| perceived distance from humans to animals is consisted
| of.
|
| We can come up with increasingly more convoluted ways of
| defining what we are. Animals can't. Maybe that is our
| innate ability.
| __s wrote:
| Also amazing with birds is how effectively they've
| evolved intelligence with a small brain
|
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-term-bird-
| brain.html
| sitkack wrote:
| We overfocus on brain volume, when we should be
| calculating the number of neurons and neuron size varies
| wildly.
|
| I can't find the original video, but Suzana Herculano-
| Houzel developed a technique to measure total neuron
| counts by liquefying the brain and then counting the cell
| nucleus density / volume.
|
| WSU Master Class: Big Brains, Small Brains with Suzana
| Herculano-Houzel
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDM3TcfGoBY
|
| (nice short popsci intro) The woman who turns brains into
| soup: Suzana Herculano-Houzel
| https://youtu.be/d2Uhv0_Ji1k?t=362 (talks about racoon
| and bird brains)
|
| https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/09/07/brainiac-with-her-
| inn...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
|
| This paper is really fun, "Brains matter, bodies maybe
| not: the case for examining neuron numbers irrespective
| of body size"
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Brains-
| matter%2C-bodie...
| pragma_x wrote:
| It's something to marvel at, really. Birds _needed_ to
| evolve super efficient brains due to all the constraints
| that flight puts on the organism; they have to be more
| efficient by weight as well as by size. Meanwhile, being
| earthbound like you or I lets our DNA get away with a lot
| more slop.
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| As is the third _m_.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| The word "mammary" contains two "m's." (c) ChatGPT
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It contains one _m_ and one double _m_. They 're distinct
| concepts.
| echelon wrote:
| I get downvoted every time I feel like posting this (the
| thread is markedly appropriate), so I'll give some
| background this time. I'll get to the point after a
| little bit of setup.
|
| To segue from your post, 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.
|
| But in being adopted, I have very nontraditional feelings
| about cloning, artificial birth, etc. I knew about my
| adoption from an early age, so it deeply worked itself
| into my thinking. At about elementary school age, some of
| my asshole neighbors bullied and called me a bastard, but
| that didn't really impact me as much as the feeling of
| being a genetic island completely alien to everyone else.
| All of my peers were related to their birthing parents
| and sometimes clonal siblings, yet I was alone in the
| universe. My weird hobbies and behaviors and preferences
| were out of the norm for my family. Despite my closeness
| with them, I didn't feel the same as everyone else around
| me. I wasn't. I was a nerd, absorbed into science books
| and Bill Nye. The southern culture and football and
| Christian God I grew up around wasn't my home, and I
| couldn't understand it just as others couldn't understand
| me. Everyone talks about blood as being a big deal - it's
| even in the foundation of the religion I was raised in -
| but to me, it meant nothing. It really shaped how I feel
| about humanity and biology and families and reproduction
| and the universe. Ideas, not nucleotides, are the
| information that matters.
|
| I've understated and undersold how fundamentally
| differently this makes me feel about people.
|
| Because of my perspective, I have controversial
| viewpoints about human biology. I don't find them weird
| at all, but there's a good chance it'll offend you:
|
| 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.
|
| Because they're clones engineered to not expose antigens,
| their tissues could be transplanted into us just like
| plants being grafted. No immunosuppressants. This might
| become the default way to cure diseases in the future. We
| could even engineer bodies that increase our
| physiological capacity. Increased endurance, VO2 max,
| younger age, different sex, skin color, transgenic
| features. Alien hair colors. You name it.
|
| I bring things like this up and get ostracized and
| criticized. But it feels completely normal to me. Our
| bodies are machines. We should do everything we can to
| repair them and make them better. It appalls me that we
| aren't making progress here.
|
| In light of how others think, I don't think I'd have
| these thoughts so comfortably if I didn't feel like
| something of a clone already. A genetic reject, an
| extraterrestrial growing up, tends to think differently.
|
| Flipping this around, your aversion to this is because
| you have a mother and father that birthed you that you
| share blood with. That you grew up in a god fearing
| society bathed in his sacrificial blood. If you were like
| me, perhaps you'd think like me.
|
| I'm totally perplexed that other people find this
| disgusting or horrifying. It feels wholly natural.
|
| And we should absolutely do it.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Terry?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Have you ever seen the movie "The Island"? I'm curious
| what your reaction to it would be.
|
| > If we can ever get over the societal (religious?) ick
| factor
|
| I believe those kinds of "ick" factors are there for a
| reason - protecting us from a descent into deep dystopia
| or something.
|
| Implementing new human things at scale often has
| unanticipated indirect negative consequences.
| echelon wrote:
| > Have you ever seen the movie "The Island"? I'm curious
| what your reaction to it would be.
|
| It's a typical Hollywood sci-fi film with the usual
| Hollywood lessons and platitudes.
|
| We wouldn't be producing clones with brains or
| consciousness. We might even have to modify the spine and
| stomach.
|
| So there's no thinking at all. They'd be like plants.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think that in this case, the ick factor is because
| evolved traits can only work with relatively simple
| patterns.
|
| My guess is for many of us, our gut says "looks like a
| human therefore is human"; if you try to tell gut
| instinct it's fine because there's no brain, you're gut's
| response is "Brain and brain! What is brain?"
|
| My gut seems to care more about dynamic behaviour than
| static appearance, but for what it's worth -- and despite
| being able to understand the premise of @echelon's
| suggestion without being upset by it -- even I find
| images of a real, natural, human birth defect where the
| brain is missing, to be horrifying (content warning: do
| not google "anencephaly" unless you're strong stomached).
| throaway1989 wrote:
| Most of the ick factors are because of our empathy, which
| triggers upon seeing another human being in "icky" states
| of being and makes us imagine what it would feel like to
| be in such a state.
| aaaja wrote:
| Have you found that other adoptees feel similarly about
| or at least are more sympathetic to your ideas?
| achenet wrote:
| > Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can
| to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that
| we aren't making progress here.
|
| unlike man-made machines, we do not fully understand our
| bodies yet, and as such should be careful when trying to
| make them better. Don't start randomly `rf -rf *` on a
| Unix system if you don't know what it does, don't start
| randomly using steroids if you aren't sure of the long
| term biological consequences.
|
| Obviously, your proposed "monoclonal human bodies in
| artificial wombs" would help with that.
|
| If you'll also allow me a quick remark on your
| upbringing, as someone from an intellectual Parisian
| family who grew up in God-fearing, football-loving
| Texas...
|
| I'm sure that somewhere in the South, there is a little
| gay kid, or one born with an odd mutation, to his birth
| parents, who felt or feels the exact same way you did -
| as something of an alien. I believe that the vast
| majority of cultures will produce outsiders, and it's
| also very probable that somewhere in Paris, there is
| someone who doesn't feel at home in the midst of heavy
| intellectual conversation and would prefer a simpler
| world focused on traditional religion and football
| (possibly association football/soccer, rather than
| American football).
|
| Humans can form 'tribes', in the loosest sense of the
| word possible, based on genetics, but we also form tribes
| based on similar beliefs, values and interests - for
| example, Hacker News :)
| echelon wrote:
| > Humans can form 'tribes', in the loosest sense of the
| word possible, based on genetics, but we also form tribes
| based on similar beliefs, values and interests - for
| example, Hacker News :)
|
| I agree with this, and I'm glad we do. But I've posted
| the "let's harvest clones for organs" idea numerous times
| on HN -- a community where many of us are on somewhat of
| a similar wavelength. It's usually met with a lot of
| vitriol and disgust.
|
| > Obviously, your proposed "monoclonal human bodies in
| artificial wombs" would help with that.
|
| That's one of the nice things about this. It would give
| us an organismal research platform where we could
| replicate experiments. No more animal studies, imperfect
| chimera systems, or molecular experiments we can't scale
| up. We'd have a perfect test bed for investigating almost
| everything that ails us.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I don't find them weird at all, but there's a good
| chance it'll offend you:
|
| It does not offend me. I cannot say if I would be upset
| if this were to be turned from idea to reality because
| the closest thing in reality is quite upsetting; but
| because I think that the only part of a body capable of
| suffering is the CNS, I also regard any potential upset
| on my part about a realisation of your idea as a "me
| problem", not a "you problem".
|
| That said, I don't know how far we are from being able to
| perfom what you suggest, even in principle.
|
| It may well be the case that growing a full human without
| a CNS is harder than solving 3D bioprinting.
|
| One downside of such a degree of biological mastery, is
| that it does to trust in real life what AI is currently
| doing to trust online.
| vacuity wrote:
| On a general note, if this feels natural and right to
| you, don't be quick to dismiss others' views as having
| less substance or credibility and being conditioned. But
| I appreciate that you earnestly believe this, and for
| that there is nothing _prima facie_ wrong with your view
| either.
|
| > Our bodies are machines. We should do everything we can
| to repair them and make them better. It appalls me that
| we aren't making progress here.
|
| I feel like this is not obvious. Many people seem to want
| to enjoy life more than anything else, and if this
| biotech means curing cancer so they can do so for longer,
| sure, but at some point it may be too invasive. Like if
| you have to undergo a procedure every year to get
| diminishing returns. A lot of the features you mention
| are nice to have, but not strongly appealing to me
| personally. Particularly for something like immortality:
| if I'm going to have that, I want a lot of other things
| too that biotech won't obtain.
|
| Also, at that level of biotech, it seems like we could
| forgo the clones and enhance our bodies directly. That
| would remove the ethical concerns of cloning, in
| particular the notion of creating clones for our own
| purposes instead of letting them reach their own. Beliefs
| that boil down to "I was here first" or "I beat you" are
| common, but I find them problematic.
|
| Birth/creation is a fascinating philosophical topic. I
| have a radical view which isn't quite "life is suffering
| so being born is a net harm", but I think that life is
| not all that valuable. I won't go out of my way to harm
| existing life, but I'm not sure I should go out of my way
| to accomodate new life. If humans all died off naturally,
| would that be such a bad thing? Life is great, but it's
| not _that_ great. If we do gain cloning technology, I
| think we should afford clones the potential to do as they
| will, just as we want for ourselves. Again, we could
| probably obviate clones for the purposes you see.
| 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.
| klipt wrote:
| No sources provided and internet failed to confirm ...
| closest I found was
|
| > In extremely rare forensic cases, a phenomenon called
| "coffin birth" (post-mortem fetal extrusion) can occur,
| where gases from decomposition expel a fetus from the
| deceased mother's body. This is not true childbirth and
| is extremely rare, occurring only under specific post-
| mortem conditions.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Oh come on, any medical text will confirm that the womb
| has it's own nervous system and blood supply and a good
| text will tell you that the system will function
| correctly in even completely paralyzed women. Just how do
| you think that works? And any text will SCREAM at you to
| keep a constant eye on the woman giving birth: if they
| stop breathing IT WILL NOT stop the birth, rather it will
| cause severe symptoms afterwards. A gynaecologist is not
| telling women to breathe to calm them down.
|
| The blood supply and nerves are weird special cases in a
| great many ways. For instance, they're not left-right
| symmetric (whereas the ones of "nearby" systems, like the
| bladder, are. So this was not done because there's only
| one womb)
| serf wrote:
| >a good text will tell you that the system will function
| correctly in even completely paralyzed women. Just how do
| you think that works?
|
| the body has a lot of messaging systems; 'completely
| paralyzed' people still enjoy the use of many chemical
| messaging signals; they just generally have a hindered
| spinal cord or neurological interface element.
|
| A paralyzed person will still go into shock after a
| dismemberment, blood-flow will be affected by vaso-
| constriction, and so on. It doesn't surprise me to hear
| that childbirth can trigger a similar set of conditions
| to occur.
|
| And that belittles the existence of the underlying
| support nervous system and the secondary elements. Many
| completely paralyzed men can achieve erection and
| ejaculation even with a near total disconnect from the
| rest of the nervous system. Why? The parasympathetic
| nervous system and secondary nervous materials in the
| region in question are taking up the slack from the brain
| and still allowing 'normal' function.
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > famous quote from Plautus
|
| The quote from Plautus appears to be _lupus est homo
| homini_ , which is much easier to parse. There's a verb
| and everything. (I didn't know that; I just looked it
| up.)
|
| > I don't know how to properly translate dative to
| english, something like "to give".
|
| Yes, the word literally means "giving [case]", but the
| grammatical concept in English is generally called
| "indirect object". English mostly doesn't have cases, so
| supplemental arguments to verbs tend to be marked by
| associated prepositions, making them "indirect".
|
| When talking about Latin specifically or languages with
| noun case in general, it is normal in English to refer to
| the "dative case"; you don't really need to translate it.
|
| I assume the case was named after the action of giving
| because giving is a very common action that necessarily
| involves three things. (Giver, gift, and recipient.) The
| name tells you what it means by example: "if a gift is
| given, the dative case is the one you'd use for the
| recipient".
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Homo homini lupus
|
| And kiwi kiwi kiwi.
|
| Couldn't help myself, being a speaker of a language with
| grammatical cases, which allows the translation of "homo
| homini lupus" without changing the grammatical structure.
| At the same time, some loanwords escape the declination
| system, giving birth to the joke above.
| wahern wrote:
| In all non-human species selfless cooperation falls off a
| cliff beyond siblings, and AFAIU this comports well with
| Game Theory-type models for understanding genetics. Popular
| examples of non-human cooperation, naked mole rates and
| bonobos, actually live in communities dominated by sisters.
| (It's not often noted, though, in the breathless narratives
| extolling the virtues of cooperation and anthropomorphizing
| the rest of the animal kingdom.)
|
| Human behavior, however, is still a deep, deep mystery in
| terms of evolutionary biology. I'm always wary of people
| applying evolutionary principles to human behaviors. Writ
| large you can see contours of what we would expect to see,
| but even then it's unclear why the boundaries are where
| they are, or to what degree we're projecting expectations
| into the data, etc. The speculation quotient is extreme. I
| wouldn't put any stock into evolutionary biology-based
| explanations for human behavior. And just as a practical
| matter, it's not like most people would leave their most
| hated cousin to die in a ditch; and though most people
| wouldn't leave anyone to die in a ditch--at least, if they
| knew that's what they were doing--I'm betting they're more
| likely to save a cousin than a stranger.
| achenet wrote:
| my viewpoint is that the human ability to cooperate
| effectively is why there's currently 8+ billion of us on
| earth and chimpanzees are an endangered species.
|
| Our capacity for stories and language helps us create
| large cooperation networks, which is a unique
| evolutionary advantage.
|
| Chimps have cooperation limited to "we are genetically
| close and you give me banana so I give you banana".
|
| Humans can create something like the Roman Republic, or
| modern nation states and corporations, based on a shared
| set of stories and language (culture, also includes stuff
| like rituals, socio-sexual taboos, etc), which enables
| millions of us to collaborate together towards a common
| goal. Which is why we're so successful as a species.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Capitalism allows thousands of people who don't know
| eachother or even speak the same language to work
| together to make all the components of a pencil.
|
| _All_ of those people might be selfish, yet they still
| work together without even knowing they are doing so.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| what an odd coincidence to see David Haig mentioned in the
| article. I just stumbled over his interview on Sean Carroll's
| podcast a few days ago, discussing the exact same topic (http
| s://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/30/125-...)
|
| _" And so while the cooperative outcome would be the most
| efficient, you lead to a situation in which there are
| conflict costs, and I think this explains why things go wrong
| so often during pregnancy. Of course, at first sight it's
| strange, my heart and my liver have been functioning very
| well for for 62 years, and yet during pregnancy, you have a
| natural process that only lasts for nine months, and yet many
| things go wrong during it. And I would argue that the reason
| why pregnancy doesn't work as smoothly as the normal
| functioning of the body is that in normal bodily functioning
| all the parts of the body are genetically identical to each
| other and working towards survival of that body, but in
| pregnancy, you have two different genetic individuals
| interacting with each other and natural selection can act at
| cross-purposes, there's a sort of politics going on, and we
| know that politics does not always lead to efficient
| outcomes."_
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war._
|
| I think this is a useful insight even on a higher level. For
| evolution (if you want to anthropomorphize it), war and
| conflict are just another set of tools in the toolbox. Where
| humans see those as evidence of something going wrong and
| evil to eradicated, for evolution it's "working as intended".
|
| (Or, if you don't want to anthropomorphize it, an indication
| how much of evolution and biology is just barely tamed chaos)
|
| (Careful to draw conclusions for human society from this
| though. People in the past had already seen the Darwinian
| "struggle between the species" as a model for society, which
| brought "Social Darwinism" and ultimately the Nazi ideology.
|
| A different conclusion would be that biology is in fact not a
| perfect ideal to aspire to, and even in the situations where
| it "works", its factual objectives are not always the same as
| ours. Which does give legitimacy for the endeavor to improve
| upon it - for everyone)
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Plus immune system would see baby's DNA as corrupted
|
| The immune system can't see DNA at all. It works by other
| methods.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| True but it can detect DNA isn't the same by comparing
| expressed proteins.
| 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)
| Qem wrote:
| > Results also suggested lower prevalence (p = 0.03) and
| concentration (p = 0.06) of male microchimerism in the brains
| of women with Alzheimer's disease than the brains of women
| without neurologic disease.
|
| It appears it may even be protective.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's probably the whole "lifestyle package" difference
| between having children and not. Hard to pin down a single
| biochemical factor in that.
| 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.
| danielbln wrote:
| I believe it all comes down to our giant noggin/brain. It's a
| giant resource tar pit, it's why we're born effectively
| premature, it's why we take forever to be in any shape of
| form self sufficient and it's why we would drain the mother
| of all resources available if she wouldn't regulate that
| desire to fuel our brain to the max.
|
| Turns out, being the most intelligent apex comes with some
| gestational specialities.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Your list of keywords is missing "ectopic pregnancy", which
| seems like exactly the kind of issue your comment contemplates.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > not exactly the warm cradle
|
| That would be the gestational sac, no?
| 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.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know that. Makes me wonder if we're
| compounding infertility issues into the future if this is
| done at scale. Not saying that's right or wrong, but it's
| worth thinking about.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Probably we are, but we're also negating them with science
| at probably a higher rate.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Right, exactly, that's my point. We're building in a
| dependency for future fertility on these advanced
| techniques (again, assuming the scaling theory is true).
| 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.
| derektank wrote:
| For my money I would say, yes, and I think Louis C.K. was right
| when he said, "Everybody on every plane should just constantly
| be going, 'Oh my God! Wow!' You're sitting in a chair in the
| sky!"
| sneak wrote:
| Yes, but by that logic we should be dumbfounded with awe
| every time we speak to turn on the lights, make a long
| distance call, eat a fresh fruit grown on another continent,
| or walk around after open heart surgery.
|
| At some point we should just assign credit where credit is
| due: thousands upon thousands of people working very hard for
| many decades to make the impossible possible.
|
| Our modern world is amazing, but it's not miraculous. It's
| achievement, not supernatural.
| 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.
| jesprenj wrote:
| > The first baby born as a result of a womb transplant was in
| Sweden in 2014. Since then around 135 such transplants have been
| carried out in more than a dozen countries, including the US,
| China, France, Germany, India and Turkey. Around 65 babies have
| been born.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29485996
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| Lab-grown vaginas made from the patient's own stem-cells have
| also been transplanted into women [1]. Hopefully soon it will be
| possible to get the whole #!/usr/bash.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginal_transplantation#Labora...
|
| (I don't know why this lab stopped performing this procedure
| though.)
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| It would be quite interesting to see how public discourse about
| gender is affected by this, and in particular if this procedure
| is done successfully on a transgender woman. Regardless of your
| political outlook, it will no longer be possible to say that the
| ability to give birth is a condition for being a woman. (And what
| will happen should chromosome replacement become possible? It
| seems unlikely that anyone would really invest in such a
| procedure, but is it medically feasible?)
| ericmcer wrote:
| If the procedures got so good that a trans woman/man was
| indistinguishable from one born that way who would still object
| to them claiming the gender they choose, most of the arguments
| fall apart at that point.
| aisenik wrote:
| Almost everyone who opposes trans people's existence today.
| Opposition to trans rights is rooted in patriarchal hegemony
| and the control of bodies. Our existence is a fundamental
| threat to the foundational perspective of the predominant
| power-structure in society.
|
| No one does a womb-check before granting women validity. It's
| always been a vibe thing and people who do not conform to the
| prescribed model of existence as a man or woman are
| constantly denied full privileges under the framework. It's
| not just trans women getting the short end of the stick here,
| it's everyone: men who do not embrace dominance culture or
| otherwise display "effeminacy" are denied true Man status,
| women who don't meet beauty standards or possess a submissive
| demeanor are slurred as bull-dykes or the dreaded transexual.
|
| This isn't an issue with any real reasonable basis for it's
| opposition, it's a golem of pure hatred and disgust in a suit
| vs. people who want to live full, free lives.
|
| editing to add: the first known uterine transplant was
| performed on Lili Elbe who received treatments through the
| Institute of Sexology in Germany. The Institute was famously
| destroyed by the Nazi regime. It's barely coincidental that
| fascism has risen again as medical science brings this
| technology to maturity. Trans women gave their lives for this
| medical miracle.
| mftrhu wrote:
| They would just move to calling the procedure a violation of
| the "natural order" - "Lovecraftian horror", "Frankenstein
| arrangement", "something Mengele would do" - argue that it is
| akin to rape, create conspiracy theories about uteri being
| stolen, and/or invoke "Think of the children!"
|
| I saw all of that already. Some of it in this very thread,
| some of it on the defunct /r/GenderCritical: I remember
| someone proposing committing suicide by volcano to keep her
| uterus out of "male [sic] hands".
| alxjrvs wrote:
| Damn, it's almost like Gender is largely vibes and any attempt
| to root it in a strict biological standard is as patently
| ridiculous as it would be trying to do the same to horoscopes.
|
| Giving birth is already not a precondition of being a woman, as
| the category "infertile women" exist.
| bsuvc wrote:
| > it will no longer be possible to say that the ability to give
| birth is a condition for being a woman
|
| This "gotcha game" has become so tiresome.
| smeej wrote:
| > He told the BBC around 10 women have embryos in storage or are
| undergoing fertility treatment, a requirement for being
| considered for womb transplantation. Each transplant costs around
| PS30,000, he says, and the charity has sufficient funds to do two
| more.
|
| Is this because they're not connecting the transplanted uterus to
| the fallopian tubes or something? Or is there some other reason
| that it wouldn't be possible to conceive the "old-fashioned way"
| post-transplant?
|
| Creating and freezing embryos otherwise seems like a very strange
| thing for a woman to have done who has no uterus, unless she was
| already considering surrogacy. Where was she expecting them to
| grow?
|
| Requiring the embryos to be created _before_ knowing whether the
| womb transplant would be possible or successful seems really odd
| to me.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Surrogacy is already a thing; stored embryos have a use without
| womb transplants.
| im3w1l wrote:
| From an individual perspective this is absolutely crazy and
| should never be done. But from a broader perspective it's clearly
| very beneficial for the advancement of science to have such
| fearless pioneers. Amazing stuff!
| mertleee wrote:
| I'm not religious, but publishing this the day before Easter is
| disgusting.
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