Overcome

Uterus transplants for transgender women will soon be possible, doctors say.

So what? It’s possible to cut people’s heads off, but it’s not desirable. Sticking a uterus in a man is not desirable. Human beings have more urgent things to do at this time.

Several teams are “actively working” to make uterus transplants for transgender women a reality, according to an article published in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, with the first such procedure likely to happen “within the next few years, if not sooner.”

Why stop there? Why not transplant zebra legs onto humans? Why not transplant dog tails onto sharks? Why not remake The Fly?

Stream Jeff Goldblum As The Fly by Toadface | Listen online for free on  SoundCloud

If the anatomical challenges in transgender women can be overcome — and surgeons have said none seem insurmountable — uterus transplants would make it possible for trans women to gestate and give birth to a child.

Never mind global warming, never mind pandemics, never mind droughts and famines and wildfires, never mind poverty and exploitation and rape and genocide, let’s use our intelligence and resources making it possible for men to gestate frankenbabies.

Comments

34 responses to “Overcome”

  1. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    I suppose it’s easier, “sexier”, and less useful than artificial wombs so of course that’s what they’ll do…

  2. tigger_the_wing Avatar
    tigger_the_wing

    It seems to me that it is the most ridiculous pandering to deluded men to suggest that anyone is seriously working on this with a view to getting it to work, when they can’t even make wombs work in women all the time. As a transplanted organ? Not a hope.

    OK, so some transplanted organs work reasonably well – given the recipient has to go on anti-rejection medication for (a much-shorter than normal) life. But a uterus is more than a cradle for a baby. Much, much more. The woman’s entire body changes to accommodate a fœtus and not reject it as a parasite. The interplay of hormones between various glands and the immune system and the ovaries and uterus are still not understood, hence the difficulty of fixing infertility in women; so there is zero chance of getting them exactly right in a man.

  3. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    And are they expecting “donors” (i.e. women) to line up to make this possible at all?

  4. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    It seems to me that it is the most ridiculous pandering to deluded men…

    It would be nice if medicine put the basic, routine treatment and care of regular, non-delusional women at least a bit ahead of the “uteri for men” project. Seems to me there’s a couple of hundred years of catching up to do to make up for the era when men were the standard, and women were nothing but the quaint, curious backwater of aberrant cases that weren’t really that important or interesting.

  5. Brian M Avatar

    ynnb: The Chinese government has excellent experience with volunteers for organ transplants. Maybe we can use their expertise. /sarc

  6. Southwest88 Avatar

    What are the “pro-lifers” going to be doing while hundreds if not thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed by the experiments trying to make this happen? What happens IF it ever progresses even to the point that the fetuses are dying at 3 or 4 months along? What if the fetus almost hits full term and then dies and the doctors say “well, maybe the next one” and start another fertilized egg down the path?

    My guess would be a return to the days of bombing clinics and shooting doctors. Even those who might grit their teeth and agree to let rape/incest survivors get abortions if the rest of the abortions can be outlawed are NOT going to be OK with creating fetuses and then losing fetuses for the egos of these men. Just saying.

  7. maddog1129 Avatar

    @ Southwest88 #6

    They’ll be bombing the fertility clinics and major hospitals — I can’t imagine transplant surgery being performed in a clinic — as well as abortion providers. And then what happens when the fetus in the transplanted uterus causes conditions that would require an abortion? Which such pregnancy wouldn’t require an abortion? Where in a man’s abdominal cavity is there room for an extra organ (bunch of organs) plus pregnancy growth?

  8. learie Avatar

    This is never going to happen. It’s all just grist for the TWAW mill.

    There’s no abstract of that article. All we’ve been given is the title. No information on what experiments have been carried out, it’s all just hypotheticals from the journalist.

  9. Rev David Brindley Avatar
    Rev David Brindley

    But it’s not just the Uterus, there’s a whole lot of plumbing required, as well as finding space.

    Male bodies have evolved to fill that space so about the only location for a womb transplant to a TIM would be the vacant space between the ears.

  10. Sackbut Avatar

    There is an article from 2018 from the NIH indicating medical expert thoughts on the matter.

    There is a 2022 article from the Daily Mirror claiming an Indian doctor plans to perform such an operation using an organ “taken from a dead donor or from another woman who decided to become a man and had their wombs removed in the process”.

  11. Omar Avatar

    There is a 2022 article from the Daily Mirror claiming an Indian doctor plans to perform such an operation using an organ “taken from a dead donor or from another woman who decided to become a man and had their wombs removed in the process”.

    So…. We have a woman who wants to be a man, and also a man who wants to become a woman. No need to buggerise round with internal organs. Swap-over head transplants will be far easier, quicker, and mutually satisfying. What could possibly go wrong.?

  12. maddog1129 Avatar

    Oh, Omar, that would solve everything!

  13. ibbica Avatar

    Swap-over head transplants will be far easier, quicker, and mutually satisfying. What could possibly go wrong.?

    The question has been asked in earnest, and even tested, because of course it has… I offer you “The history of head transplantation: a review”:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/

    With a warning that no, that is not a read for the squeamish. The review includes fairly detailed descriptions along with photographs and diagrams reprinted from the original articles. Here’s the relatively dry abstract for anyone wanting the gist without the gory details:

    Background

    Since the turn of the last century, the prospect of head transplantation has captured the imagination of scientists and the general public. Recently, head transplant has regained attention in popular media, as neurosurgeons have proposed performing this procedure in 2017. Given the potential impact of such a procedure, we were interested in learning the history of the technical hurdles that need to be overcome, and determine if it is even technically possible to perform such a procedure on humans today.

    Method

    We conducted a historical review of available literature on the technical challenges and developments of head transplantation. The many social, psychological, ethical, religious, cultural, and legal questions of head transplantation were beyond the scope of this review.

    Results

    Our historical review identified the following important technical considerations related to performing a head transplant: maintenance of blood flow to an isolated brain via vessel anastomosis; availability of immunosuppressive agents; spinal anastomosis and fusion following cord transfection; pain control in the recipient. Several animal studies have demonstrated success in maintaining recipient cerebral perfusion and achieving immunosuppression. However, there is currently sparse evidence in favor of successful spinal anastomosis and fusion after transection. While recent publications by an Italian group offer novel approaches to this challenge, research on this topic has been sparse and hinges on procedures performed in animal models in the 1970s. How transferrable these older methods are to the human nervous system is unclear and warrants further exploration.

    Conclusions

    Our review identified several important considerations related to performing a viable head transplantation. Besides the technical challenges that remain, there are important ethical issues to consider, such as exploitation of vulnerable patients and informed consent. Thus, besides the remaining technical challenges, these ethical issues will also need to be addressed before moving these studies to the clinic.

  14. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    Take that, Reggie, you closed-minded ignoramous!

    – Loretta

  15. Omar Avatar

    Also, back in 1954, Soviet scientists grafted the head and upper body of a puppy onto a fully-grown dog. That combo survived 29 days.

    https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/how-the-soviet-scientist-created-a-two-headed-dog-174b48a916dc#:~:text=In%201954%2C%20Demikhov%20successfully%20grafted,the%20hand%20which%20caressed%20it.

  16. NightCrow Avatar

    I haven’t had time to read it yet, but the full article is freely available on the website of the journal in which it appears.

  17. learie Avatar

    Thanks for the link, NightCrow.

    It’s just a bunch of hypotheticals and statements that the doctors would just wing it. Still no answer as to where the uterus is going to go, and how they’re going to get a male body to produce the hormones necessary to gestate a baby. No discussion of any experiments carried out.

  18. twiliter Avatar

    Mary Shelley is turning in her grave.

  19. Mike Haubrich Avatar
    Mike Haubrich

    Omar, I think it would make more sense to just transplant male brains into women’s bodies. (No sense at all in either case.)

    I don’t even see how the anti-rejection drugs could work. The blood of pregnant women is dangerous to men, even blood that is transfused from a woman who has been pregnant in the past creates a 13% greater risk of death to males than from either a man or a woman who’s never been pregnant.

    I gave blood last weekend, and of course the Memorial Blood Center offers the option to enter identity rather than sex. I am sure that there must be some non-public field in ttheir database that tracks the sex of the donor, especially since crossing sex in some critical situations could lead to an increased morbidity risk for the recipient.

    And that’s just one consideration where sex matters. How many potential hormonal or endocrinal elements, how many other reproductive organs would have to be modified or transplanted in order to achieve this goal of males carrying babies? Where would the arterial supply to the placenta be routed from the man’s blood supply?

    A womb is not a self-contained unit, it’s a part of a whole body. A GRC doesn’t change any of that.

  20. What a Maroon Avatar
    What a Maroon

    Rev @9,

    Well, it worked for Zeus.

  21. John the Drunkard Avatar
    John the Drunkard

    Somewhere in the last couple of years, I saw a report of a ‘pioneer’ transwoman in Germany who died after an attempted uterus transplant. Sometime around 1930.

  22. Bruce Coppola Avatar
    Bruce Coppola

    I follow this blog in large part for the lucid and intelligent commentary. But this time I am disappointed in all of you for your lack of vision and imagination.

    Don’t you see the ultimate solution?

    Whack off the penis but keep the testes and the internal male plumbing. Implant the uterus and female plumbing. Join up the female plumbing with the male plumbing. Voilà! Human autogamy and a genuinely non-binary person!

    Try to do better next time, people.

  23. Holms Avatar

    Uterus transplants have already been performed successfully, with multiple children born as a result. But there is a notable caveat: this is not a surgery performed to save life. It is not even a surgery for maintaining / restoring lost quality of life. A woman can go through life in happiness without ever being pregnant, to say nothing of us men. This is pure wish fulfilment, and so will almost certainly not be provided for on any insurance policy.

  24. Ophelia Benson Avatar

    A whack implant! Problem solved!

  25. Ophelia Benson Avatar

    Here’s one delightful passage from the article:

    The primary consideration for hormone management in TG women centers on whether candidates should undergo orchiectomy (removal of the testicles) before undergoing TG UTx and pregnancy. In all cases, sperm preservation should be encouraged, allowing for embryo generation with a cis-female partner or an egg donor. If orchiectomy is not performed before UTx, patients should be counseled to discontinue certain feminizing medications before pregnancy (e.g., spironolactone and finasteride) because of the risk of birth defects in a developing fetus. As TG women would likely have testicular production of androgens, prenatal exposure to androgens could potentially lead to virilization and external genital masculinization of a female fetus, similar to the risks for pregnant cis-females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

    Oh who cares; onward!

  26. guest Avatar

    @21 I think you’re referring to ‘Lili’ Elbe?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe

    There was a movie:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danish_Girl

  27. twiliter Avatar

    I say if they want to go fuck themselves, who are we to stop them? It’s theoretically (but only speculatively) possible — Save some sperm, do the trans thing, get a uterus implanted, and voila!

    Lest we forget about the genetic disorders that occur with inbreeding, that could be problematic (oopsie).

    It’s a horror show at best.

  28. Holms Avatar

    twiliter, inbreeding? I don’t see how that can result from this. If the trans woman is the genetic father of the child, the egg still has to come from a different person, presumably not a close relative.

  29. twiliter Avatar

    If they have their own female parts? Freeze some sperm and impregnate yourself later?

    But yeah, it’s not very likely in any event.

  30. Sackbut Avatar

    twiliter, they have someone else’s female parts.

    From that 2018 NIH paper:

    Uterine transplantation entails the transplantation of the uterus, including the cervix, a cuff of vagina, the surrounding ligamentous and connective tissues, as well as the major blood vessels to the level of the internal iliac vessels. The uterus is then placed orthotopically in the pelvis of the recipient, where it is structurally supported using the uterosacral, round and broad ligaments laterally, the bladder peritoneum anteriorly, and the vagina and paravaginal tissues inferiorly.

    So, a uterus and associated anatomy. Not ovaries. So no means of getting pregnant other than implantation.

    But even if they were talking about transplanting ovaries, they are someone else’s ovaries, someone else’s eggs.

    The tangent brings to mind the prohibition against incest, and whether that applies to step-siblings, or to same-sex couples. I don’t know.

  31. twiliter Avatar

    You both are right of course. My disbelief in the whole prospect makes me facetious. It’s just astounding to me that people are willing to perform medical experimentations to solve nonexistent physical problems. I think complications are certain, life threatening, and mind boggling. It raises innumerable ethical questions.

  32. Your Name's not Bruce? Avatar
    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    Our historical review identified the following important technical considerations related to performing a head transplant: maintenance of blood flow to an isolated brain via vessel anastomosis; availability of immunosuppressive agents; spinal anastomosis and fusion following cord transfection; pain control in the recipient. Several animal studies have demonstrated success in maintaining recipient cerebral perfusion and achieving immunosuppression.

    Emphasis added.

    There’s a world of horror right there.

  33. twiliter Avatar

    As much as I believe in The Big Nothing, I still like the idea of a special hell reserved for people like that.

  34. iknklast Avatar

    Okay, uterus transplant. What about…placenta? Umbilical cord? With implantation, you don’t need ovaries or fallopian tubes, but will the implanted uterus be able to generate all the structures needed to gestate a baby? Somehow, I suspect not. Maye in a female, yeah, because their bodies do that. But a male body?

    Seems like we’re going to need a lot more transplants here.