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Woman with Transplanted Uterus Gives Birth, the First in the U.S
- koolba 9y agoFrom the article (not all contiguous but related): > A new frontier, uterus transplants are seen as a source of hope for women who cannot give birth because they were born without a uterus or had to have it removed because of cancer, other illness or complications from childbirth. Researchers estimate that in the United States, 50,000 women might be candidates. > The transplants are meant to be temporary, left in place just long enough for a woman to have one or two children, and then removed so she can stop taking the immune-suppressing drugs needed to prevent organ rejection. > The transplants are now experimental, with much of the cost covered by research funds. But they are expensive, and if they become part of medical practice, will probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is not clear that insurers will pay, and Dr. Testa acknowledged that many women who want the surgery will not be able to afford it. While the science is amazing, why go this route rather than having a surrogate mother? I've heard the price of a surrogate is $30-50K.
- b4lancesh33t 9y agoMany, many women wish to carry their own children. Some want to do that this badly.
- cutcss 9y ago"Want" as in they are biologically wired to want to do so; hormones/evolution/etc.
- creep 9y agoIt may or may not be simply biological "wiring". Many women are fine with surrogates, and most surrogates are fine with carrying another woman's child without significant emotional attachment. Women who use surrogates want the child, the experience doesn't matter as much as a successful birth by any method. I think a big factor in the cases discussed in the article is that these women were told they would never ever have their own children. Unlike women who are "infertile" (which is usually just a measure of probability, and not a binary diagnosis), women who do not have a uterus obviously understand that there isn't a probability factor for getting pregnant. But then tell a woman with such a diagnosis that there is an experimental procedure that will allow her to fully experience what she had always been told was not possible. It is more for her than just wanting a baby at that point-- the procedure offers her everything she was told she could not have in terms of giving birth to a child.
- danharaj 9y agoLiterally all of your thoughts and feelings are biologically wired.
- solidsnack9000 9y agoSo many wants are biologically wired...
- nostromo123 9y agoBy the same token, you can just lay off having sex, since you are just wired biologically to want it ;-)
- chiefalchemist 9y agoLucky for them there are no enforced prerequisites (i.e., test and/or license) for becoming a parent. I don't doubt some level of that drive exists. What feels questionable is the sanity (?) of going to such extreme lengths to pursue it? As if there is a complete unawareness of the bigger picture.
- dcwca 9y agoIt’s not about sanity. Desire for reproduction is a biological imperative.
- fiblye 9y ago>I don't doubt some level of that drive exists. That's one hell of an understatement. It's only the primary driving force of all successful complex lifeforms. Living things that give preference to offspring other than their own die with zero remaining trace of their existence.
- toasterlovin 9y agoMaybe they meant the specific drive to carry a child, which, in my experience, not all women possess, even if they possess other drives that lead to successfully promulgating the next generation.
- astura 9y agoDrive to go through pregnancy and childbirth, not drive to reproduce.
- notyourwork 9y agoI'll go out on a limb and say if you aren't a female I don't think you are well positioned to judge a woman's judgement towards wanting her "own" baby versus using a surrogate or adopting. (I'm not a female so I have no point of view here.)
- ggg9990 9y agoSure, but I don't think any insurance should ever pay for this.
- b4lancesh33t 9y agoThis is an amazing story of progress, technology, and hope. Do you need to make it about what it costs to you, or can that discussion maybe wait for another context?
- ggg9990 9y agoIt can't really wait, because I bet someone wants this now, and shouldn't get it from public coffers.
- juicyfroot 9y agoAnd they will petition the government to tax you enough to make it happen. They are doing soon.
- nvahalik 9y ago> While the science is amazing, why go this route rather than having a surrogate mother? Or even just adoption. Adoption is far cheaper as well. There are plenty of reasons why people want their own biological children... but this seems like it carries a ton more risk with it. With complications from the transplant and heck even just childbirth.
- koolba 9y agoYes that's what I was trying to get at. The increased cost comes with significantly increased risk yet the same end result (a biological child).
- theli0nheart 9y agoIt's not the same end result. There are huge psychological issues that can come up with being the genetic mother to your child but having someone else carry them for you. Then you also have to figure out how (if?) the surrogate is involved in the child's life at all, how you explain to the child that someone else birthed them, etc. If you ever find yourself favoring one child over another, you'll always wonder if it's because it's not "your" baby. Basically, it's not as simple as just handing off an embryo to another person and 9 months later acting like nothing happened. There are huge ramifications to a decision like this that don't come with being the birth mother.
- thomasfedb 9y agoI’m always struck that people overestimate how difficult it is to explain things to children. I think people often project their own discomfort about talking about something onto the child that is hearing about whatever it is.
- ecopoesis 9y agoAdoptions in the US cost ~$40k, a lot more then the 10-15k for pregnancy.
- deleted 9y ago
- chiefalchemist 9y agoTaken a step further..why not adopt? While impressive it feels too much like a First World Problem. Aren't there any real problems this team could have solved?
- jroseattle 9y ago> While impressive it feels too much like a First World Problem. Aren't there any real problems this team could have solved? Talk to any couple who has had difficulty conceiving, and the humanity of this "first world problem" gets brought into perspective.
- mberning 9y agoExactly. How can you not understand a person’s desire to have a child of their own flesh and blood? That instinct and desire is such a deep part of our biology. The people asking must be very young or have some strang sociopathy.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoIntelligence and empathy may be inversely correlated. Diversity is helpful here
- MBCook 9y agoName a society on earth were people would prefer to adopt rather than go to this option if it was available to them. I don’t think this is an issue of the “American“ perspective or something like that.
- pessimizer 9y agoI'd bet most of them. People don't adopt because it is extremely difficult for some reason. Adopting probably costs more than an artificial uterus.
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- xenadu02 9y agoLet’s say you lost your testicles due to cancer, but there’s a new procedure that can grow new ones from your stem cells. It’s experimental and will cost $150,000. Before having your cancerous testes removed you stored sperm. Are you really surprised that some men who want to be fathers would choose to have the procedure rather than using their own previously stored sperm?
- robbrown451 9y agoYes I'm surprised. I'd want my testicles back for other reasons maybe, but if I had stored sperm I don't see why to have an expensive operation.
- icebraining 9y agoYes. In fact, much more surprised than in this case - I can at least see why would you want to have your baby grow inside you. Doing experimental surgery just so you can have fresh sperm seems absurd to me.
- justinjlynn 9y agoShit, I'd just want my balls back so I didn't have to take shots every few weeks.
- jschwartzi 9y agoAnd they'd be brand new, with none of the reduced output that comes from aging.
- kurthr 9y agoWell, yes I'm shocked that someone would go to great expense, risk their life, and use scarce research resources in a completely unnatural effort to do something "naturally"... but I shouldn't be. Because rule 34... someone will get off on it.
- tonyhb 9y ago
- anonymfus 9y agoSurrogate motherhood is a very traumatising experience.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoWhile the science is amazing, why go this route rather than having a surrogate mother? I've heard the price of a surrogate is $30-50K. That sounds rhetorical, but I'll bite anyway. Some women really long for the experience of childbirth. This may not be entirely psychological. Giving birth has significant impact on a woman's physiology. In addition to changing the shape of the hips and often other details like that, it leaves a woman a chimera for many years. Because her blood and the blood of the baby mix, she carries cells from the baby for many years afterwards. I have a genetic disorder. I have two biological sons. I was not diagnosed until they were about 12 and 14 years old, so I didn't (consciously) know about my condition at the time that I was making reproductive choices (though I did know I was always "sickly"). My first pregnancy significantly impacted how I eat. I removed a number of things from my diet to cope with my difficult pregnancy and many were never added back into my diet. I have reason to believe this did my health a lot of good. For example, it cured the chronic, sever vaginal yeast infections I had for more than two years prior that pregnancy. I never again had chronic, severe yeast infections. I have read up a bit on pregnancy-induced chimerism and talked a bit with people online about it and talked a fair amount with my sons. I have come to think that some women long for a baby because it can have a profound impact on a woman's body in ways we don't fully understand and perhaps sometimes that longing is rooted in some subconscious awareness that going through the process of carrying a child to term may alter their body in ways that are potentially for the best. This would be really hard to prove. We have no means to see what the biological outcome would be for the same woman with and without the pregnancy experience. But I am in remarkably good health for someone with my genetic disorder and I credit my two pregnancies with some portion of that fact.
- hiram112 9y agoThat is quite interesting to hear from a woman. Artificial wombs are coming. I was under the impression that women considered pregnancy as a burden which carries risks, is painful, causes all sorts of negative hormonal / physiological effects, etc. I think that artificial wombs will initially be challenged by feminist and conservative groups, but will end up being accepted, first with wealthy Western women, but eventually by everyone else. I have never considered that women might choose to carry a child, if they weren't required due to technological and scientific advances.
- blitmap 9y agoI think it is incredibly cool that we can essentially move a uterus from one woman to several others. Startup idea: Uterent™
- intopieces 9y agoCountries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria prohibit all forms of surrogacy. So, this gives women in those countries the option of having a child legally.
- oh_sigh 9y agoWhat effect do immunosuppressors have on the fetus?
- sjg007 9y agoProbably well studied in pregnant moms with cancer or transplants. I would guess not a big impact as far as we know today. First there are cases where the maternal immune system attacks the fetus. Second the placenta generates immunosuppressants to prevent that, third, the fetus itself and the baby at birth does not have any innate immunity. In fact the baby relies on the moms immunity after birth.
- astura 9y agoCan you harvest(1) eggs from a woman without a uterus? I don't see how you would. To get to the ovaries of a woman without a uterus you'd need to cut her open. (1) is that the correct terminology?
- robocat 9y agoAny reason a man couldn't get one, with correct hormones?
- gregschlom 9y agoNow that's an interesting question
- theparanoid 9y agoA male pelvis is more narrow than a female pelvis.
- d4l3k 9y agoC-sections are already a thing.
- iamthirsty 9y agoDon't other parts of the body expand during gestation, though?
- toasterlovin 9y agoYes. We think of our bodies as these static things, but the way a pregnant woman’s body transforms to prepare for birth is nothing short of amazing.
- robocat 9y agoAll the babies delivered so far from a uterus transplant were C-sections (as explained in article).
- actuallyalys 9y agoHe would also need a vaginal canal so he could menstrate. That's possible with surgery, but it'd be a deal breaker for most men.
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- creep 9y agoI find it interesting that the Baylor team chose a shorter timeframe from surgery to implantation with success. According to the article, the initial thought was that a longer wait time gave a chance for the women to heal, but the Baylor team thought the immune-system-suppressants (used to ensure the body does not reject a foreign organ) too harmful to continue for long periods.
- jessriedel 9y agoDo we know if they removed the uterus during the same surgery as the c-section, or was it done later?
- creep 9y agoFrom the article we know that each uterus recipient can have up to two births before the uterus is removed. But specifically when it is removed after that possible second birth I'm not sure. Looked around a bit and couldn't find anything. I'm assuming that would make the most sense, but I'm not a surgeon.
- LeoJiWoo 9y agoPretty fascinating science. The "hundreds of thousands of dollars" cost is a bit concerning to me. I'm also guessing it will difficult to bring the cost down since it requires a donor uterus.
- adventured 9y agoThe price will be brought down through other methods, specifically cloning. It won't make sense at all to rely on donor organs. At our current rate of improvement on cloning / growing organs and tissue, we'll be able to do it in the next decade or two.
- majormajor 9y agoTransplants are expensive (not just the procedure, all the after-care for the rest of the life), and leading-edge medical treatment will continue to be expensive, even if we can get the cost of transplantation itself down (my hunch is that most of the hundreds of thousands is in the cost of the surgeons, the cost of the medical facility, and all the intense recovery from extremely invasive surgery stuff). In a reasonable universe, things like this would be discussed openly in terms of public-vs-private health care coverage, limits of cost, and liability for "uncaused" stuff (genetic bad luck, etc) vs "caused" stuff (e.g. alcoholic or obeseity-caused cirrhosis) so that we weren't simply writing blank checks with future people's money. Especially with the potential to grow organs - now your rate limiter on the costs is potentially gone! But in the US we can't even decide that people deserve health care access at all, so discussing the limits of it will have to wait for later, I suppose.
- gnu8 9y agoI can't wait to find out from the republicans why this is an abomination before the lord our god.
- creep 9y agoWhy incite a political discussion? The connection this article has to politics is extrapolated in your mind for one purpose.
- adventured 9y agoYour statement contrasts amusingly with the actual context. This occurred at a conservative-leaning, Baptist university in Texas: Baylor.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoThe uni is actually in Waco, about 150+ miles south of where the hospital is. Not sure how connected they are these days.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- majormajor 9y agoNormally this would be a nit-pick, but it's a potentially significant one here since the medical center isn't religiously affiliated: Baylor the hospital system isn't affiliated with the university these days. It's affiliated with Texas A&M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylor_University_Medical_Center_at_Dallas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baylor_University_Medical_Cent...
- adventured 9y agoIt's a fair point. I wasn't implying it was a religious medical center, rather, that that region very much leans conservative, which is in fact true. Texas A&M is one of the most conservative state schools: "Texas A&M leads Princeton Review list of most conservative state schools" http://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Texas-A-M-leads-list-of-most-conservative-schools-6435734.php http://www.chron.com/news/education/article/Texas-A-M-leads-...
- quickConclusion 9y ago>Since 2014, eight other babies have been born to women who had uterus transplants, all in Sweden Just to show that single payer system can be good for medical innovation, not just universal healthcare.
- sattoshi 9y agoI would rather this innovation not be made with my taxes. The money thrown at this could have done so much elsewhere.
- psergeant 9y agoLuckily Sweden is a civilised country where individuals don’t get to choose the medical needs of other people they don’t know.
- guest 9y agoI am actually a Swedish citizen and I'm happy we still go partiallly by Keynes and not Friedman. So the taxes I'm paying I'm happy goes partially towards the betterment of all of humanity. A functioning public sector with regulation drives technological EVOLUTION as all markets stagnate wo regulation and injections of assets.
- cdoxsey 9y agoIt looks like the swedish transplants were funded by research at a university, not insurance: http://sahlgrenska.gu.se/english/research/uterus/questions http://sahlgrenska.gu.se/english/research/uterus/questions (though perhaps that's a distinction without a difference?) > The cost of a uterus transplantation is estimated to be around SEK 100,000 per patient. [...] > Will this cost the patient anything? > No. The first initial experiments with uterus transplantation will be covered entirely by research funding. Apparently some of the research also came from a Professor in the US: > The team learned this technique at the University of Connecticut and received help at the beginning from Professor John McCracken, who is a pioneer in reproductive medical research. It took about a year before the autotransplantation method on sheep worked well. Single-payer systems also have to constrain costs, so its not clear that they would actually cover a procedure like this, or if they did there might be a really limited supply. (I suppose the supply would be inherently limited anyway by how many available uteri there are) Single-payer systems are actually rarely actually single-payer. For example apparently private insurance is becoming more popular in Sweden: > The number of people purchasing supplementary private insurance is rapidly increasing, from 2.3 per cent of the population in 2004 (Swedish Insurance Federation 2004) to approximately 4.6 per cent in 2008 (Trygg-Hansa 2008). The voluntary health insurance mainly gives quick access to a specialist and allows for jumping the waiting queue for elective surgery (Glenngård et al. 2005). http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/98417/E93429.pdf http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/98417/E9...
- donohoe 9y agoTo be fair, what did you think she was going to do with it? This shouldn’t be a surprise!
- bitL 9y agoHow far are we from completely artificial uterus with no need for human body? If we plan to colonize other planets, we need literal "baby factories". How far are we from this technology? (regardless of dystopian vibe)
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoWhy would we need non-human baby factories?
- bitL 9y agoI meant without the need of having uterus inside a (living) human being. Literally growing human babies in factories.
- notdonspaulding 9y agoYou've not supported your conclusion that we "need" a non-human baby factory with any actual argument or facts. Surely the simplest solution to the reproductive question during space colonization is to send along a doctor or midwife with the couples headed out from earth? Humans are really good at making this happen.
- enraged_camel 9y agoSpending extended amounts of time in zero gravity has profound effects on the human body, most of them negative. Pregnancy is already very tough, and we know literally nothing about the additional challenges associated with it (and with childbirth) in a zero G environment, or on another planet. From this perspective, there may be some merit to the parent poster's argument that human "factories" may be less risky for everyone involved, since it might be easier to control the conditions.
- sjg007 9y agoWe’ve sent pregnant rats into space. We know a lot about zero g rat babies and moms. Long term more serious issues are space radiation effects. Nobody has any idea how to practically solve that issue.
- partycoder 9y agoPregnancy already has many associated risks. This may increase the odds substantially. Plus, pregnancy while taking a lot of immunosuppresant drugs doesn't sound like a really good idea.
- GarvielLoken 9y agoI first read " Woman with Transparent Uterus Gives Birth, the First in the U.S "
- sighsigh1112 9y agoUseful! It was becoming concerning how few people there are on the planet, good to see another means of making more. /s