Two Soylentils wrote in about the failure of the United States' first attempted uterus transplant:
Uterine Transplant Fails
The Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio, has embarked upon a programme of uterine transplantation, with surgeries planned on a total of ten patients. The first recipient, however, has suffered an unspecified "sudden complication" and the transplanted uterus, which was obtained from a cadaver, has been removed.
The first uterine transplant, which was unsuccessful, was performed in 1931. This was the first time the procedure had been attempted in the United States, where it is still considered experimental.
coverage:
- People
- Daily Mail
- The Dallas Morning News blog
- CNN
- Business Insider
- NBC News
- ABC News
- The Washington Post
- New York Times
- Reuters
[Continues.]
First Uterus Transplant in the U.S. Fails After Complication
The first ever attempted uterus transplant in the U.S. has failed after an unknown complication occurred:
The Cleveland Clinic says it has removed a transplanted uterus — the first-ever in the U.S. — after the patient suffered from a "sudden complication."
The clinic conducted the landmark operation in late February. As we reported, the procedure is intended to "open up another possible path to parenthood besides surrogacy or adoption for U.S. women who do not have a uterus, or who have a uterus that does not function."
The transplant was part of a study that the clinic says is meant to include 10 women with uterine factor infertility, meaning "they were born without a uterus, have lost their uterus, or have a uterus that no longer functions." The clinic says in a statement that the study will continue despite this setback.
The risky procedure takes into account the chance of the body rejecting the organ by including the administration of anti-rejection drugs throughout the years following the surgery as well as monthly cervical biopsies to check for organ rejection. In vitro fertilization is used to create embryos that will be implanted in the uterus. The transplant is intended to be temporary, and after the successful childbirth of one or two babies the transplanted uterus is either removed by a hysterectomy or allowed to disintegrate. Nine uterus transplants have taken place in Sweden, resulting in 5 pregnancies and 4 births.
Study about the first ever live birth following a uterus transplant: Livebirth after uterus transplantation (DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61728-1)
Related Stories
Richard Paulson, President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, has said that transgender women could give birth as soon as "tomorrow" using donated wombs:
Those born with male assigned sex organs cannot conceive children biologically; however, this may soon change, at least according to one fertility expert. Transgender women—those who were assigned male at birth—could give birth as early as "tomorrow," Richard Paulson, an obstetrician-gynecologist and the president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said, according to The Telegraph. Thanks to advances in transgender medicine, donated wombs may be able to help transgender women conceive on their own, Paulson said during the society's annual conference in San Antonio, Texas.
Since at least 1999, transgender men have successfully given birth to healthy children, The Washington Post [archive] reports. More recently, Trystan Reese, a transgender man and his partner Biff Chaplow, gave birth to a healthy child last August. Despite their successes, the process is much more complex for transgender women. Primarily because a man's pelvis is a different shape than a woman's, making the birth much more complicated. Still, Paulson insists that it's possible, but notes the birth must be conducted via cesarean section.
"There would be additional challenges, but I don't see any obvious problem that would preclude it," Paulson said. "I personally suspect there are going to be trans women who are going to want to have a uterus and will likely get the transplant."
A woman in the U.S. has given birth in the last month after having successfully received a uterus transplant in September 2016. This follows an unsuccessful uterus transplant performed at the Cleveland Clinic in February 2016:
For the first time in the United States, a woman who had a uterus transplant has given birth.
The mother, who was born without a uterus, received the transplant from a living donor last year at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, and had a baby boy there last month, the hospital said on Friday.
At the family's request, their name, hometown and the date of the birth are being withheld to protect their privacy, according to Julie Smith, a spokeswoman for the hospital, which is part of Baylor Scott & White Health.
Since 2014, eight other babies have been born to women who had uterus transplants, all in Sweden, at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg.
[...] At Baylor, eight women have had transplants, including the new mother, in a clinical trial designed to include 10 patients. One recipient is pregnant, and two others — one of whom received her transplant from a deceased donor — are trying to conceive. Four other transplants failed after the surgery, and the organs had to be removed, said Dr. Giuliano Testa, principal investigator of the research project and surgical chief of abdominal transplantation.
"We had a very rough start, and then hit the right path," Dr. Testa said in a telephone interview. "Who paid for it in a certain way were the first three women. I feel very thankful for their contribution, more so than I can express."
Up to 50,000 women may be candidates for uterus transplants.
Also at Newsweek, Time, and Dallas News.
Related: President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Says Transgender Women Could Give Birth
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday March 11 2016, @04:09PM
I have to wonder about this... I mean, science is great, advances in medical technology improve people's lives, but...a uterus transplant?
A uterus is not necessary for health. Having kids is not something you must be able to do. I would put a uterus transplant in the same category as cosmetic surgery - only much more dangerous because of the rejection problems. Ok, anyone has the right to cosmetic surgery, as long as it doesn't impact on other people. Meaning, for example, that it should not be paid for by governmental health programs.
But a uterus transplant does impact on other people. At least, the intent seems to be to the carry a fetus to term. A fetus that will be exposed to massive medical risks by living in a uterus that could be rejected at any time, increased health risks due to immune suppression, plus all of the other effects of the transplant drugs that the mother must take.
Imho, this is an unethical medical procedure.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @04:30PM
> Having kids is not something you must be able to do.... Meaning, for example, that it should not be paid for by governmental... programs.
Same with schools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @06:05PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @05:35AM
Jew don underspland scarkasm.
Clerly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 11 2016, @08:25PM
Every child must be educated. Not every child must become a parent.
Do political debates really matter? Ask Joe!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @08:33PM
For thousands of years kids did not receive the privileged education they get today. It's completely unnecessary and the government shouldn't be paying for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @09:25PM
For thousands of years the life expectancy was below 50 years, you were lucky if you survived past the age of 5, and the local warlord practically owned your life.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 11 2016, @09:28PM
For thousands of years kids did not receive the privileged education they get today.
Yeah, and for thousands of years civilization was generally shitty. I mean fuck, we didn't even grudgingly stop trying to prevent black people from voting* until the sixties! And even then they had to send in the National Guard to physically [wikipedia.org] force [wikipedia.org] people (governors!) down south to stop being racist assholes.
Being educated is not optional for 21st century society. How *much* education is. A populace with less education is generally easier to control and take advantage of.
*Yes this is probably oversimplifying the problem and racism still exists. You know what I mean.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 11 2016, @09:37PM
Armed escort
Woodrow Wilson Mann, the mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to enforce integration and protect the nine students. On September 24, the President ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army—without its black soldiers, who rejoined the division a month later—to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000-member Arkansas National Guard, taking it out of the hands of Faubus.[8]
Oh for fuck's sake. In Little Rock, they had to send in the actual army, because the governor had called out the state National Guard to block the integration.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Troll) by c0lo on Friday March 11 2016, @04:42PM
What about the chance of the newborn from the transplanted uterus be the next Einstein, the one who manages to find feasible solution to FTL travel. The whole humanity would benefit for the entire life of the Universe.
Can you afford to kick such a huge benefit down?
---
(apologies, bradley13, mate, nothing personal, I don't know you.
It is your post that I have problems with, it managed to push my evil button)
Warning, warning warning: EXTREME RANT
On the same line, using a religious "ethic" instead of a "rational" one: if God have wanted the uteri to be transplant-able, He'd have created them with loop-and-hook velcro bands.
Fucking righteousness
It can't be "live and let live"!
It must be "the good of many prevails over to good of the few"... as long as "the good" get's defined by them.
Funny thing... they may be not even be aware of how they think. After a while, righteousness becomes their second nature, an instinctive behav... nay, a knee jerk reaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by fustakrakich on Friday March 11 2016, @05:10PM
What about the chance of the newborn from the transplanted uterus be the next Einstein, the one who manages to find feasible solution to FTL travel.
Yeah, except the kid genius was born in the wrong place and got blown up by a cluster bomb. Oopsy-daisy
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @05:19PM
What about the chance of the newborn from the transplanted uterus be the next Einstein, the one who manages to find feasible solution to FTL travel. The whole humanity would benefit for the entire life of the Universe.
Can you afford to kick such a huge benefit down?
You can't use that to guide yourself in life. What if you marry the wrong person and instead she would have married someone else and had the next Einstein, the one who manages to find feasible solution to FTL travel? The whole of humanity would benefit but now they won't because you decided to marry the wrong person. Kill yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @08:06AM
Not applicable, I'm not married.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @12:32PM
Yes it is! We would have had the next Einstein if you hadn't selfishly evaded marriage.
(Score: 3, Touché) by nitehawk214 on Friday March 11 2016, @05:28PM
What if by not posing on this site ever again you encourage someone to become the next Einstein and discover FTL travel?
EVEN IF THERE IS A 1% CHANCE YOU MUST BELIEVE IT IS TRUE!
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @08:14AM
I got 3 replies to the post.
None of which showed any disagreement with the "Fucking righteousness" part of it.
It must be that the whole SN agreed with it! What a harmonious community!!
(grin)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday March 11 2016, @04:43PM
You should have spoken up before sperm donation, infertility treatment, etc.
And, let's be honest, a vasectomy is not something you NEED. It's something you choose to have. I'd rather have a million parents who CHOOSE to have a child having them (even if that means transplants and treatments) than one who chooses NOT to being forced, or unable to find assistance in stopping it, to have one.
Hence we should speak out against anti-abortion, anti-contraception, forced marriage, etc. too.
But a womb transplant? No worse than any other infertility treatment.
I'd much rather we spent any time arguing against that on getting rid of parents who should never have had children in the first place.
This is also my answer for people who foster, adopt, or have children in homosexual relationships. You're almost saying "How dare they desire to look after a child so much that they undergo radical and dangerous medical procedures to do so?" I'd rather have them than some kid who sleeps around or some rape victim being forced (socially or legally) to have a baby they don't want, or some drug addict having babies because they were high and don't remember the conception, or they might get child benefits for it.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday March 11 2016, @05:16PM
Imho, this is an unethical medical procedure.
Not to mention the possibility of necessarily exposing any pregnancy to all those immunosuppressant drugs. I'm sure they're not all "Category A" [drugs.com]. It's one thing to see if something can be done. But being able to do something is not necessarily a good enough reason to do it. Once we can grow or print a uterus from stem cells and perform what would essentially be an autograft - with minimal rejection possibility - this procedure would become viable. As it is, however, I think there's a certain lack of forward thinking that went into the process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @09:04PM
Some women have to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their immune system from killing their babies. Unless the baby is a result of multiple inbreeding events, it will be foreign to the mother.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 11 2016, @09:13PM
Regardless of how you get your uterus, the part that worries me is that a pregnancy massively stretches the uterus. And it'd better remain perfectly connected to all the nutrient sources as it crushes everything around it until it stretches a woman's waist to a few times the original size. And it gets kicked around from the inside, then has to massively contract (correctly) to eject its contents (though there's a bypass for that one).
There's a million ways a pregnancy can go wrong (when in med school, my sister always joked she wondered how any babies are born healthy at all, given the known stats and the unknown factors).
Having a pregnancy inside a uterus that some human did a best-effort at connecting sounds absolutely friggin' nuts!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12 2016, @12:02AM
From TFS:
Nine uterus transplants have taken place in Sweden, resulting in 5 pregnancies and 4 births.
It sounds "absolutely friggin' nuts!", but that is one of the amazing things about modern medicine.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 11 2016, @07:45PM
...living in a uterus that could be rejected at any time...
I don't think organ transplants work like that. There's an initial risk that the immune system reject an organ transplant but once it's been assimilated that risk goes away.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Dunbal on Friday March 11 2016, @09:01PM
I don't think organ transplants work like that.
Yes they do. And I'll use my authority as a doctor to state that. Rejection can be acute, hyperacute or chronic. You can also have the host rejecting the graft (the uterus) OR you can have the graft reject the host, although for obvious reasons this is more common in blood/bone marrow transplants. But organs contain immune-type cells as part of their make up and they can start to react against the host. There is a much higher risk of any rejection initially, but you're dealing with the immune system. For reasons that are not 100% clear yet, it can become suddenly triggered against a particular antigen at any time, just like you can become suddenly allergic to something at any time. Most people when asked "are you allergic to peanuts (for example)" answer incorrectly by saying "no, I've had peanuts with no problems". One of the necessary conditions for allergy is that you have to have been exposed to the allergen at some point in your life. The technically correct answer would be "I haven't had a problem with peanuts so far"... There are the exceptions (gut bacteria can get up to mischief sometimes) but they're not the norm.
Anyway that's why transplant recipients are kept on medication that depresses the immune response for the rest of their lives. This medication does it's job - depressing the immune system, which means that transplant recipients need to be monitored carefully and regularly for the rest of their lives, since they can get infections much faster and that are much more severe than the average person.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 11 2016, @10:28PM
Ethics are for pansies. If you can afford to pay, you should be able to get the therapy/surgery you want.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 11 2016, @04:10PM
Stuff happens to guys sometimes, making our junk useless. If something happened to mine, I can't really imagine having a doctor graft on some other person's junk. It's kinda creepy to even think about it.
Is this something that women are cool with, or are we just looking at some outlier, trying to make a point?
Do political debates really matter? Ask Joe!
(Score: 5, Informative) by draconx on Friday March 11 2016, @04:24PM
Well, we've talked about penis transplants [soylentnews.org] on this site before.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 11 2016, @08:13PM
Well, we've talked about penis transplants on this site before.
And nobody was going on about how unethical the idea was. Why the double-standard, Soylent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @09:07PM
Can a penis get pregnant? Does a penis go around carrying a baby for 9 months, a baby that dies if the penis falls off? No? THERE YOU GO, FUCKWIT.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @05:22PM
Sorry there was a special on asians this week. But look on the bright side - you'll never get it caught in your zipper!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 11 2016, @05:26PM
Organs were meant to do work. If you can get a grown or transplanted replacement for a non-functional or missing organ, why not?
Uterus != genitals. You aren't going to look down and notice it. I don't see why it would be "creepy".
Say you do get a penis transplant. What's creepy about that? Spell it out for us, because your post is old-timey backwards thinking.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday March 11 2016, @05:31PM
Organs were meant to do work.
I dunno about you, but my ass seems to be specially designed for sitting on! It refuses to work for me, it certainly isn't going to work for you...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 11 2016, @05:32PM
The organ is skin, right? It's doing the work of not allowing pathogens to kill your ass!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 11 2016, @07:40PM
"reproductive organs" does indeed equal "reproductive organs". Or, near enough, bearing in mind that only the testes and the ovaries have comparable functions.
Backward, ehhh? So, if you lost your testes, you would be cool with a transplant from - a brother? Just anyone? If so, whose children would you be fathering? Interesting idea, cuckolding yourself, voluntarily.
On the other hand, transplanting a penis might be less creepy, if you get to keep your own testicles. In that case, you're just borrowing someone else's hose to deliver your own sperm.
Whatever, it seems creepy to be using another person's reproductive organs. Going to the bother of replacing those organs only has one goal, after all - to reproduce. Assuming that all the other bits and pieces are in place, the woman can probably enjoy an active sex life, without the uterus, just a man can enjoy sex after a vasectomy.
Maybe I am backward. If I'm going to invest all the money, time, and energy into raising a kid, I'd like to think that the kid is really mine. Investing in some other person's DNA is less appealing than extending my own family tree.
Do political debates really matter? Ask Joe!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 11 2016, @09:04PM
Eventually we will post a story about growing a new (longer) penis or a uterus from your own stem cells, for the purpose of transplantation.
And someone will comment "waaah fertility research is a waste of money! only the rich benefit!!11". There's no pleasing the crowd.
As for the testes thing, the penis transplant guy I heard of fathered his own child, so testes weren't involved. I doubt that a donor testicle transplant would even work, or would keep producing another man's sperm. That would be funny though.
This uterus transplant technique would be greatly enhanced by lab-grown organs. It's not like these transplant are going to routinely fail because of surgical complications. It's the rejection and need for anti-rejection drugs that is the main obstacle, and yet women have still had children with these temporary uteruses.
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(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday March 11 2016, @10:42PM
I found a Web page about testicular transplantation [altpenis.com]. It says the first (unsuccessful) attempt on a human was in 1911, then the procedure became widespread in the 1920s, with questionable results, and really took off when a doctor named Serge Voronoff [wikipedia.org] started implanting bits of testicular tissue from chimpanzees into humans. For some reason [nih.gov], the surgery fell out of favour [wikimedia.org]. Then in 1977, a testicular transplant was done between identical twins by someone called Sherman Silber [wikipedia.org], and resulted in four children. Wikipedia erroneously credits Silber with "the world's first ovary and testicle transplants."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 11 2016, @05:09PM
Is something causing merged stories to get tagged with breaking? I think I've seen this before, where it wasn't a choice of the editor or submitter.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Saturday March 12 2016, @08:40AM
How could they fail? Done in Saudi Arabia 2000, Turkey 2012 [dailymail.co.uk], 9 patients in Sweden 2014 [cbsnews.com] and so on. Doesn't seem like a Nobel prize feat anymore.
I think many people now did the observation that many women will do *anything* to make babies. But with current transplant technology the recipient has to take copious amount of medicines. Not something really compatible with the health of the offspring. Having a penis or vagina transplant is something else. It mainly affect the one that makes the decision.
Babies isn't a consumer product. It's a new life.