Historical event - a uterus transplant!

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This amazing medical break through is sure to create a lot of interest on many levels. It should also stimulate CD/TG writer's story-lines. "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..."

"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." "Dr. Testa said: “I think many men will never understand this fully, to understand the desire of these women to be mothers..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/health/uterus-transplant-baby.html

Comments

Likely not pure XX

Speaking from an admitted depth of ignorance, I think the woman is not pure XX, but Intersex, though I do not know what the combination would be. Though some other research says that she is CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome), meaning that her cells do not have the androgen receptors to correctly act with female hormones, and is not intersex.

Birth defect

Frank's picture

I don't think it is anything more than a birth defect. She had ovaries with eggs. I don't see anything to indicate anything genetic.

Hugs

Frank

For fiction

shiinaai's picture

For fiction, it's a nice idea. However, if anyone were to think that this will revolutionize MtF, I'm sorry, please don't keep your hopes up.

Uterus transplantation is nothing new. It's been done several times before, often done through strict procedures because the chance for organ reaction is very high, a source I read a couple of years ago even suggested the rejection chance to be higher than heart transplant. That's why the uterus can only come from the closest match within the person's immediate blood relatives, from mother to daughter in most cases.

For the uterus to function after transplantation, the person's genes matter too. I don't know exactly why it won't work, but a doctor friend told me that "whoever tells you that a man getting transplanted uterus can get pregnant are lying to you and most probably just wants to charge you through the roof or secretly wants you dead." It simply wouldn't work, same case with ovarian implants on male receivers, wouldn't work either.

Again, it's fine if it's fiction. You can attribute it to either magic, different laws of biology (considering that seahorses can change their gender at will in our world) or higher level of technology.

I'm saying this because one of my coworkers actually believed it. He said he and his boyfriend was saving money for this operation in America, and at first I asked if he was joking. When he said he wasn't, I showed him all the facts surrounding the issue. I was sure that whoever told him it could be done just wanted to get his money,.