Can testes be transplanted?

General Questions
#1

Also, are autologous organ transplants possible?

Let’s say we have a happily-married couple, crazily in love with each other. We’ll call them Art and Gwen. They’ve been living in connubial bliss for a few years, and together they’ve decided to gift the world with the fruit of their loins. Tragically, Art is in a serious mishap that mortally wounds him. Gwen is given the bad news while sitting in the hospital chapel (with Art’s best friend Lance at her side to provide comfort and support), and is asked if she wishes to donate Art’s organs so that others may live.

But Gwen, in her grief, can only focus on one thing: her dreams of bearing Art’s child(ren) have been snatched away by the cold, unfeeling hand of Fate. Then Lance steps up, and makes the following offer to Gwen: if Art’s doctor (whose name is Merle, for some reason) will only* remove and store his (Lance’s) testicles, and transplant Art’s testicles in their place, then he (Lance) will do his level best to get Gwen pregnant with Art’s child. It doesn’t even have to be a carnal conception — Lance is perfectly happy to donate Art’s specimens for IVF; he was just that good a friend. And after Lance has done his final favor to his old pal, and Gwen has borne Art’s baby, Lance will return to Dr. Merle and have his original testicles reinstalled and maybe start a family of his own someday.

Is any of this even remotely possible?

*I realize that this sentence stresses the word “only” to its breaking point, and I beg y’all’s indulgence.

#2

If Lance is willing to take Art’s parts then that might work. I sincerely doubt that Dr Merle could store Lance’s original equipment in any kind of transplant viable condition for any length of time.

#3

If they’re going to do IVF, I’d think they’d not have to transplant the testes at all. Couldn’t they extract viable sperm from Art’s after his death?

#4

I can’t imagine any ethical doctor doing something like this except between identical twins, and then only to make hormones should one of them lose his own testicles due to disease or injury.

#5

Lance only needs to take one, not both, and have his own tied off for the time needed. So he can remain semi-intact without worrying about recovering his removed organ.
Can’t really see why this wouldn’t work in principle. Lance would need to take the usual anti-rejection drugs whist carrying the transplant. Should be about it.

If you were only concerned about harvesting Art’s sperm, there is no requirement that the testes are plumbed in properly. All they need is a blood supply. You could implant them under a skin flap anywhere and redirect a couple of suitable blood vessels. Add a drain and away you go. Lance could remain quite intact. Heck, if it were only until you have a viable amount of sperm harvested Gwen could probably host the organ. The hormonal difficulties would only transitory and probably manageable.

The ethical question only comes down the now well worn one of a widdow’s right to her deceased husband’s sperm, and the right to become pregnant with it. No different to those questions of access to long frozen sperm.

#6

There’s the ‘ick’ factor i cannot get past. On a bunch of levels.

#7

In the OP’s scenario, who would be the legal father of any resulting children? The sperm would have Art’s DNA, but they would be produced by Lance’s body. A paternity test would pin Art as the father, but a calendar would show that as an impossibility.

#8

Of course, albeit I understand that they would have a limited number of opportunities to try to conceive.

I’m trying to work out whether some Casanova could make a living by renting out his phallus to bereaved widows with acts to their late husbands’ testicles.

#9

Earlier this year, surgeons performed the first-ever penis and scrotum transplant.

But the testicles were NOT transplanted for ethical reasons:

More details:

Transplanted testicles will always make the donor’s sperm

#10

Posthumous sperm retrieval.

#11

Lance has every right to insist on full carnal knowledge, IMHO.

#12

Seriously?

#13

I just imagine the doctor’s face as Lance explains this scenario.

#14

As fun as this all might be, it’d probably just be quicker and easier to use electroejaculation to collect semen from the donor.

(The More You Know!)

#15

[Moderating]

Your opinion isn’t relevant here in this fact-based discussion, and even if it were, it’s disgusting. The word for men insisting on sex is “rape”, and no, they don’t have any right to it, ever.

#16

Extremely bad and tasteless joke on my part. I apologize.

#17

Wow. That’s really cool. I wonder if that is something that could eventually be used for FTM gender reassignment surgery.

#18

A 2015 article that addresses the issue.

Some interesting history there too.

There has been success between twins.