If a male of any age has the female reproductive organs surgically implanted into his body (And of course if he took proper medications to keep himself, or herself, from dying). If she also took female sex hormones (Estrogen and what else?), Could that man/woman have a child without it and the child dying? Have there been any experiments of that sort?
note: I don’t plan to have a sex change operation
;j
Sorry, friend, you can’t “surgically implant” reproductive organs. So the answer is no, not at this time.
IANAD, but here’s my take:
Organ transplant recipients have to take daily doses of antirejection medicine. The medicine supresses their immune systems, so everything from the common cold to cancer becomes a greater threat to their health. It would probably be possible to transplant a woman’s reproductive system into a man, and the man might be able to bear a child this way, but the risks associated with the transplant far outweigh any benefit and make it a foolish thing to try.
I don’t suppose anti-rejection drugs would help, would it? Are there different “levels” of rejection, and/or does the rejection mechanism of the human body reject a replacement organ differently than a completely new organ?
I suspect that anti-rejection drugs might mess with any pregnancy.
In addition, if you implant a uterus all the eggs will contain the genetic material of the donor. I think it’s the same deal with testicles.
And I hate to be citeless, but I do recall some article about a gender reassignment transplant operation between two transexuals (mtf and ftm, obviously) a few years ago. Can’t find a cite in Google and got tired of wading through porn (using the terms “transplant transexual”:rolleyes: ).
At one point the Chinese claimed that they had successfully performed a dual transplant between two transsexuals. The Chinese have a long record of claiming all sorts of scientific achievements that go against the common consensus, usually without anything to back up their claim. They never backed up their claim on that one either.
Think about it: in order to perform such a transplant, you would need two people who were:
of opposite genders
both transsexual
of roughly the same body weight
of the exact same tissue type
at exactly the same time.
The chances of finding even a single candidate pair to test is minute, to say the least. The chances of ever developing a useful surgical protocol are nil without experimental candidates. Even if a surgical protocol is developed, most transsexuals will not be candidates for it because of the issues outlined above; therefore, there’s no real-world incentive to develop such techniques.
Of course, all of this goes out the window if we ever get to the point of single-tissue cloning, but that’s nowhere near reality.
Acually there are a good number of transexuals, realistically candidates for the experiment would be hard to find. On the note of the fact that the donor would be spreading their genetic information: I personally don’t know how far we’ve gotten with cloning, but there are people who wouldn’t care (lol I make myself sound like a transexual don’t I?). And I know some scientist somewhere has to be doing a similar experiment with rodents and the like (Scientists do tend to experiment on random things, such as Viagra)
There are persistent rumors, as Some Guy mentions, that organ swaps have been performed in China, but this has never been independently confirmed and most of us believe it’s bullshit. I personally would consider the need for antirejection drugs too much of a price to pay, especially since the implanted organs probably wouldn’t work anyway.
Uterine transplants have been attempted in Saudi Arabia between genetically similiar women; however, as far as I know no such attempt has resulted in a live birth. (The Saudis have a religious objection to in vitro fertizilization, so uterine transplants are their answer to infertility, usually performed between sisters or from mother to daughter.) Generally, something goes wrong and the recipient’s body rejects the uterus before the child comes to term. As I recall, there are also problems simply with getting enough blood to the womb, and there may also be issues with maternal antibodies attacking the placenta, antirejection drugs notwithstanding.
It’s unclear whether a genetically male individual would be able to produce the necessary hormones to support a pregnancy in progress. Several important hormones of pregnancy are excreted by the ovary during pregnancy.
That_King2:
Note: you don’t need one. The fertilized ovum will happily latch onto pretty much any blood-rich tissue, as many ectopic pregnancy victims will attest. You could keep your male parts (and dispense with any perceived need for female parts) and quite possibly gestate it to the point of viability in your abdominal cavity if a c-section at the appropriate time is OK with you.
Wasn’t that basically the plotline to Junior? And it still brings up a question, if not “How’s the fetus going to gestate? In a box?” then how does the fetus get nutrients?
Through the placenta.
Although the placenta normally latches on to the interior of a uterus, it is capable of parasitizing the intestines or even the liver. A uterus is not required for pregnancy, but it is highly recommend as etopic pregnancies have an extremely high complication rate, and a significant percentage end in death for one or both parties.