Infertile Daughter To Receive Uterus From Mother

kkleiner writes "Led by Dr. Mats Brännström, a team of surgeons at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden are giving Sara Ottosson, now 25 years old, hope that she may one day fulfill her dream of giving birth to a baby. The uterus will come from a very special donor: Eva Ottosson, Sara's mother. Sara's operation will mark only the second time transplantation of a uterus has been attempted in humans, and the first time between a mother and daughter."

Comments

Not really so rare

[sackvillian]

Many children inherit their childhood home.

Re:well ...

[kimvette]

Uterus != ovaries, so no.

Responsible?

[steevven1]

I feel bad for the girl who has problems with infertility, but is it really responsible to put your child at higher risk by having it grow in an essentially experimental situation, when you could just deal with your unfortunate problem, make the best of a bad situation, and possibly adopt?

Re:Responsible?

[Anonymous Coward]

agree.

It is pathetic how many resources are wasted on fertility medicine. There are plenty of children in need of adoption (not the foreign adopt a stolen kid kind); many children languish in foster care, only to graduate to the penal system when they turn 18. These kids could have radically different life paths if, folks instead invested the money, that would have gone to a fertility clinic, in an adopted child's education and upbringing..

Re:Responsible?

[Seumas]

No, you have to remember. Squirting out one of your own makes you a wise sage and quite nearly a saint for looking after your own responsibility for the next eighteen years. It's everyone else who doesn't squirt one out and demand to replicate their genetic structure like wild dogs that are selfish and self-centered. Media outlets act like the people in this family are a cross between victims and heroes, when the real admirable thing to do would be to put all that money and energy spent trying to reproduce those faulty genes into helping some poor child out there who would be delighted to have a family of their own.

Re:Responsible?

[Rei]

There's a variety of different ways uterine transplants can be done, and different surgeons are looking at different ones. Two major differences are whether you're dealing donors from cadavers and donors from live patients. Donor uteruses from cadavers obviously aren't doing their owner any good. Donor uteruses from live patients will be generally from surgical situations where the uterus would be removed anyway (clearly not in this situation, but in the general case...). The use of cadavers allows a lot more of the surrounding tissue to be transplanted, which makes blood vessel reconnections easier; however, organs from cadavers are more likely to have complications.

My sympathies to your GF; antiepileptics are generally pretty nasty during pregnancy to the fetus. My spouse is also epileptic, although is trying to wean herself off them. I myself follow this news closely.

Re:Responsible?

[cheekyjohnson]

I'd say she should adopt a child. I think that this world is already overpopulated with humans as it is.

Re:Responsible?

[Kjella]

Those that fight to have their own child, stay in the gene pool. Those that don't and raise someone else's, exit the gene pool. You don't get much stronger evolutionary pressure than that. Also from what I've heard it's not that hard to find people to adopt babies or very young children. Those you find in foster care are often older, taken out of their home because they've suffered neglect, abuse or molestation and alcoholics or junkies as parents. As a result many of them have developed huge problems of their own, which many people are reluctant to adopt. And if you end up with someone that's already in the rebellious phase who likes to point out you're not his real parents, well the amount of bonding you get will be limited. Even if people got other the part about having their own child, don't expect the institutions to be empty.

Re:Responsible?

[narcc]

How many resources are wasted on curing deafness?

Most of them, I'd wager. The "deaf community" is very hostile to cochlear implants -- they actually think being deaf is a good thing.

There's a neat documentary (it's watch instant on netflix) called "Sound and Fury". If you didn't hate "deaf culture", you will after watching this eye-opening documentary.

Never mind the rampant illiteracy and extraordinarily low unemployment, these idiots think that being deaf is perfectly normal and that they're not limited in way. Thus, they refuse their children the one technology that will make their lives easier.

Hell, one deaf school fired it's superintendent for not being deaf from birth. These people are evil.

Re:Responsible?

[trytoguess]

Also, just to note, there's a sequel to the documentary called Sound and Fury 6 Years Later. Turns out the two deaf parents decided to implant Heather 3 years later when she was 9, and even the mom got implanted. All in all, I think the parents acted in a fairly understandable way. Initially, they were against implanting since it brought up too much emotions about deaf people being inferior, but they later accepted that it'd be better if the kids were able to walk two worlds so to speak. Frankly their issues were so similar to the ones faced by immigrant cultures that it was rather eerie.

Re:And they do that with socialized medicine!

[Macrat]

How about choosing adoption?

So, daughter's husband dropping his seed into....

[ip_freely_2000]

the mother-in-law's uterus. I think my testicles just shrank into my belly.

If this fails, she plans to adopt

[gr8dude]

The ending bit of the video attached to the article - "if this fails, she plans to adopt". Can you blame her for trying before giving up?

You say "can't replicate like a feral cat", but that is not what is really happening. Those parents who abandon their children usually breed like feral cats (hence there is a great supply of such children), whereas in her case it is not mentioned anywhere that she wants a "houseful" of babies.

You also say that people should better spend their money in different ways. But if they earned it, don't they have the right to choose what to do with it? [as long as it is not something illegal - like buying guns and killing other people]

I may have acted differently, had I been in their shoes, but I can't say I have reasons to say they are stupid or irresponsible.

Re:well ...

[imsabbel]

Made the same mistake in my comment below, before looking up the Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome.

Scary part: Relevance 1 in 5000. Main symptom: no uterus _and_ no vagina.

Wikipedia has also the following insane story:
"In 1988, a teenager living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. The doctors were puzzled, however, because she did not have a vagina, only a shallow skin dimple. Doctors traced her pregnancy to a knife wound to her abdomen 278 days earlier, after she had practiced fellatio on her boyfriend. The sperm had leaked from her stomach to her abdominal cavity and fertilized one of her eggs. This case was reported by Dr. Richard Paulson, head of the University of Southern California Fertility Program in Los Angeles, February 3, 2010.[3]"

Sounds just like something from House...