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First Baby Born After Deceased Womb Transplant (bbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the medical-milestone dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A healthy baby girl has been born using a womb transplanted from a dead person. The 10-hour transplant operation -- and later fertility treatment -- took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2016. The mother, 32, was born without a womb. There have been 39 womb transplants using a live donor, including mothers donating their womb to their daughter, resulting in 11 babies. But the 10 previous transplants from a dead donor have failed or resulted in miscarriage. In this case, reported in The Lancet, the womb donor was a mother of three in her mid-40s who died from bleeding on the brain. The recipient reportedly had Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, which affects about one in every 4,500 women and results in the vagina and uterus (womb) failing to form properly.

The baby girl was delivered by Caesarean section on December 15, 2017, weighing 6 pounds (2.5kg).

3 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Could vs. Should by rmdingler · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Perhaps and only maybe this is one of those things that we do without a great amount of consideration if we should?!?!

    I know the earth is critically short of humans, but marketing dead wombs to people with broken wombs seems a bit macabre... how does the doc begin that conversation?

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Could vs. Should by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps and only maybe this is one of those things that we do without a great amount of consideration if we should?!?!

      Perhaps you should not be so judgemental. The mother and baby are both doing fine, so no harm was done. Medical knowledge was advanced.

      Individuals should be allowed to own and control their own bodies, and make their own informed decisions. It is none of your business.

      marketing dead wombs to people with broken wombs seems a bit macabre

      This is the very first successful procedure, so I doubt if any "marketing" was done.

  2. media sensationalism by SuperDre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hmmm.. so it's a womb that was taken from a deadperson, than later the woman who got the womb got pregnant and delivered a baby.. That makes it a tad bit different than the initial headline might suggest, as I thought it was a pregnant lady that died and they had transplanted the womb including the baby into the other woman and then delivered the baby.. that would make the story quite different.