Womb transplants Vs Preservation of life

[truman]

That's a very good point.

By virtue of the fact a uterus is transplanted the woman would have to take high doses of immunosuppressants for life for the uterus not to be rejected which would be very harmful to the developing foetus if, indeed, the woman could even get pregnant.

 

I think a successful pregnancy/birth has already been accomplished in Sweden..

[Jeffrey Shaw]

I think the issue here is why the NHS should have to fund infertility treatment.

Surely the NHS is for sick people - does infertility fall into that bracket ?

 

That's really a question about how we define sickness and illness.

The NHS funds all kinds of things that people could manage without, but just because someone can function doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong.

Good points. On balance- and on balance sheet to (what with the NHS having overspent by £infinity so far this year)- I would lean towards the NHS confining itself to fixing illness/disease; let lifestyle treatment be funded only by those who seek them.

[jfish1936]

Googling "uterus transplant" led to the Wikipaedia article, which contains good information and references to professional literature, with abrief ethical discussion.

They quote a possible incidence of "absent womb" as 1/4,500; this suggests to me a ballpark figure of 10,000 women in Britain eligible for the surgery,some too old, some too young; maybe 500 cases a year (give or take 1,000 or so either way!)

 

Note that at least three surgeries sre needed:

Initial transplant;

Caesarian section for delivery;

Final hysterectomy to remove the need for immunosuppressants.

 

Religious question:

If this operation is done on a Roman Catholic woman, would the church accept her sterilisation by the final hysterectomy?.

 

From reference 9 in the Wikipaedia article:

A deep body of evidence and literature has established no statistically significant increase in the incidence of newborn malformation in the post-transplant setting of many solid organs. Reports from the National Transplantation Pregnancy Registry (NTPR) and others strongly support maintenance of immunosuppression combination therapy regimens during pregnancy [11–13]. Although malformation and development risk has been reported for certain regimens, the flexibility of available low-morbidity immunosuppression protocols used with other organ transplants suggests that UTx regimens could be formulated to minimize gestational harm [11].

Edited October 12, 2015 by jfish1936
including extra information

[truman]

Good points. On balance- and on balance sheet to (what with the NHS having overspent by £infinity so far this year)- I would lean towards the NHS confining itself to fixing illness/disease; let lifestyle treatment be funded only by those who seek them.

 

What if a person's infertility is caused by a disease?

[Jeffrey Shaw]

What if a person's infertility is caused by a disease?

Perhaps the answer might be to look at the disease and whether it's life-threatening?