The Swedish expert behind the
research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ
donor would be the patient's own mother - raising the
prospect of carrying your children in the same womb that
carried you.
He says that it may even be
technically possible one day to transplant a womb into a
man, and use hormone injections to allow a pregnancy to
succeed.
However, it would be the first organ
transplant which is not needed to cure a life-threatening
illness, and there is likely to be a debate over whether
such major surgery - and powerful immune-suppressing drugs -
can be justified.
Professor Mats Brannstrom,
presenting his work at the European Society for Human
Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Madrid on
Tuesday, said that he had been inundated with pleas for help
from women after it was revealed last year that he had
transplanted wombs into mice - and produced live baby mice.
Womb surgery
There are many thousands of women of
childbearing age who have perfectly good ovaries, but no
womb - some who were born without one, and some whose wombs
were removed at a young age, either as a result of cancer,
or as a result of another kind of medical emergency.
Until recently, there has been no
prospect of them bearing their own children, leaving them
only the option of surrogacy - which is illegal in many
countries.
Studies of other female transplant
patients taking immunosuppressant drugs during pregnancy
have not shown any adverse effects.
The first human womb transplant has
already been attempted by surgeons in Saudi Arabia.
Their success was short-lived - the
organ had to removed less than 100 days later when a blood
supply failure caused the transplanted tissue to start
dying. There was no attempt to start a pregnancy with this
patient.
Professor Brannstrom plans to use a
different surgical technique to avoid this problem.
Legal option
He said that having a transplant
organ was more desirable than a simple surrogacy arrangement
with the mother and sister in question.
He said: "In many countries,
surrogacy is illegal - and in others, the person who gives
birth to the baby is officially recorded as the parent.
"In addition, it is impossible to
control lifestyle factors, even if a surrogate promises they
will not drink or smoke or take drugs during pregnancy."
However, all major abdominal surgery
carries a risk of death or serious injury - the risk of just
having a general anaesthetic is reckoned at one in every
3,000 patients.
Dr Phil Dyer, the president of the
British Transplantation Society, told BBC News Online that
taking immunosuppressing drugs also presented a risk.
He said: "There will be a debate
over whether organs should be transplanted where there is no
direct benefit to the patient in terms of their health -
though there might of course be an emotional benefit in
terms of quality of life."
