Why I'm not convinced by uterine transplants.
I was watching a programme on TV the other night called 'Transplanting Memory', about people who had undergone organ transplantation who suddenly found themselves experiencing memories of their donors and even taking on aspects of the donors personality. For instance, one lady sat up in her hospital bed after the surgery and demanded beer, even though she had never drunk it before. An 8 year old heart recipient had repeated nightmares about being murdered, and it turns out her 10 year old donor had been murdered. She was able to give details to the police, from donor memory, which resulted in the murderer's conviction.
Scientists are just beginning to realise that there's more to transplantation than simply replacing the car's engine with a new one because its broken. There is the possibility of cellular memory, the possibility that our memories don't die with us, but are retained in tissues and cells. It's a rare problem for recipients, but it happens. Could it happen with uterine transplants, too?
Another major ethical issue is that of organ rejection. Patients normally have to take a battery of different drugs for the rest of their lives in order to stop themselves rejecting the organ. These drugs suppress the immune system so it can't recognise the organ as a foreign body and attack it. This sounds great in principle but it means that the person's immune system is nearly switched off, leaving them suseptible to colds, viruses, infections and other diseases. Would women wanting children really want to put themselves through that risk to their health?
As the womb will have been put in surgically, there might also be the risk of rupturing during pregnancy which is potentially life threatening to both the mother and the baby. There may be an increased risk of premature delivery and all the health complications that poses for the baby, not to mention the fact that the baby would have to be delivered by caesarean section, which has a mortality rate for the mother 3 times higher than vaginal birth. I'm not downplaying the agony of childlessness, but when there are so many other options available, such as surrogacy, I can't see why anybody would take such risks with themselves or their baby.
