Babies and wombs: medical advice needed.

aruna said:

Is it medically possible to transplant the foetus from A's womb to B's?

Click to expand...

no.

considering the extensive physiological changes that occur during pregnancy - not just w the hormones but w the way the blood is supplied to the fetus, it's impossible to transplant a fetus.

this isnt like transferring one organ to another body (which itself is a complicated process) this is transferring one living being into another.

just wont happen.

A gigantic no.

Surrogate mothering is possible, which may be what you were thinking of. However, the zygote never really goes from one woman to the other; egg cells are removed from the genetic mother, are fertilized by sperm in a lab (run by a fertility agency), and are then implanted into the surrogate mother. And this has to occur at an extremely early stage of development--basically at the fertilized egg stages. They'll let it run through a few cell divisions, then put it in and hope it implants.

This is why what you're suggesting is impossible. To hunt for an unimplanted ball of cells in the genetic-mother is madness, and once that ball of cells is implanted and has started developing, it can't be removed without killing it. Even if one could remove the fetus while it was still alive, not only would the recepient mother's body not have recieved any pregnancy hormones, and be unable at that time to support a fetus of any stage of development (other than egg-level), but there'd likely be some serious incompatibility issues between the surrogate mother and the infant.

If you're writing a sci-fi or futuristic story though, you could probably say science has advanced to the point where this is possible. And someday it might be.

The placenta is a temporary organ that acts as a biological barrier between mother and fetus. It allows mom and child to have different blood types by keeping the blood separate, but still allows oxygen and nutrients to transfer between mom and kid.

The placenta is biologically/genetically part mom and part child. So, even if you could figure out the mechanical plumbing in a transplant, you'd then have to deal with the possibility of organ rejection as the new mom's immune system see's the old mom's organ tissue and attacks it. It would definitely be a weird procedure, even for a SF story.

In case you didn't get enough "no" answers... add me in.

You might want to check out this story from the Associated Press about transplanting donor wombs from cadavers into women who have had hysterectomies so that they can have a baby, and then removing the womb. Sounds crazy to me, but maybe it will work with your story.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UTERUS_TRANSPLANTS?SITE=NYPOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT