First Uterus Transplant in the US Planned

Filed in archive Other Biotechnology News on January 24, 2007

Doctors at the of the New York Downtown Hospital are planning the first womb transplant in the United States.

"I think we're ready," Del Priore said. "There is always more you could do. But knowing what my colleagues in the field have done and what we have done, we think it's absolutely doable."

If the transplant works, women with functioning ovaries might be able to conceive without the need for IVF. The procedure has been attempted in 2002 in Saudi Arabia, and although blood clotting forced surgeons to remove the organ after 99 days, they called it a technical success. Still the issue has raised a lot of controversy, not only from the medical standpoint, but also from the social and cultural implications.

"I think we should do more animal research before we do it in a human," said Mats Braennstroem of Goeteborg University in Sweden, who has been trying the procedure on mice, pigs and sheep. "We have to be sure it's a safe procedure and that we know exactly how we would do it in humans. We haven't done all those experiments yet."

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