This is interesting to me at the margins, because one of the things I learned when my wife got pregnant the first time was that the womb is not exactly the warm cradle of nurturing that I had always (without thinking much about it) imagined, but in many ways a blast door or containment vessel to protect the mother (host) from the fetus (roughly, xenomorph) that would otherwise explode like an aggressive parasite (killing them both).
So I mean, you probably don't want to have any leaks or weak stitches in your uterus transplant...
> Results also suggested lower prevalence (p = 0.03) and concentration (p = 0.06) of male microchimerism in the brains of women with Alzheimer’s disease than the brains of women without neurologic disease.
> It’s no accident that many of the same genes active in embryonic development have been implicated in cancer. Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit.
Amazing article. Another reason that hardshelled laid eggs are such a great invention. The offspring can do its thing from a safe distance.
My uncle said yesterday that man's harsh nature goes back to Rome: Homo homini lupus.
The article says it goes back a lot further than Rome!
> So if it’s a fight, what started it? The original bone of contention is this: you and your nearest relatives are not genetically identical. In the nature of things, this means that you are in competition. And because you live in the same environment, your closest relations are actually your most immediate rivals.
"And so while the cooperative outcome would be the most efficient, you lead to a situation in which there are conflict costs, and I think this explains why things go wrong so often during pregnancy. Of course, at first sight it's strange, my heart and my liver have been functioning very well for for 62 years, and yet during pregnancy, you have a natural process that only lasts for nine months, and yet many things go wrong during it. And I would argue that the reason why pregnancy doesn't work as smoothly as the normal functioning of the body is that in normal bodily functioning all the parts of the body are genetically identical to each other and working towards survival of that body, but in pregnancy, you have two different genetic individuals interacting with each other and natural selection can act at cross-purposes, there's a sort of politics going on, and we know that politics does not always lead to efficient outcomes."
> Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war.
I think this is a useful insight even on a higher level. For evolution (if you want to anthropomorphize it), war and conflict are just another set of tools in the toolbox. Where humans see those as evidence of something going wrong and evil to eradicated, for evolution it's "working as intended".
(Or, if you don't want to anthropomorphize it, an indication how much of evolution and biology is just barely tamed chaos)
(Careful to draw conclusions for human society from this though. People in the past had already seen the Darwinian "struggle between the species" as a model for society, which brought "Social Darwinism" and ultimately the Nazi ideology.
A different conclusion would be that biology is in fact not a perfect ideal to aspire to, and even in the situations where it "works", its factual objectives are not always the same as ours. Which does give legitimacy for the endeavor to improve upon it - for everyone)
> containment vessel to protect the mother (host) from the fetus (roughly, xenomorph) that would otherwise explode like an aggressive parasite (killing them both).
You can also flip the perspective the fetus is trying to survive in a hostile environment designed to strangle it. If it isn't clawing for every ounce of food and air it will become a miscarriage. It must interface with a system built for millenia designed to kill anything that doesn't have its code.
In truth, it is the equilibrium that evolution has achieved. Placenta must account for the most vicious fetus, and fetus must account for most vicious placenta.
> So I mean, you probably don't want to have any leaks or weak stitches in your uterus transplant...
With this sort of surgery, they wouldn't be cutting into the uterus (womb) itself when extracting it from the donor, but instead will cut around it to remove it, along with some very essential plumbing. The receiving mum will also be on industrial-strength immune suppressants anyway.
Where you DO have to worry about leaks and weak stitches is with said plumbing (uterine arteries and veins) -- they have to support virtual firehoses of blood through the duration of pregnancy, and their damage is one reason why a delivery can go south very, very quickly. Obstetric medicine is definitely a high-risk sport, which is why their malpractice insurance rates are head and shoulders above any other medical specialty. But I digress...
Absolutely. From what I understand, there's been an evolutionary war for resources between the womb and the placenta, which is a big part of why human pregnancies are so complicated and invasive compared to other mammals (because no other mammal has this anywhere near as extreme as we do).
I believe it all comes down to our giant noggin/brain. It's a giant resource tar pit, it's why we're born effectively premature, it's why we take forever to be in any shape of form self sufficient and it's why we would drain the mother of all resources available if she wouldn't regulate that desire to fuel our brain to the max.
Turns out, being the most intelligent apex comes with some gestational specialities.
They also check the blood type of the baby and the mother and I believe this is to make sure the mother won’t throw clots, and to take precautions if there’s a mismatch.
> The first baby born as a result of a womb transplant was in Sweden in 2014. Since then around 135 such transplants have been carried out in more than a dozen countries, including the US, China, France, Germany, India and Turkey. Around 65 babies have been born.
"Grace was born with a rare condition, Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, where the womb is missing or underdeveloped, but with functioning ovaries"
I stopped and looked at the natal photo for a while. It is a feeling I have not had before. This new life, chanced not only by lineage but multiple family members and a host of research and medical staff.
The image shows very little technology, but to me, is the epitome of how life and progress can unite.
Just for clarity, "in UK" is qualifying the whole thing, not that she just happened to be in the UK. A woman in Alabama had a child via a uterus transplant, among other places.
This is really cool but it's ultimately a stop-gap measure.
Where we want to end up is with artificial wombs because that will ultimately give individuals much more control over their reproduction and will do away with the onerous physiological and psychological stresses that pregnancy puts on women.
Actually we are still discovering and learning about the biology of birthing.
We can now support extremely premature babies outside the womb, but as of now, the risks of growing a baby in an artificial womb is not overcome with the benefits.
Why?
Because you are trivialising the emotions of pregnancy and motherhood. It is not stress all the time, it is also joy and satisfaction and like everything in life, a roller coaster.
If everything scientific inquiry accomplishes is a “miracle”, then nothing is.
Is it a miracle I can go to JFK and fly through the air and be in Europe for dinner?
It’s a surgical procedure. It’s cool that it worked. We don’t need to invoke the supernatural here, especially given the oodles of hard work that went into this by very real and natural human beings.
For my money I would say, yes, and I think Louis C.K. was right when he said, "Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, 'Oh my God! Wow!' You're sitting in a chair in the sky!"
Yes, but by that logic we should be dumbfounded with awe every time we speak to turn on the lights, make a long distance call, eat a fresh fruit grown on another continent, or walk around after open heart surgery.
At some point we should just assign credit where credit is due: thousands upon thousands of people working very hard for many decades to make the impossible possible.
Our modern world is amazing, but it’s not miraculous. It’s achievement, not supernatural.
Readit News
This is interesting to me at the margins, because one of the things I learned when my wife got pregnant the first time was that the womb is not exactly the warm cradle of nurturing that I had always (without thinking much about it) imagined, but in many ways a blast door or containment vessel to protect the mother (host) from the fetus (roughly, xenomorph) that would otherwise explode like an aggressive parasite (killing them both).
So I mean, you probably don't want to have any leaks or weak stitches in your uterus transplant...
Keywords: fetal microchimerism, placental barrier, trophoblast invasion
This is just a fact of reality for any women that have children though.
Eg male chromosomes from fetuses being found in women’s brains: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3458919/
(I don’t think this is believed to be unusual or an example of ‘containment failure’ of the womb)
It appears it may even be protective.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...
Red in tooth and claw at every layer, from the smallest cell to the entire biosphere.
Amazing article. Another reason that hardshelled laid eggs are such a great invention. The offspring can do its thing from a safe distance.
The article says it goes back a lot further than Rome!
> So if it’s a fight, what started it? The original bone of contention is this: you and your nearest relatives are not genetically identical. In the nature of things, this means that you are in competition. And because you live in the same environment, your closest relations are actually your most immediate rivals.
"And so while the cooperative outcome would be the most efficient, you lead to a situation in which there are conflict costs, and I think this explains why things go wrong so often during pregnancy. Of course, at first sight it's strange, my heart and my liver have been functioning very well for for 62 years, and yet during pregnancy, you have a natural process that only lasts for nine months, and yet many things go wrong during it. And I would argue that the reason why pregnancy doesn't work as smoothly as the normal functioning of the body is that in normal bodily functioning all the parts of the body are genetically identical to each other and working towards survival of that body, but in pregnancy, you have two different genetic individuals interacting with each other and natural selection can act at cross-purposes, there's a sort of politics going on, and we know that politics does not always lead to efficient outcomes."
I think this is a useful insight even on a higher level. For evolution (if you want to anthropomorphize it), war and conflict are just another set of tools in the toolbox. Where humans see those as evidence of something going wrong and evil to eradicated, for evolution it's "working as intended".
(Or, if you don't want to anthropomorphize it, an indication how much of evolution and biology is just barely tamed chaos)
(Careful to draw conclusions for human society from this though. People in the past had already seen the Darwinian "struggle between the species" as a model for society, which brought "Social Darwinism" and ultimately the Nazi ideology.
A different conclusion would be that biology is in fact not a perfect ideal to aspire to, and even in the situations where it "works", its factual objectives are not always the same as ours. Which does give legitimacy for the endeavor to improve upon it - for everyone)
You can also flip the perspective the fetus is trying to survive in a hostile environment designed to strangle it. If it isn't clawing for every ounce of food and air it will become a miscarriage. It must interface with a system built for millenia designed to kill anything that doesn't have its code.
In truth, it is the equilibrium that evolution has achieved. Placenta must account for the most vicious fetus, and fetus must account for most vicious placenta.
With this sort of surgery, they wouldn't be cutting into the uterus (womb) itself when extracting it from the donor, but instead will cut around it to remove it, along with some very essential plumbing. The receiving mum will also be on industrial-strength immune suppressants anyway.
Where you DO have to worry about leaks and weak stitches is with said plumbing (uterine arteries and veins) -- they have to support virtual firehoses of blood through the duration of pregnancy, and their damage is one reason why a delivery can go south very, very quickly. Obstetric medicine is definitely a high-risk sport, which is why their malpractice insurance rates are head and shoulders above any other medical specialty. But I digress...
Deleted Comment
Why us and not other mammals? No idea.
Turns out, being the most intelligent apex comes with some gestational specialities.
That would be the gestational sac, no?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29485996
A rare, congenital, condition.
The image shows very little technology, but to me, is the epitome of how life and progress can unite.
Where we want to end up is with artificial wombs because that will ultimately give individuals much more control over their reproduction and will do away with the onerous physiological and psychological stresses that pregnancy puts on women.
An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14194422
We can now support extremely premature babies outside the womb, but as of now, the risks of growing a baby in an artificial womb is not overcome with the benefits.
Why?
Because you are trivialising the emotions of pregnancy and motherhood. It is not stress all the time, it is also joy and satisfaction and like everything in life, a roller coaster.
Is it a miracle I can go to JFK and fly through the air and be in Europe for dinner?
It’s a surgical procedure. It’s cool that it worked. We don’t need to invoke the supernatural here, especially given the oodles of hard work that went into this by very real and natural human beings.
At some point we should just assign credit where credit is due: thousands upon thousands of people working very hard for many decades to make the impossible possible.
Our modern world is amazing, but it’s not miraculous. It’s achievement, not supernatural.