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Subject: Science ready to let men have babies
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 99 12:55:12 +1300
From: harryo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Science ready to let men have babies
BRITAIN'S foremost fertility expert says advances in medical technology
mean men can now bear children.
Lord Winston, who as Professor Robert Winston was ennobled three years
ago by Tony Blair, says doctors could use today's techniques to implant
an
embryo in a man's abdomen, allowing him to carry it to term and then
have it
delivered by caesarean section.
The treatment, overturning millions of years of evolution, would allow
homosexual couples to have children and help heterosexuals if the woman
could not become pregnant.
It comes as traditional attitudes to parenting are being challenged by
the use
of in vitro fertilisation techniques, which have helped increasing
numbers of
lesbians to have children of their own.
"Male pregnancy would certainly be possible and would be the same as
when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy - outside the uterus - although
to
sustain it, you'd have to give the man lots of female hormones," said
Winston, who will outline the concept in his new book, The IVF
Revolution,
to be published in April.
The in vitro fertilisation pioneer, who presented the BBC television
series
The Human Body, said such foetuses could be implanted inside the man's
abdomen with the placenta, through which the baby would receive its
nutrients, attached to an internal organ.
Winston, who is head of the fertility clinic at Hammersmith hospital,
west
London, acknowledged that it would be dangerous as there would be a
risk
of bleeding from the implanted placenta. In addition, the hormone
treatment
could lead the man to grow breasts.
Despite this, however, he believed the technique would still appeal to
some:
"There might be some demand among consenting homosexuals but I don't
think there would be a rush of people wanting to implement this
technology."
The concept was the central theme of the Hollywood film Junior, in
which
the unlikely figure of Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a man who becomes
pregnant.
Other fertility experts agreed that the fantasy could now become a
reality.
Dr Simon Fishel, director of the Centre for Assisted Reproduction in
Nottingham, said: "There is no reason why a man could not carry a
child.
The placenta provides the necessary hormonal conditions, so it doesn't
have
to be inside a woman."
He revealed that he had been approached in the past two years by three
couples who wanted the man to carry the child because of the woman's
physical problems. In all the cases he had refused because he felt
there
were
risks.
In one case, the woman had lost her womb as a result of an accident and
the
man was keen to carry the child rather than involving a surrogate
mother.
"They wanted to do it quietly and genuinely," said Fishel. "This kind
of
treatment is ethically acceptable and one would do it if it could be
done
without risk."
The procedure's possibilities were recently demonstrated in the
remarkable
case of a woman in Oxfordshire who carried a baby outside her womb.
A scan revealed the embryo had travelled into the mother's abdomen and
had
attached itself to her bowel. She decided to continue with this rare
type of
ectopic pregnancy and the baby was delivered without mishap.
Dr Gillian Lockwood, a clinical research fellow at the John Radcliffe
hospital, Oxford, who knew about the case, said: "This shows the
possession of a uterus is not absolutely necessary and if this is the
case then
male pregnancies are theoretically possible."
Although leading figures in the homosexual community predicted that
there
would be many gay couples keen to carry their own children, any
fertility
doctor considering it would have to obtain approval from the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
Suzanne McCarthy, chief executive of the authority, said: "If an
application
were made, we would give it serious consideration but we would not be
interested only in the science of how safe and effective it would be,
but also
why it was being done."
In western countries women have always played the central role in
bringing
up children, but attitudes have begun to change. Until the 1960s it was
considered unnatural for the father to be present at the birth - today
it is the
other way around.
Tim Hedgley, chairman of the national fertility association Issue,
welcomed
the possibility of allowing men to be mothers. "It is not ghoulish in
any way
and you certainly could not stop a man from doing this in legal terms
on
the
grounds of sex because that would be discrimination," he said.
Some scientists, however, rejected the treatment out of hand. The fact
that
male pregnancies were possible did not mean they should be allowed,
said
Ian Craft, an in vitro fertilisation pioneer at the London Fertility
Centre. "It
would be dangerous and is a distortion of nature," he said.
Among those who would be eager to take advantage of male pregnancy
techniques would be homosexual couples, said Mark Watson, a director of
the lesbian and gay rights group Stonewall.
"If this option were available, gay couples would certainly take
advantage of
it as another way of having children," he said.
It would change social attitudes towards parenting and help to convince
society that men were as capable of bringing up children as women, said
John Baker, a sociologist at the University of Brighton and a member of
Families Need Fathers.
"This would remedy an injustice that lies within biology. If a woman
wants
to get pregnant all she has to do is get a man drunk, while a man has
to
plead
with a woman to have his child," he said.
It was difficult for a man to be an actively involved parent as he was
still
expected to work long hours, said Dr Jill Dunne, an expert at the
Gender
Institute in the London School of Economics.
"Before we can even begin to think about whether men can give birth, we
have to think of how they can get the time to develop a loving, close
relationship with their children," she said.
We are all born into the world with nothing.
Everything we acquire after that is profit.
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