Monday, April 14, 2014

People Are Ignorant

This article appeared in the Washington Post a few days ago.

Lab-grown vaginas successfully implanted in girls in tissue-engineering first

Four teenage girls have received vaginas grown from their own cells in a lab. And they work.
These girls were born with underdeveloped or missing vaginas because of a rare condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome that affects about 1 in 5,000 women. While their labia looked like those of other girls, their vaginas, cervixes and wombs, which are necessary for menstruation and childbirth, never fully formed.

The first paragraph is snarkier than perhaps it was meant to be.  The rest of the article describes the science behind this breakthrough.  And then the last sentence:

The breakthrough could also be meaningful to transgender people seeking sex-reassignment surgery, though the researchers did not comment on that possibility.

which is pretty stupid and has nothing to do with anything in the article.  But I guess some idiot "journalist" thought he was working for the National Enquirer and had to ask.  The fact that the researchers did not comment meant that they are taking their work seriously.

Me, I would have waited for someone to offer that as a possibility (many, far from all, of this audience would line up to get theirs) before asking and then reporting that the researchers had no comment.

I'm in Noo Yawk today so I can't easily update my page.  If I could, I'd have a brief poll

I'd line up!
( ) yes
( ) no

The full article can be found here. If you sort comments "oldest first" you'll find my two cents.





2 comments:

  1. Not much point in a yes/no pole, more like how hard woudl you fight to get to he front of the queue?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Couldn't help but notice that nobody wanted to challenge the writing at the Washington Post as you suggested.
    Seems to me the point of the exercise for these young genetic woman is to give them a vagina so that their ovaries have a way to be fully functional.
    I suppose if there was a way to grow some ovaries and a uterus etc., then this technology would be meaningful for transexuals. Otherwise techniques currently in use, penile inversion, grafting etc. seem to do the same thing.
    So, imagining the day when such surgery would allow a mtf transexual natural childbirth without any sort of artificial fertilization ... I'd line up. Of course I'd need the fountain of youth at the same time! :)

    ReplyDelete

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