- Advances in medical science mean that
it is now technically possible for men to bear children, according to Britain's
leading fertility expert, Professor Lord Winston.
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- Lord Winston, a pioneer of in-vitro fertilisation
techniques, says in a new book that an embryo could be implanted in a man's
abdomen - with the placenta attached to an internal organ such as the bowel
- and later delivered by Caesarean section. However, other experts expressed
serious misgivings about the treatment, saying the chances of a successful
pregnancy were extremely low and needed to be balanced against the risks
to the man's health.
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- The prospect of male pregnancy, fictionalised
in the film Junior starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is raised in Lord Winston's
book, The IVF Revolution, to be published in April. "It would be technically
possible for a man to bear a child," said the professor, head of the
fertility clinic at Hammersmith Hospital in west London and presenter of
the BBC television series The Human Body.
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- He acknowledged that such a technique
would involve treating the man with female hormones and could be dangerous
because of the risk of bleeding.
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- The male pregnancy would imitate an ectopic
pregnancy in a woman, a condition where the embryo begins to develop outside
the uterus and which can prove fatal.
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- According to Dr Gillian Lockwood, a clinical
research fellow at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, male pregnancy
would be theoretically viable but the chances of success would be "thousands
to one against".
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- In addition to the feminising side-effects
of hormonal treatment, Dr Lockwood says, the man would also need a partial
colostomy because the placenta would not come away cleanly. "The lining
of the womb is specially designed to allow the placenta to invade it and
come away freely when the baby is born," she said. "No other
organ in the body can do this and without the protective uterine muscle
the baby runs a real risk of being damaged.
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- "Even when we transfer embryos into
the uterus there is only a 50:50 chance of them becoming attached, so the
chance of getting an embryo to stick in the wrong place is very low."
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- Doctors would have to obtain permission
to carry out the treatment from the the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority. A spokesman for the authority said applications would be subjected
to a rigorous assessment process that would consider the reasons behind
the treatment as well as its safety and effectiveness.
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- In theory, the technique could allow
homosexual couples to have children and help heterosexual couples where
the woman cannot carry a child.
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