Stephen Colbert on the Dude Uterus

On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you could put a uterus in a man:

Scientists claim that the first human baby could be born from a transplanted womb within three years.

Animal experiments have dismissed many of the concerns that womb transplants could not produce healthy babies.

The Swedish expert behind the research says that one of the best candidates to be an organ donor would be the patient's own mother - raising the prospect of carrying your children in the same womb that carried you.

He says that it may even be technically possible one day to transplant a womb into a man, and use hormone injections to allow a pregnancy to succeed.

However, it would be the first organ transplant which is not needed to cure a life-threatening illness, and there is likely to be a debate over whether such major surgery - and powerful immune-suppressing drugs - can be justified.

Professor Mats Brannstrom, presenting his work at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Madrid on Tuesday, said that he had been inundated with pleas for help from women after it was revealed last year that he had transplanted wombs into mice - and produced live baby mice. (Emphasis mine.)

Yikes. That is a bit much. I saw that movie, and didn't like it.

I am impressed with their technical acumen -- crazy lab people, what will you think of next? -- and I am certain that there are many women who can be helped by this procedure. However, I just know that this is going to be an ethical street fight about where to draw the line. Science, why do you always make my life difficult?

Anyway, here is a link to a video of Stephen Colbert talking about the article. It is totally hilarious.