November 14, 2009 10:23 PM GMT
Irielle,
I have been reporting on this area of medicine for years and I think most people have taken it as a SF look at the future rather than science fact, even though I reported on the bladders when they were successful in human transplants. Thank you for fielding this article for us.
Fortunately for transmen, there are a lot of genetic males with impotency problems, so this project probably benefited from that....although there may be characteristics of genito-urinary cells that encouraged work in this area. I am sure this is of particular importance to rabbits, however (lol). Similar work is being done for hearts. The significant thing here is that they are the patient's genetic cells which ensures compatibility. First a penis, next a vagina? Ovaries? Uterus? Think of all the gg with ovarian and uterine cancer who have hysterectomies. The motivation to develop this is there. This is reality, not science fiction. This IS the century that will give TG persons the body to match their brain-sex. A fully-functioning body. Likely a body the correct size and shape. I'll take a GG-4603 Wendy Model in Blond, please. I should live so long.
Understand that this reality is coming at us like an express train, along with wonders we only dream of today. Cures for Diabetes, Cancer, etc. Not just treatments, but cures. It is simple extrapolation. If they can replace any body part with a grown match, if they can alter the genetic structure, there is no reason they will not eventually be able to re-engineer your entire body. The first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. The first manned mission to land on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Under 66 years to go from 852 feet to a quarter-million miles...outside the atmosphere of Earth...in less time than it takes to drive across the United States in a car at a normal rate. What do you think 2075 will have brought? However, it is dangerous to make direct time correlations with the past. Scientific advances have developed at an increasing rate of change, not linear. Computers, for one thing, have sped up the ability to "think" out details using software models. I truly believe I may, with luck, live to a day where death is only by the result of severe trauma. If not, some of you here WILL. live to see it. What is sex adjustment compared to that? Experts have predicted reverse engineering of a dinosaur by 2050. I want to believe. I do believe. It is coming, and faster than most of us imagine, a day when being read will require a scientific test....and maybe even that will not tell. Perhaps that will teach some of us to keep our knees together, lol.
Maybe, just maybe, science will beat society to making being transgendered acceptable. But, who wants to live in hiding with a "dark" secret hanging over them? Will self-centered reasons scrub transphobic feelings from genetic males and garner acceptance for MtF SRS? Perhaps this article may lead down that path:
http://www.wired.com/wire[...]viagra/
"The team secured human penile tissue
from men having male-to-female sex-change operations. They found that the human penis tissue expressed measurable amounts of hydrogen sulfide, which raises the hope that some drug could be found to cause more H2S production.
"These observations may help to unravel the complex mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of human penile erection and may lead to the development of therapeutic approaches in the treatment of ED and sexual arousal disorders," the authors wrote in PNAS."
Could it be that, before long, transwomen will give many more genetic males erections?
