Researchers at Spain's Carlos Simon Foundation kept a donated human uterus alive outside the body for 24 hours. The device, called PUPER, uses modified human blood pumped through a circuit of plastic tubing, a mechanical heart, an oxygenator, and a waste-filtering kidney analog to mimic the body's circulatory system. The work is unpublished. The team calls the machine 'Mother.'
The immediate scientific target is embryo implantation research. Foundation director Carlos Simon identifies implantation failure as a core unsolved problem in IVF, one that persists despite decades of incremental improvement. Studying the process in a living, intact uterus outside the body is not possible with any existing method. The team also wants to sustain a donated uterus long enough to observe a full menstrual cycle, a benchmark no one has reached.
The full original is worth reading for the engineering detail: how blood pressure, glucose, oxygen, humidity, and organ tilt are each controlled, and how four years of sheep uterus trials in Zaragoza preceded the human experiment. Beyond the science, González envisions the device eventually gestating a human fetus entirely outside the body. That claim alone demands scrutiny, and the article does not let it stand unchallenged.
[READ ORIGINAL →]