Can a man become pregnant? Meet Lee Mingwei
By Lim Tri Santosa
BANDUNG (JP): The ability to carry a child and give birth is uniquely female. For years, Hollywood has poked fun at the idea of a man giving birth. This was the plot of the film Junior starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the parent-to-be, with much hilarity being conjured up by the notion of men suffering from morning sickness and mood swings. But now, the very nature of pregnancy could dramatically change.
Can a man become pregnant? Personally, I do not think that a male should become pregnant. A male becoming pregnant is unnatural and would be extremely dangerous to both the man concerned and the fetus. However, some articles and related websites that I have seen have made me almost believe that a man could get pregnant. There is even an informative web page about a male who is pregnant. Click malepregnancy.com to go to the website about the pregnant man.
If one visits Mr. Lee Mingwei's website, however, one might just be lulled into almost believing in such a bizarre notion. It has to be some kind of hoax, but after reading a bunch of it, it looks like it's real. Downright freaky though. Complete with the ultrasound video of the "virtual" baby in his tummy and a constant live cam feed accompanied by the comments of experts who are monitoring his health on a day-to-day basis, the website has enough scientific gizmos to make it appear as if Lee is actually pregnant.
In other words, Mr. Lee is shown to be pregnant. A fictitious website it may well be, but Lee's pregnancy is attracting a fair amount of traffic on the Net. If authentic, this would be a medical first notwithstanding every "man gets pregnant" story we have ever seen on the covers of gossip tabloids.
Yet, I still don't even know who the father is.
It offers provocative interviews with news commentators, bioethicists, together with "GenoChoice", the nonexistent research firm credited with providing the technical know-how to get Mr. Lee pregnant. Enough material, in fact, to critically discuss the social implications of male pregnancy. A close look at the site reveals that the videos and live EKG of Mr. Lee, as well as the ultrasound video of the fetus, are simply animated gif images. Pretty convincing idea, indeed! But, alas they don't change on a day-to-day basis.
The website carries three films (needs QuickTime movie player) of Lee with a bulging "womb" tucking into a gigantic meal (oops, it seems a "junk" fast-food meal, not good for your baby!), getting on the bus (but everybody ignores him and they all fail to offer him a seat, finally he smiled like "Dracula-man" in the OSRAM light bulb advertisement), and buying groceries (hey, wrong alley, you should use a trolley cart for your merchandise, not a basket, danger of miscarriage!). It also promises to make an official film documentary on the whole experiment and the registered audiences will be notified when the film is available at the nearest theater (I think at the JiFFest in 2100).
Not being a doctor, I can't relate to the technicalities of it all. But reading through the information, a male becomes pregnant through In vitro fertilization techniques (IVF) through the implanting of an embryo and placenta into the abdominal cavity. The website describes a five-step process for a male to become pregnant.
The steps are as follows: oral doses of female hormones are administered, implantation, embryo growth, growth of the fetus, and, finally, delivery through a Caesarean section to remove the baby and the placenta.
As far as I know, there is yet to be discovered a substitute for the womb. A fetus needs this environment to develop and grow for many months before surviving outside it. So, although it's possible to grow a baby without a uterus, it's very unlikely and very dangerous. Men simply cannot be expected to do this because it is historically, ethically and biologically women's work.
By the way, my mother was very surprised when she saw the picture of Mr. Lee on the screen, but after I explained the whole story, she laughed and said science should spend less time on male pregnancy and more time modifying the male brain so that men could find more ways of sparing additional time for their children. The point is, let's not run before we can walk.