Hell yeah science! The weirdest and greatest thing on the planet. Remember when you used to flick Bunsen burners on and off to pass the time in Year 8? Or that one day when your unusually laconic science teacher let you build a little cardboard house, run wire all through it and charge it until the whole thing caught fire and burnt to the ground? Or that time you nearly killed said laconic science teacher with a model rocket motor that shot out the top of the cardboard tube rocket you’d made and embedded itself a foot and a half into the ground right next to where he was standing? No? Anyone? That can’t have been just me. Look, the point I’m trying to make here is that, while most of us ended our practical engagement with science on a day-to-day basis the moment we stepped out of high school, other people continued on looking into things and researching and testing and have come up with some pretty cool shit. The latest advancement? Laboratory-grown vaginas that are being successfully implanted into teens. Yes, you read that correctly.
See, there’s this condition which is called Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuester-Hauser Syndrome – named, I can only assume, after a battle for naming rights ended in an epic four-way tie – which affects young women, resulting in an underdeveloped or even absent vagina. Mull that one over in your Embarrassing Bodies informed minds for a while.
Researchers in the United States and Mexico have been developing treatment for this condition, which involves taking a sample of vulvular tissue from each patient and, essentially, growing a new vagina in the lab using prototype “scaffolds” in order to attain the right shape.
The results post-implantation have been extremely positive, with patients capable of full sexual and menstrual function, including orgasm. The positive nature of these results is encouraging, not only for combating the syndrome that I’d bet my house you’d never heard of before reading this, but how regenerative medical procedures can be applied to a wider range of tissue and organ-based ailments.
Science! Fuck yeah! Happy weekend, y’all!
Photo: AFP via Getty Images.
