Patient-Inspired Research: A Better Way to Go?

Recently, I attended a meeting of the Oncofertility Consortium and had one of those "a-ha" moments that change one's perspective in a very real way. A surgeon from Sweden was talking about uterus transplantations, and she described how these came about. She told a story about one of her colleagues, who was talking to a young woman who had cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy. The patient asked the physician if they could give her a "new" uterus so that one day she could have a biological child. The physician told her that was not possible and the patient responded, "Why not?" That prompted the physician to start a new field of research, uterine transplantation, that has had some early successes, as well as many failures.