I have a friend who has been trying to become a parent for over 6 years now. I am happy to say she is close now to adopting a child but it is still not certain it will happen.
I don’t really like the title of this article. This sort of …
Month: January 2013
FERTILITY ALERT: New Hope For Fatherhood in Men With Klinefelter Syndrome
by Philip Werthman, M.D.
Chromosomes. They’re the thread-like structures found inside the cells of living organisms. The pigeon has 80 chromosomes. A pineapple has 50. But among the factors that make us uniquely human, is the presence of 46 …
Infertility doctors and couples are fuming over a proposed bill in North Dakota
Fargo, ND (WDAY TV) — A controversial piece of a abortion bill before the North Dakota Senate, has some couples and their infertility doctors fuming.
Senate Bill 2302 would limit the number of embryos a physician could transfer, and it would prevent a woman diagnosed with cancer, from storing embryos during chemotherapy.
Kathy Burgau, back in 1998, told the story of her cancer battle, hoping to have a family after chemotherapy, she had embryos frozen, so she could have children after cancer treatment. That was done here in Fargo, but this bill before the North Dakota senate tomorrow, does not allow us to freeze any embryos. It would make that illegal.
Dr. Stephanie Dahl, Reproductive Medicine Specialist: “If the bill passes, couples who want to freeze embryos before chemo, would have to go out of state. It is available now.”
And not just cancer patients. The proposed bill would limit the number of fertilized eggs an invitro-fertilization specialist could transfer into a patient during that cycle to two eggs. It could financially and emotionally cripple couples trying to conceive by way of IVF. Read full article.
Double Helix Serves Double Duty
Last Wednesday, a group of researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute reported in the journal Nature that they had managed to store digital information in synthetic DNA molecules, then recreated the original digital files without error.
The amount of data, 739 kilobytes all told, is hardly prodigious by today’s microelectronic storage standards: all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a scientific paper, a color digital photo of the researchers’ laboratory, a 26-second excerpt from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and a software algorithm. Nor is this the first time digital information has been stored in DNA.
But the researchers said their new technique, which includes error-correction software, was a step toward a digital archival storage medium of immense scale. Their goal is a system that will safely store the equivalent of one million CDs in a gram of DNA for 10,000 years.
If the new technology proves workable, it will have arrived just in time. The lead author, the British molecular biologist Nick Goldman, said he had conceived the idea with a colleague, Ewan Birney, while the two sat in a pub pondering the digital fire hose of genetic information their institute is now receiving — and the likelihood that it would soon outpace even today’s chips and disk drives, whose capacity continues to double roughly every two years, as predicted by Moore’s law. Read full article.
Lawyers for Catholic hospital argue that a fetus is not a person
Canon City, Colorado (CNN) — Life begins at conception, according to the Catholic Church, but in a wrongful death suit in Colorado, a Catholic health care company has argued just the opposite.
A fetus is not legally a person until it is born, the hospital’s lawyers have claimed in its defense. And now it may be up to the state’s Supreme Court to decide.
Lori Stodghill was 28 weeks pregnant when she went to the emergency room of St. Thomas More Hospital in Canon City vomiting and short of breath, according to a court document. She went into cardiac arrest in the lobby.
“Lori looked up at me, and then her head went down on her chest,” said her husband, Jeremy Stodghill.
She died at age 31. Her unborn twin boys perished with her. That was New Year’s Day 2006. Stodghill, left behind to raise their then-2-year-old daughter alone, sued the hospital and its owner, Catholic Health Initiatives, for the wrongful deaths of all three.
After about two years of litigation, defense attorneys for the hospital and doctors entered an argument that shocked the widower. Read full article.
Ob/Gyn Group Urges Docs to Help Prevent ‘Octomom’-Type Multiple Births
(HealthDay News) — A leading ob/gyn group is recommending that pregnant women with three or more fetuses be counseled by their doctors and told about the option of reducing the number of fetuses they are carrying.
Known as multi-fetal pregnancies, these are typically the result of fertility treatments and are associated with a much higher risk of complications, as well as premature delivery and developmental issues for the children, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
The issue first gained notoriety in 2009 when Nadya Suleman, dubbed the “Octomom” by the press, gave birth to octuplets after her fertility doctor implanted 12 embryos into her uterus. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine generally recommends implanting no more than two embryos in women under 35 (Suleman was 33). Suleman’s fertility doctor lost his medical license in 2011 for this and other cases of negligent medical treatment. Read full article.
A Flood of Suits Fights Coverage of Birth Control
In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.
In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.
“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.” Read full article.
Surrogacy case hears ‘principle of intent’ is primary consideration
It should be presumed that the parents of a child born to a surrogate mother are “the commissioning couple”, a fertility expert told the High Court this morning.
Dr Mary Wingfield, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, with a specialty in infertility, said the fact that a child was the genetic child of the commissioning couple was also a factor. But the “principle of intent” was the primary consideration.
Dr Wingfield was giving evidence in a landmark case challenging the refusal of the State to allow the genetic mother of twins born to a surrogate mother to be listed as the children’s mother on their birth certificates.
The surrogate mother was the sister of the genetic mother in the case, the Court had been told, and was not objecting to the couple’s application.
Reporting on the family law case, which would normally be heard in private, has been partially approved because of the importance of the issues at stake. Read full article.
For menopause, estrogen fears overblown
Millions of women are needlessly suffering from the effects of menopause: the intrusive hot flashes, night sweats and wet linens; the inability to fall back asleep in the middle of the night; “brain fog”; and depression, as well as the negative impact on one’s love life (loss of interest, dryness and actual pain).
All these symptoms and more could be relieved by replacing lost estrogen. Yet many women – and their doctors – are paralyzed with fear about the safety of hormones.
We are living in the long shadow of negative press that surrounded the initial release of the Women’s Health Initiative study results. Ten years ago, media reports suggested that rates of breast cancer, stroke and heart disease were unacceptably high in hormone users (equine estrogen and synthetic progesterone) compared with those women who were taking the placebo (dummy pill). The study was stopped prematurely after five years.
However, early results of estrogen-alone trials involving women with a hysterectomy, published two years later with little media attention, showed lower rates of heart disease, diabetes in women under 60 and breast cancer in all age groups. Yes, lower rates of breast cancer. Read full article.
Unlikely Coalition Fights Contraception Mandate
Abortion opponents rallying by the thousands Friday in Washington at the annual March for Life have lost some political battles lately but won a string of court victories, thanks in part to a diverse coalition challenging a contraception mandate in the health care overhaul.
For-profit businesses, state attorneys general and educational institutions are among more than 100 plaintiffs who have mounted some 40 lawsuits challenging the mandate, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit legal institute that has played a leading role in the suits. With lower courts in dispute over the mandate, both sides agree the issue will almost inevitably be settled by the Supreme Court.
The mandate requires employer-sponsored health care plans to cover contraception, including intrauterine devices and emergency birth control drugs that many religious employers equate with abortion. The Obama administration offered a narrow exemption for religious organizations and required insurers, not employers, to pay for the services. However, opponents remain unsatisfied. Read full article.