Author: brigitte

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Va. eugenics victims would receive compensation for sterilization under bill

brigitte

EugenicsIn Richmond — E. Lewis Reynolds was just a boy when his cousin hit him in the head with a rock, nearly killing him and triggering epileptic-like convulsions that lingered for some years.

His condition didn’t stop him from enlisting in the Marine Corps or serving his country in Korea and Vietnam during a 30-year military career.

But it was enough to classify a teenager as a “defective person” and order his compulsory sterilization under an infamous 1924 Virginia law whose aim was to build a more perfect society.

The state has already offered a formal apology for a selective-breeding policy that led to the sterilization of hundreds of mostly poor, uneducated men and women and served as one of the models for eugenics programs in other states and even Nazi Germany.

Now Reynolds, 85, thinks it’s time that Virginia pay compensation, too, to him and perhaps hundreds of others. Read full article.

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Sperm donors who know parents can apply to see children, court rules

brigitte

spermSperm donors who know the parents to whom they have donated can apply for contact with their biological children, a court has ruled. Previously this was not allowed.

Following Thursday’s ruling straight and gay couples who are considering conceiving using a sperm donor they know are being urged to establish the childrearing equivalent of a pre-nuptial agreement – a co-parenting deal.

The case, the first of its kind, involves two lesbian couples who were friends with a gay male couple. All three couples are in civil partnerships. One of the gay men is the biological father of both the children of one of the lesbian couples, the other man is the biological father of one child who is being brought up by the second lesbian couple.

The male couple applied to the family court for contact and residency of their biological children. The women contested the application, saying that this would infringe on their family life, but lost. Under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act same-sex couples are legal parents of children conceived through donated sperm, eggs or embryos in the same way that heterosexual couples are. Read full article.

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Sexual and Relationship Dysfunction Is the True Cost of Porn

brigitte

womenOver the past several years, I’ve written extensively on the nature and effects of pornography abuse. (Visit here andhere for some basic information.) I am pleased to see that with Ricky Camilleri’s recent HuffPostLive interview of Isaac Abel and others that this issue is finally hitting the cultural zeitgeist. The points made in the interview are very much on target, although the discussion barely scratches the surface.

The simple, undeniable fact is young people — digital natives — are texting, tweeting, chatting, blogging, posting and otherwise communicating and being entertained by and through digital technology on an almost constant basis. For instance, a recent Pew Internet & American Life survey revealed that texting is now the primary mode of communication between teens and their friends and family, far surpassing phone calls, face-to-face interactions and emailing. Boys and young men in particular are susceptible to the lure of digital technology, burying themselves for hours on end in ultra-violent video games and, more importantly, online porn. Read full article.

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Girl born through in vitro fertilization, others testify on abortion before N.D. Legislature

brigitte

Alexis GrabingerBISMARCK — When Alexis Grabinger was in the womb, that womb belonged to her aunt.

The Jamestown High School senior and daughter of Democratic state Sen. John Grabinger, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning that she would not be alive if her mother had not been allowed to produce multiple eggs for in vitro fertilization. The other eggs were later destroyed, something that would be considered an abortion under a resolution before the committee.

“I strongly believe my parents and the doctors are not abortionists, but rather miracle workers who brought life when there was none,” Alexis said.

Alexis was speaking in opposition to Senate Concurrent Resolution 4009, sponsored by Sen. Margaret Sitte, R-Bismarck, which proposes to amend North Dakota’s constitution by simply adding, “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and defended.” Read full article.

 

 

 

 

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Ottawa fertility doctor accused of inseminating women with wrong sperm

brigitte

Ottawa Wrong SpermAn Ottawa fertility doctor faces a disciplinary hearing Thursday over allegations he artificially inseminated three women with the wrong sperm.

Dr. Bernard Norman Barwin, a celebrated gynecologist, could lose his licence if the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario discipline panel finds he committed misconduct.

He agreed last year to stop the practice of insemination after the college filed its notice of hearing.

The medical college alleges that three of Dr. Barwin’s patients discovered their children aren’t biologically related to their husband or, in one case, the patient’s chosen donor.

Two women with the same allegations sued Dr. Barwin a few years ago. The lawsuits were resolved last year, but neither the women’s lawyer nor Dr. Barwin’s lawyer could discuss the terms. Read full article.

 

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Cancer gene mutation linked to earlier menopause

brigitte

(Reuters Health) – Women carrying BRCA mutations tied to breast and ovarian cancer may hit menopause a few years earlier than other women, according to a new study.

Doctors already discuss with those women whether they want immediate surgery to remove their ovaries and breasts, or if they want to start a family first and hold off on ovary removal.

“Now they have an additional issue to deal with,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosen, who worked on the new study at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.

An estimated one in 600 U.S. women carries the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation.

Those mutations greatly increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer at some point in her life increases from 12 to 60 percent with a BRCA mutation, and ovarian cancer from 1.4 percent to between 15 and 40 percent. Read full article.

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Infertility doctors and couples are fuming over a proposed bill in North Dakota

brigitte

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.

 

 

 

 

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Double Helix Serves Double Duty

brigitte

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.

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Lawyers for Catholic hospital argue that a fetus is not a person

brigitte

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.

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Ob/Gyn Group Urges Docs to Help Prevent ‘Octomom’-Type Multiple Births

brigitte

GR_PR_healthdaylogo153x52(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.