April 1, 2009
I wear a little silver ring on the third finger of my left hand. It’s a simple ring: a thin band embellished with a roughly-ovular shaped bowled accent. A hand-shaped silver sphere is nestled in the middle of this crude bowl, as imperfectly spherical as its resting place, a sign of the authenticity of the [...]
February 4, 2009
A must-read blog post from Samuel Wood, MD, who is a board certified reproductive endocrinologist and has been practicing in this field for 15 years, on the octuplets. He puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the physician and has contacted the medical board to investigate the situation.
He not only shows leadership in contacting [...]
January 27, 2009
An article by Cheryl Miller posted today at www.reason.com raised questions on how the information should be handled, by whom and how much. In Who’s Your Daddy? Cheryl discusses the plight of one young woman who has a rare stomach disorder. She is in her 20s when records were either destroyed or not kept at all. [...]
January 9, 2009
While this has been done in the United States, the first baby was born in the UK free of the breast cancer gene, BRCA1, which would have meant that the baby girl had an 80 percent chance of contracting breast cancer. I know this is a sensitive issue for some and there are arguments that [...]
January 9, 2009
It’s only speculation now that environmental factors, including assisted reproduction technologies, have contributed to the high increase in the number of children diagnosed with Autism. Education and awareness of Austin have been key to the increasing diagnosis in children. The study, by Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, chief of the division of environmental and occupational health [...]
December 29, 2008
I recently posted about how patients are canceling their IVF appointments for surrogacy and egg donation in India because of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but apparently that has not stopped the booming industry in India. In fact, with many women and men getting laid off from their well paying jobs, more educated women [...]
December 17, 2008
Ken Mosesian, the executive director of the American Fertility Association and a practicing Catholic and an openly gay man in a committed relationship has commented about the Vatican’s Dignitas Personae, which was released on December 8, 2008, and is the Vatican’s newest “Instruction on Bioethics,” which includes IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.
While the Vatican [...]
December 10, 2008
People magazine got the exclusive and showed the first pictures of his four-month old twin boys, born via surrogacy this past August http://tinyurl.com/66e43e. Both Ricky and his babies look happy and healthy, but what really impressed me was that he is caring for his boys without the help of a nanny! I know how hard [...]
December 9, 2008
Women who are exposed to secondhand smoke either as children or as adults are 68 percent more likely to have fertility problems, including miscarriages. I’m astounded by that figure. I know from speaking to embryologists that they can tell from looking at an embryo if the intended mother or egg donor smoked, but I had [...]