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New research has examined the usefulness of bone marrow stem cells for treating male infertility, with promising results. The related report by Lue et al, “Fate of bone marrow stem cells transplanted into the testis: potential implication for men with testicular failure,” appears in the March issue of The American Journal of Pathology. When a couple experiences infertility, the man is just as likely as the woman to be the cause. Male infertility may arise from failed proliferation and differentiation of the germ cells (precursors of sperm) or from dysfunction of the supporting cells. New research is looking to stem...

Infertility - not assimilation or inadequate education - is perhaps the biggest obstacle to Jewish continuity, suggests Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.  “We are in a great demographic crisis,” says the Conservative rabbi, an expert in medical ethics. “We Jews are not even reproducing ourselves, let alone growing.”  Dorff understands how much education is required to take somebody born Jewish and transform that person into someone who knows a lot about Judaism and practices it. “But you can't educate someone who is not there,” he said in a phone...

Boy or girl? Almost half of U.S. fertility clinics that offer embryo screening say they allow couples to choose the sex of their child, the most extensive survey of the practice suggests. Sex selection without any medical reason to warrant it was performed in about 9 percent of all embryo screenings last year, the survey found. Another controversial procedure - helping parents conceive a child who could supply compatible cord blood to treat an older sibling with a grave illness - was offered by 23 percent of clinics, although only 1 percent of screenings were for that purpose in 2005....

Infertile couples desperate to conceive children are turning increasingly to fertility specialists for help. Yet, widespread use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has led to a completely unforeseen consequence: the creation of the world’s largest population of frozen human embryos. That reality has ignited a vigorous moral debate among scientists, politicians, theologians, and parents about what should be done with the surplus store of nascent human life.The challenge for pro-life evangelicals is to develop systematic moral reasoning that can be applied to a range of issues including embryo adoption, human embryonic stem cell research, ART, “therapeutic cloning,” genetic engineering,...

Infertile couples sometimes resort to IVF in order to conceive a child. IVF is a laboratory technique by which human embryos are conceived in a petri dish which contains a culture medium. The woman is given hormones which stimulate her ovaries to produce up to 30 or more oocyte (ova). These are retrieved by inserting a needle into the ovaries via the vagina with ultrasound guidance. These oocyte are mixed with sperm. The sperm is obtained by masturbation and is usually donated by the husband. If the husband is infertile however, the sperm may be obtained from another man. If...

Womb transplants in humans should be possible within five years, say scientists in Sweden ... The procedure would allow women who have functioning ovaries but no womb to carry their own children, and the researchers say they have already been contacted by hundreds of women who are interested in having such a transplant. There are several reasons why a woman can lack a uterus. Some, with a condition called Rokitansky syndrome, are born without a vagina or a uterus. Others can lose their womb, for example through cervical cancer, or if the organ ruptures during childbirth. The only current way...

SAN FRANCISCO — Like other gay men in their golden years, Jack Norris and Seymour Sirota had heard the horror stories. An elderly lesbian couple is housed on separate floors of a nursing home and kept from seeing each other. A gay retired college professor feels compelled to keep his sexual orientation a secret after his roommate at an assisted living facility asks to be transferred. "I thought, 'We are not going to be in that situation,'" the 67-year-old Norris says crisply. "This is not going to happen to us in our final days." That's how the two New Yorkers,...

A sperm donor in Michigan passed a rare and serious genetic disease to five children born to four couples, doctors are reporting today. The doctor who discovered the cases said that all four couples were clients of the same sperm bank. That bank, the doctor added, assured him that it had discarded its remaining samples from the man and had told him he could no longer be a donor. It is not known how many children the donor had fathered, whether he knew he carried the disease before he donated sperm, or whether the bank had informed him of his...

May 11, 2006 — - After five years trying to conceive, Kelly and Eric Romenesko decided to try in vitro fertilization. Their twins, Alexandria and Allison, were born last year. It was a joyous event in the couple's life. "They're miracles. They're precious," Kelly Romenesko said. The couple were not prepared for what came next. When Kelly, a teacher at two Catholic schools in Wisconsin, told her bosses she had gotten pregnant through in vitro, they handed her a pink slip. "I was in tears," she said. "I remember asking, 'Is this the only reason why I'm being fired?' They...

...Between 1990 and 2000 the U.S. teen pregnancy rate plummeted by 28 percent... [Many assume] sex education and conservative abstinence initiatives are both to thank for [this] fact ... What, though, if there's a third explanation, one that has nothing to do with just-say-no campaigns or safe-sex educational posters? What if teenagers are less fertile than they used to be? In a well-respected study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, [epidemiologist Shanna] Swan, now at the University of Rochester Medical Center, found that sperm counts are dropping by about 1.5 percent a year in the United States and 3 percent in...

From the moment a baby girl is born, her fertility clock begins the countdown. Though she has millions of eggs in her immature ovaries, by the time she's a woman, the viability of those eggs has already started to diminish. By age 40, her chances of conceiving have declined, while her chances of having a child with chromosomal abnormalities have increased. And if she's like thousands of women in their 30s who have yet to meet Mr. Right and whose careers and personal choices don't include, for now, child rearing, she may find herself wishing that should could freeze time....

BABIES conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are almost three times more prone to have two genetic brain disorders, a study by consultants at two Irish hospitals has found. The authors have surveyed the families of almost all the 1,105 IVF babies born in Ireland since 1989. While the number with the brain disorders was tiny, the consultants have called for similar research to be carried out worldwide. The two genetic disorders, Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS) and Angelman Syndrome (AS) are rare, occurring in about one in 15,000 births in the general population. But the study found they were almost three...

The American Fertility Association Releases New Educational Tools for Embryo Donation: Help for Donors and Help for RecipientsNEW YORK, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Fertility Association announces the release -- both in print and online at http://www.theafa.org/ -- of new educational brochures that shed light on the complexity of embryo donation -- both for the donor of unused embryos following IVF treatments, as well as for the recipient of donated embryos. Fertility clinics across the country will receive a total of 20,000 copies of these brochures to distribute to their patients.  "Fertility patients must be armed with the best...

Say goodbye to diaries — those small books with breakable locks that little brothers could easily get their hands on. Today’s women have computer programs that help them track their most cherished secrets. Women practicing Natural Family Planning (NFP) can throw away their paper charts and store that information in their palm pilot. And there is no worry about this sensitive information falling into the wrong hands — with the click of a button, the intimate details of a woman’s life can be protected by a password. Woman Calendar, a program by BEIKS LLC, is a simple program that any...

Libido Problems Linked to the Pill May Be Long-Term By Kathleen DohenyHealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Jan. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Women who take birth control pills might be at increased risk for a long-term loss of sexual desire, according to new research from a team at the Lahey Clinic in Boston. "We have known for a long time that 30 to 40 percent of women on birth control pills have decreased libido," said study co-author Dr. Andre Guay, director of the Center for Sexual Function/Endocrinology at the clinic. But his findings, published in the January issue of The Journal of Sexual...

Mankind has an aggravating habit of complicating simple issues. Perhaps the most obvious example in present times is the raging debate over embryonic stem cell research. Let’s put this in its proper perspective… Do you think it’s okay to create a human child, freeze the little guy for up to 5 years, then thaw the poor kid out and kill him? This is the process of storing human embryos and harvesting embryonic stem cells. I could explore the various facets of the debate ranging from the hidden agenda of pro-abortionists to the possibilities of medical advances. But why bother? All...

Human eggs which could grow into embryos have been created in a laboratory for the first time, scientists announced yesterday. They were created by scraping stem cells off the surface of ovaries and exposing them to a chemical which stimulated growth. The breakthrough suggests limitless supplies of eggs could be grown, solving the problem of the acute shortage of donor eggs for infertile women wanting IVF treatment. But the idea has horrified pro-life groups after scientists admitted they could use the technique to 'farm' embryos for their research. The procedure was tested by a University of Tennessee team, which took...

BOSTON (Reuters) - A Connecticut woman who was artificially inseminated with the wrong sperm gave birth to a healthy baby boy, her attorney said on Wednesday. Laura Howard last year sued an infertility clinic in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after her doctor informed her that she had mistakenly been injected with sperm from a man who is not her fiance, lawyer Bruce Jacobs said. Howard, a 40-year-old nurse, gave birth on Tuesday to a 6-pound, 1-ounce baby boy, and DNA tests are under way to confirm the child's paternity, Jacobs said. "While she's thrilled to have this baby, this error has made...

Laptop computers may damage the ability of young men to father children, doctors warned yesterday. Working with the devices balanced on the thighs raises the temperature of sperm by almost three degrees centigrade. That is enough to trigger fertility problems which - with frequent exposure - could be permanent, experts warned. Laptop computers are becoming increasingly popular, especially with younger people. But not only do the machines generate heat, the legs- closed position needed to use them also sends the temperature of that area soaring. In the first study of its kind, researchers measured the temperatures of 29 healthy volunteers...

All signs point to yes. During the past several months, the image has flickered into our homes with increasing regularity: Following the end of a campaign-trail speech, little Emma Claire Edwards, 6, and Jack Edwards, 4—both blond and cherubic—joyfully run up to the stage where their dad, Sen. John Edwards, 51, scoops them into his arms. Standing nearby beaming, always, is Elizabeth Edwards, 55. Do the math, and it's not hard to figure out that Edwards gave birth to Emma Claire at age 48 and Jack at 50. And yet if Edwards used her own eggs, this is all but...