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Two Sets in the U.S. Are Born on the Same Day - It is a rare event in the United States, indeed in the world -- the birth of sextuplets. Out of more than 4 million births in the U.S. in 2005, just 85 deliveries involved five or more babies. Making the occasion rarer recently was the birth of two sets of sextuplets just 10 hours apart.On June 12, Ryan and Brianna Morrison of Minnesota became parents of four boys and two girls, born after just 22 weeks in their mother's womb. And in Phoenix that same day, after just...

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, June 12, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Minnesota couple welcomed the birth of all six of their sextuplets at St. Luke’s Hospital in Minneapolis yesterday,although the couple’s and their childrens’ story would have been far different if doctors had their way. "The babies arrived sooner than we'd hoped for, but we are optimistic," father Ryan Morrison said in a statement. "Brianna is doing well. Thanks to all who are praying for our family. We are very happy to be parents." After 22 weeks, Brianna Morrison gave birth to four boys and two girls just before midnight Sunday. All six...

Glenn Sacks Discusses the Texas Frozen Embryo Case on the Nationally-Syndicated Mike McConnell Show (Audio Available) Fathers' rights advocate Glenn Sacks discussed the controversial Texas frozen embryo case on the nationally-syndicated Mike McConnell Show yesterday. The case involves Augusta Roman and her ex-husband Randy Roman, who during their marriage tried for several years to have a child (and had one miscarriage) before undergoing infertility treatments. The day before the embryos were to be implanted, Randy told her that he was troubled by certain aspects of their relationship and wanted to wait to implant the embryos until they had resolved their...

Samantha Carolan was 23 and fresh out of graduate school when she decided to donate eggs to an infertile couple. Ms. Carolan concedes that she would never have done it if not for the money, $7,000 that she used to pay off some student loans. She has since had a second egg extraction, for which she was paid $8,000, and she is planning a third before taking a break. “The first time, it’s frightening,” said Ms. Carolan, now 24, of Winfield Park, N.J. “It is surgery, and I don’t think I would have done it without compensation. But I had...

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...