Ethical Issues Related to Birth of IVF Octuplets : Not a Cause for Celebration, Doctors Warn

 
Two newspapers recently published two opinion pieces examining the ethical issues surrounding the recent birth of octuplets to a California woman, Nadya Suleman, who reportedly underwent fertility treatments. Summaries appear below.
 


~ Arthur Caplan, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Something has gone terribly wrong when a 33-year-old single woman — who has no home of her own, no job [...]

Second hand smoke affects fertility

If you need another reason to quit smoking, consider that it may diminish your chances of being a parent or grandparent. Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that women exposed to second hand smoke, either as adults or children, were significantly more likely to face fertility problems and suffer miscarriages.
 An epidemiologic [...]

Easing fertility through lifestyle changes

Couples who have been trying to conceive can easily grow impatient when their plans don’t go exactly, or as easily, as planned. But before concluding that they may have certain fertility problems or that they need fertility drugs or treatments, it is good to first take a closer look into the way they are leading [...]

Study Shows It May Be Possible to Preserve Child-Bearing Ability in Young Girls with Cancer

Research appearing in the on-line edition of Fertility and Sterility revealed that it may be possible for girls suffering from cancer in childhood to preserve their ability to have children later in life.

While advances in cancer therapies have dramatically improved survival rates for patients who suffer from childhood cancers, the use of chemotherapy and radiation [...]

Hair Coloring and Pregnancy

 
Most experts agree that when it comes to hair coloring, safe is better than sorry. So wait out the first trimester before heading back to the salon to retouch those roots. If your practitioner is extra cautious, he or she may advise against hair coloring during your entire pregnancy, but there’s no hard evidence that [...]

Foods That Make You Fertile

Successful marathon runners know that to make it to the end of a race, good nutrition is critical — from the “I’m in training” trail mix to that carb-loading dinner the night before the big run. Like the marathoner, you can use food to boost your chances of making it to the finish line, whether [...]

Father’s age and Infertility

Among couples with fertility problems, those in which the man is over age 35 have lower pregnancy rates and increased chances of miscarriage, a new study shows.
To come to this conclusion, French researchers looked at more than 12,000 couples who went to a fertility clinic in France. In most of the cases, the couples were [...]

Perfumed ‘risk’ to future fertility

A principal investigator for the Human Reproductive Sciences Unit of theUK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) has revealed that using certain cosmetics during the early stages of pregnancy could affect fertility in males in later life. Professor Richard Sharpe undertook research on rats, which showed that after exposure to certain chemicals commonly found in cosmetics such [...]

Alcohol abuse in women linked to fertility problems

Researchers studying Australian groups of twins have established a link between heavy alcohol use and delayed pregnancy, in findings to be published in the journal ‘Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research’.
Mary Waldron, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine and corresponding author of the research, wrote that this was the first study [...]