Harvard study offers women endless fertility
(theGRIO) A controversial new study claims it may be possible for older women or those with fertility problems to produce an unlimited supply of human eggs and have babies later on in life. Researchers at Harvard say they have extracted stem cells from women’s ovaries capable of generating new eggs. This challenges the long-established belief that women cannot make any more eggs after menopause. The prevailing dogma is that fertility irreversibly decreases with age, explains lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Tilly of Massachusetts General Hospital. “Young girls are given a bank account of eggs at birth that’s not renewable,” Tily said about most women’s pattern of fecundity. “[A]s they mature and become a woman, then they use these eggs up.” Tilly, nevertheless, says his findings, which appear in the journal Nature Medicine, have significant ramifications for women’s reproductive health and could restore infertility — even reversing the biological clock. “These cells, when maintained outside the body, are more than happy to make eggs on their own,” he says. “If we can guide that process correctly I think it opens up the chance that sometime in the future we might get to the point of actually having an unlimited source of human eggs.” This …
READ MOREWhite couple told they can’t foster black child
(theGRIO) A white couple who say they have been denied the right to continue fostering a black child have vowed to fight authorities to overturn the decision. For five months, foster parents Ben and Sarah FitzPatrick, gave the child a loving home but on Monday were told the baby could be taken away as early as Friday. A pair of Norfolk social workers visited their home and said because their foster baby is black, the child would be better off with African-American foster parents. The check the FitzPatrick’s received to take care of the foster child has also bounced, with the bank telling them there were “insufficient funds,” Sarah FitzPatrick said in all the months they have taken care for the child this was the first time any issue of color was mentioned. WATCH COVERAGE: The FitzPatricks, of Norfolk, VA, got this surprise announcement just a week after a local news station aired their complaints about a neighboring foster care agency and flaws in the system that lead to the death of baby Braxton Taylor. For seven months the FitzPatricks provide baby Braxton with a home but when he was transferred to another foster mother he endured abuse that killed him. The couple believes Norfolk’s …
READ MOREAuthor: Obama’s Father Planned to Give Him Up for Adoption
New book ‘The Other Barack’ draws a candid portrait of a brilliant but troubled man (NBC) A new book may shed new light on the background of President Obama’s father. “The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama’s Father” is slated for release on Tuesday, July 12 by Public Affairs Press. In it, Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs takes a candid look at Barack Obama Sr. and paints a portrait in sharp contrast to the one provided by the president in his own memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” published in 2004. Through exhaustive interviews, Jacobs assembles a complex depiction of the elder Obama as a brilliant but troubled man. One of the most notable revelations she offers is that when Barack Obama Sr. was a 24-year-old college sophomore, he and Ann Dunham — his second wife and the mother of President Obama — initially planned to give their unborn child up for adoption via the Salvation Army. Jacobs’ account was gleaned from a memo about a conversation with Obama Sr. conducted by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. She further reports that upon the time of that memo’s release (through …
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