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Strollerderby
First Lady Rosalynn Carter with Democratic Party activist and serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1978.
After 34 years, a family has been reunited with their brother who was previously believed to be murdered by serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Harold Wayne Lovell went missing as a teenager back in 1977, and since he had worked in construction and fit the profile of Gacy’s victims in their area of Aurora, Illinois — boys between the ages of 14 and 21 — his family was convinced he was one of them. Continue reading »
Can you even imagine finding out the baby you gave birth to ended up going home with another family accidentally?
Two 12-year-old girls who were switched at birth are choosing not to add the trauma of finding out the truth of their situations: they’re sticking with the moms they know.
The girls, Irina and Anya, live within miles of each other in eastern Russia and only learned of the mistake when the ex-husband of one of the mothers refused to pay child support because he suspected their daughter was someone elses because she bore no resemblance to him. DNA tests confirmed his suspicions that their daughter was not theirs biologically.
The girls have since decided to stay with the parents who raised them rather than their real parents, according to ABC News.
Two Russian families learn their 12-year-old daughters were switched at birth.
After a father demanded a paternity test because his child didn’t look like him and he didn’t want to pay child support, two Russian families found out that their 12-year-old girls were actually switched at birth. The DNA test showed that the girl was not related to the father or the mother in the child support case, which led them to the discovery. Now both families are suing the hospital for the mix-up. Continue reading »
Relax, mama!
As if being twice your normal size isn’t enough reason to take it easy during pregnancy…
The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that “children born to women who experience unusual levels of psychological or social stress during pregnancy are more likely to show signs of accelerated aging than other children,” according to Gawker site io9. You hear that Type A’s? No need to freak about about creating the perfect nursery while you’re cooking baby, unless you want him to age more rapidly than his peers. Continue reading »
DNA testing can reveal possible health risks. Is it worth knowing?
If you could use genetic testing to peer into your child’s future and get a glimpse of her likely health risks, would you do it? Many parents would, according to a new study.
Be warned though: you might not like what you see. Most genetic testing does not offer a clean bill of health. Most of us carry a genetic disposition towards some kind of large-scale health issues like heart disease and diabetes. Do you really want to know that your healthy, vibrant little kid is carrying a genetic predisposition for lung cancer? We may believe that knowledge is power, but researchers and policy makers warn that parents may not really be up for the truth about their kids’ genes.
Adoption, divorce, same-sex marriages, in-vitro fertilization and more have all served to change the way we think about what it means to make a family. But amid all the medical miracles and the blending and rearranging of the family unit, one thing remains the same: Children will always have just one biological father and one biological mother. Or will they?
Scientists at Newcastle University have come up with a technique which allows them to create an embryo that includes the DNA of two women and one man. Continue reading »
Technology is a wonderful thing in most ways — but it’s posing new challenges for sperm donors and their desire for anonymity. Rachael Lehmann-Haupt has an interesting piece up on Slate’s Double X today about how DNA testing and Google can lead to parents and children tracking down their sperm donor, whether he wanted to be found or not.
She follows the case of a donor from California who donated when he was young, and left a little bit of information in his donor profile — namely, that his father was in the Baseball Hall of Fame and his mother was a nurse, his birthdate, and his college major. Along with those things, he made it clear he didn’t want to be found. Continue reading »
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