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Should couples be able to buy custom-made babies?
Surrogacy has become a well-established road to parenthood for many couples.
Surrogates form agreements with couples stipulating how and when the surrogate will become pregnant, with whose eggs and sperm. They agree about where the birth will take place. They agree on compensation to the surrogate for her time and the burden of carrying a pregnancy.
In the normal order of things, all these details are sorted out and signed into a contract before the baby is conceived.
A group of prominent fertility advocates have now been accused of reversing the order of operations: they would hire a woman to become pregnant, and then shop her fetus around to prospective parents.
The more advanced we become at creating life in all sorts of new-fangled ways, the more people who previously wouldn’t have been able to conceive are able to have children. Now, that may even include dead people.
The rules of post-humous baby making are being written as different precedent-setting scenarios are playing out right now, all across the world. Continue reading »
Can doctors save the fertility of young kids battling cancer?
9-year-old Dylan Hanlon has cancer. A lump in his chest turned out to be Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare cancer, fortunately caught early.
The prescribed nine months of chemotherapy doctors are using to destroy the cancer may also be destroying his chances of fathering his own children when he grows up. Numerous forms of chemotherapy, high-dose body-wide radiation, radiation aimed at the pelvis and some surgeries can leave patients unable to procreate.
About 10 percent of the 1.5 million people diagnosed with cancer last year were younger than 45, more than 15,000 of them under 20. It’s estimated that roughly half of younger patients risk either some immediate fertility damage, or for girls the prospect of menopause in their 20s or 30s. It depends on the type of cancer and treatment. Young adults have options — bank some sperm, freeze embryos or eggs. Children diagnosed before puberty don’t. Boys don’t produce sperm before puberty, ruling out sperm banking. Girls are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have but those are in an immature state, so egg-freezing isn’t an option. Continue reading »
The bone sperm connection
We already know that the health of our bones is affected by sex hormones, but scientists have discovered that the relationship may go both ways.
A paper in the journal Cell suggests that bones and the hormones derived therein play a critical role in regulating sex hormones and male fertility. The discovery was a surprise to researchers and may be a route to treating male fertility problems.
Here is what scientists discovered about the bone-sperm connection and what it might mean for men trying to conceive: Continue reading »
How do you know when it's time to get pregnant?
Should I have a baby?
It’s a question probably every woman asks herself at least once. Straight or gay, married or single, housewife or high-powered lawyer: At some point, we all look in the mirror and wonder if we should be getting pregnant right about now.
For some of us, it’s an easy question. We’ve always wanted kids and can’t wait to conceive. For others, we just asked that question because our mother asked for the 10,000th time, and the answer is still no.
For most women, though, it’s more complicated. There are pros and cons to having a baby. Even if you know you want kids, choosing the right time can be a torturous dance of weighing variables: Where are you at with your career? Do you need to finish grad school first? Should we have a baby before or after we buy a house?
If you’re not sure whether or not you want kids, the issue is even more complex. You might wonder if you’re really cut out to be a mom at all.
There’s one thing that cuts through the knot of indecision: baby lust!
Surprise!
Everyone knows that as a woman ages, her chances of getting pregnant decreases. This scientific fact has proven to be a double-edged sword for me. I was born in 1969, the day after my mom turned 41, so I’ve never put too much stock in broad-sweeping conclusions when it comes to conception as it relates to age.
Yes, I must have put some stock in it. After all, I opted against a vasectomy after my triplets were born despite the fact that neither my wife nor I wanted any more children. Why did I opt against it? Simple. Caroline was 38. And as I stated earlier, everyone knows that as a woman ages, her chances of getting pregnant decreases. Throw in the fact that Caroline had needed the help of hormone shots to conceive our other four children? We figured we were good to go.
What’s that saying about making God laugh? Something about telling Him your plans?
Sperm counts are falling among men in the developed world.
My colleague Heather has a great piece up at the Daily Beast about the rising numbers of men suffering from low sperm counts.
Falling sperm counts aren’t an accident. They’re being caused by living in the developed world. Overeating, exposure to industrial chemicals, recreational and prescription drugs can all have adverse effects on sperm counts. Heather says the effect on future generations could be dramatic. So dramatic that instead of worrying about “peak oil”, we should be fretting about “peak sperm”.
Sperm counts may be falling by as much as 1.5% a year in the U.S., and double that in Europe. If that trend continues, it won’t take long for male fertility to dry up entirely. In a few generations, men would be routinely infertile.
Is this really happening? And if it is, why aren’t we hearing more about it?
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