Some Older Women Just Have to Have a Baby

Say hello to Fiona Palin, 49 years old in this photo. You see her with her healthy daughter Kiki, age 5 months. Fiona is just one of many older women who are unwilling to be without a baby, despite getting on in years. Among the financially comfortable and well off, this is becoming something of a trend.

In 2008, Brad Van Voorhis, head of the fertility clinic at the University of Iowa, decided he wanted to measure how well children conceived through in vitro fertilization do on intelligence tests, hoping to dispel lingering concerns about their cognitive abilities. So he and his team compared the standardized-test scores of 463 IVF kids ages 8 to 17 against the scores of other kids in their classes. They found that the IVF kids scored better overall and in every category of test—reading, math, and language skills. And they found that the older the mother, the better the kid performed.

...Some evidence even suggests that having babies late extends a person’s life. Boston University’s Thomas Perls has been studying centenarians since 1995. He found that women who gave birth to children after the age of 40 were four times more likely to live to 100 than those who did not. His study has nothing to do with reproductive technology or adoption: It shows a connection between an unusually healthy reproductive system and longevity. But longevity is complex, and Perls hypothesizes that there’s something about living with kids—all that running around, all that responsibility, all that social connectivity in the shape of picnics and playdates—that maintains health. People who’ve made a big investment to have little kids take care of themselves, and people who take care of themselves live longer.

...The relative wealth of older parents blunts their supposed shortcomings in other ways. Research supports intuition: Rich people live longer than others. Demographers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have found that the gap in life expectancy between richest and poorest Americans has widened since 1980 to four and half years from three. Rich people are likelier to have good health insurance, and insured people live longer because they can avail themselves of checkups and screening tests. Rich people are likelier not to be smokers, they’re likelier to be thin, and they’re likelier to have good cardiovascular health.

...It is nearly impossible to have a baby at 50 by accident. “Oops” does not happen; that momentary abandonment of good sense or caution will almost never result in a pregnancy. No matter how a child is procured, whether through technology or adoption, her 50-year-old parents have likely gone through some kind of hell—paperwork, blood tests, questionnaires, waiting, visa applications, mood swings, marital discord, and recalibration of expectations—to have her. These are the most wanted of children. And their parents, some would argue, can give them something that the youngest and prettiest don’t have: the wisdom of age and an abiding sense that life is a precious gift not to be wasted.



Fiona Palin started trying to conceive ten years ago, when she was 38. She underwent six failed IVF cycles and three miscarriages—including, the final time, a miscarriage of triplets. Depressed for years, she decided to give up hope, go back to school, and become a tourism consultant. She investigated adoption. She was keeping herself busy.


Last August, when she and her husband, Nick, who is 63, decided to thaw and use their last remaining embryo, abiding in a freezer since 2002, they were done “with everything but the crying,” she says. “I thought, This won’t work. Don’t put any hopes on it.” It did, though. Fiona learned she was pregnant in the bathroom of a Ralphs supermarket in Los Angeles, where, in anticipation of a long, boozy evening with relatives, she took a do-it-yourself urine test, just to be safe. “I screamed. I was crying hysterically in the toilet. If anyone would have heard, I’m sure they would have called security. I got myself together and went outside, and Nick was there. He said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ and I told him, and then he started crying. So we’re crying in this parking lot of this supermarket.” According to her obstetrician, Fiona’s pregnancy was “flawless.” _NYMag

In affluent countries, healthy 50 year olds often have another 30 years of relatively vigorous life left in them. If they want to -- and are able to -- nurture and raise another child or generation of children, who is to say they cannot?

Recent research from Karolinska Institute in Sweden demonstrates that older men are more than capable of siring healthy and intelligent children -- in younger women or older.

If older women plan ahead and freeze their young eggs ahead of time, they can birth healthy and smart babies using their even older husbands' sperm. If they have no frozen eggs of their own, they can buy eggs from healthy young females willing to part with a few. Either way, IVF can help. Some older couples even have frozen embryos patiently waiting for the couple to commit to bringing it into the world as an instantiated being. And then, there are always surrogate mothers, willing to bear another couple's child for a fee.

The objections to having children at an older age can generally be met and dealt with by persons who are smart enough, healthy enough, and affluent enough. But have they truly thought about how they will deal with the teenage brain, when the time comes? I suspect that the pivotal factor in overcoming that challenge, will be how well the parents can honestly and emotionally engage the child from the earliest age up to the teenage years. And how well the parent can limit the child's exposure to an extremely dysfunctional popular culture, educational culture, and the culture of dysfunctional peers of childhood.

For many people, having to raise their own grandchildren -- when their own no-good kids fail to raise them -- will provide them with as much child-raising satisfaction in their middle and old age as they can stand. But don't be surprised if this trend toward maternity among older, childless women of affluence, begins to pick up momentum.

Step by Step Toward a Brave New World

Fertility Medicine is generating some interesting new techniques. A new technique for growing hundreds of eggs in a lab, while a woman undergoes cancer chemotherapy--or is exposed to other environmental hazards such as the radiation of outer space etc--offers promise for thousands of women who would otherwise be doomed to infertility. By taking sections or biopsies of ovaries, and freezing them for later use, a woman's fertility can survive separate from her body for years.

Another fertility tool is the Inovocell device, which is an interesting IVF tool to reduce the cost and inconvenience of the procedure:

The Invocell device is a sealed capsule that allows fertilisation to take place inside the body, in the vaginal cavity. A woman would first be given mild drugs to stimulate her ovaries, and then eggs would be removed from them while she is under sedation. Up to seven eggs are then put into the Invocell capsule, along with washed sperm. The capsule is then placed inside the vagina. After three days the patient would return for a second appointment, in which the capsule is removed and any fertilised embryos are examined for quality. The best one or two would then be transferred to the womb. __Times

That reminds me of another device which is a bit more invasive, the Anecova capsule:

The new device allows embryos created in the lab to be incubated inside a perforated silicon container inserted into a woman's own womb. After a few days, the capsule is recovered and some embryos are selected for implantation in the womb (see image, top right)

Embryos incubated in the lab must have their growth medium changed every few hours to provide new nutrients and get rid of waste. The new device provides a more natural environment.

The silicon capsule is about 5 millimetres long and less than a millimetre wide. Its walls are perforated with 360 holes, each around 40 microns across. After embryos have been loaded inside, the ends are sealed and the container is connected to a flexible wire that holds the device inside the uterus (see image, lower right). A thread trails through the cervix to allow it to be recovered later on. __NS

The two devices are quite different in practise, but both provide ways for embryos to be retrieved from the woman's body, tested, and the best ones selected for implantation in the uterus.

It is easy to see how such devices could be used in a fiction plot--or a criminal scam. One woman could be carrying another woman's eggs in an Invocell, get a man to unwittingly fertilise the eggs, then take the fertilised eggs to IVF for implantation into the uterus of the woman who produced the eggs. It is an open and shut court case of paternity. The wronged (but complicit) wife gets a lucrative divorce. The egg donor gets a hefty paternity judgment, even though the father has never slept with her. Moving along . . .

The final device--not yet developed--is the artificial womb that is capable of incubating the embryo through a normal gestation to delivery. Such a sophisticated device will require the solution of several technical problems.

H/T Futurepundit.com

Male Birth Control Pills: A Potent Infertility

Feminists have loudly longed for a male birth control method, in the interests of contraceptive equity. Memphis based GTx recently announced that its experimental drug "C-31" achieves "100% male infertility" at a dose of only 0.1 mg per day (in rats).

The key is something called a selective androgen receptor modulator, or SARM. “These compounds suppress a brain hormone, and shut down sperm production in a reversible way,” Jim Dalton, vice president of research and development at GTx, tells the Health Blog. GTx, based in Memphis, Tenn., specializes in hormone treatments for cancer and men’s health.

To achieve birth control, men would have to take such a pill for two to three months to deplete their sperm. It would take about the same amount of time for them to return to full reproductive capacity after stopping the medicine. Even if all goes well, any pill is still five to 10 years away. __WSJblog

The selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) approach to contraception could provide an added benefit of providing greater muscle mass to users. SARM research is booming, since SARMs can be modified to produce highly selective effects on the androgenic hormonal system. SARMs are not in themselves steroids, and may find their way into the drug cabinet of elite athletes eventually.

More on the sociological impacts of such a drug at Sentient Developments.

H/T Futurismic

Growing Better Designer IVF Babies?

UK researchers are trying to make having babies by IVF safer and more reliable. In the process, they may end up with healthier embryos.

The new device allows embryos created in the lab to be incubated inside a perforated silicon container inserted into a woman's own womb. After a few days, the capsule is recovered and some embryos are selected for implantation in the womb.

Embryos incubated in the lab must have their growth medium changed every few hours to provide new nutrients and get rid of waste. The new device provides a more natural environment.

The silicon capsule is about 5 millimetres long and less than a millimetre wide. Its walls are perforated with 360 holes, each around 40 microns across. After embryos have been loaded inside, the ends are sealed and the container is connected to a flexible wire that holds the device inside the uterus (see image, lower right). A thread trails through the cervix to allow it to be recovered later on.___NewScientist

In vitro fertilisation is a high-risk procedure for the embryo. Fewer than 50% of implanted embryos survive. The new technique provides the encapsulated embryos with a more natural environment, allowing embryos to develop more normally--leading to more selectively viable pregnancies.

We Are All Hermaphrodites Now

It is possible to take a man's bone marrow cells and make sperm from them. Scientists in England now plan to make sperm from a woman's bone marrow cells. In Brazil, scientists claim to have made both sperm and eggs from male mouse embryonic stem cells. Putting it all together, scientists should soon be able to produce any number of sperm AND egg cells from any given person--male or female! We are all hermaphrodites, now.

According to New Scientist magazine, the scientists want to take stem cells from a woman donor's bone marrow and transform them into sperm through the use of special chemicals and vitamins.

Newcastle professor Karim Nayernia has applied for permission to carry out the work and is ready to start the experiments within two months.

The biologist, who pioneered the technique with mice, believes early- stage 'female sperm' could be produced inside two years. Mature sperm capable of fertilising eggs might take three more years....Early-stage sperm have already been produced from male bone marrow.

Taking stem cells from an adult donor - possibly a cancer patient - removes the ethical problems associated with using embryos....Greg Aharonian, a U.S. analyst who is trying to patent the technologies behind female sperm and male eggs, said he wants to undermine the argument that heterosexual marriage is superior because it is aimed at procreation. "I'm a troublemaker," he said.

Researchers at the Butantan Institute in Brazil, meanwhile, claim to have turned embryonic stem cells from male mice into both sperm and eggs. They are now working on skin cells....If their experiments succeed, the stage would be set for a gay man to donate skin cells that could be used to make eggs.

These could then be fertilised by his partner's sperm and placed into the womb of a surrogate mother.___DailyMail

You see the catch, right? While a lesbian woman can gestate and give birth to the biological offspring of her and her female partner, for gay males to give birth to their offspring, they require a surrogate mother. What is missing from this picture? An artificial womb, correct?

Perhaps it is enough for now, to be able to provide the choice for two men or two women to create a new human life between them. In fact, one woman could provide both sperm and eggs, gestate the fetus, and give birth. Again, one man will be able to provide both sperm and eggs, but still requires a surrogate mother. But that would be inbreeding, perhaps even a weird, previously undiscovered form of incest?

Well, think about it. Fertilisation clinics will likely not offer the option for several years yet, and you may have to go to a third world clinic to have the procedure performed. For the lesbian or gay couple who otherwise have everything, this may provide a form of "normalcy" that has been missing. For the husband with low sperm count or the man who is post-vasectomy but now wants children, this opens new possibilities. For the woman past menopause, who still wants a child, this sets the biological clock back. And for the narcissistic megalomaniac who is too selfish to create a clone, the option of being both father and mother to a child may solve the problem of propagation without partners.

Mass Producing Babies--Toward an Artificial Womb

There is a strong need for reliable artificial wombs in the developed world. Women are as deeply immersed in work and careers as men--not to mention just as vain about their appearance as men. They do not wish to sacrifice the time, and the wear and tear, that pregnancy and childbirth entails.

Teruo Fujii of the University of Tokyo in Japan and his colleagues are building a microfluidic chip to nurture the first stages of pregnancy. They hope, eventually, to create a fully automated artificial uterus in which egg and sperm are fed in at one end and an early embryo comes out the other, ready for implanting in a real mother. They say using such a device could improve the success rate of IVF.

.... Fujii’s team has created a “lab on a chip” that is 2 millimetres across and 0.5 millimetres high, in which up to 20 eggs can be fertilised and then grown until they are ready for implantation. Endometrial cells, which line real wombs, are also grown in the device, so that the chemicals they produce can reach the embryos and help them grow.

“We are providing the embryos with a much more comfortable environment, mimicking what happens in the body,” Fujii says.

Experiments in mice suggest that the chip is more successful than traditional IVF at producing embryos that will grow into healthy fetuses. Of 50 fertilised eggs grown on the chip, 30 developed into early embryos, compared to 26 out of 50 fertilised eggs grown through “microdrop” IVF. Here a drop of mineral oil is used to cover the fertilised egg and a small volume of culture fluid to stop the egg drying out. In a separate experiment, Fujii’s team implanted embryos grown on the chip into mice and found that 44 per cent of them developed into healthy fetuses, compared to 40 per cent of those grown in microdrops. “It’s not just about more embryos surviving to be implanted, they also seem to be doing better once they are implanted,” says Wheeler.

....For now the sperm and eggs are still prepared for fertilisation manually but the researchers are working towards automating those steps too. Wheeler’s team has already automated them, but has not compared his chip-grown embryos with ones produced by conventional IVF, nor grown endometrial cells on a chip. He suggests that combining his approach with Fujii’s might produce even better results.

The chip could also be used for growing genetically modified animals, stem cells and cloned embryos, he adds.

Source

For now, these chip-conceived embryos will be implanted into a living female host. Eventually, living wombs outside the bodies of females will receive the embryo implants. Further on, completely artificial wombs designed and grown for this purpose would act as recipients of embryos, and incubators for the developing fetus.

When the fertilisation process is automated, and the subsequent pregnancy takes place entirely in an artificial womb, pregnancy will be within the reach of anyone who possesses both sperm and egg--or anyone who can afford to buy them.

Sperm is successfully frozen and used years later. Egg freezing will eventually reach the same degree of reliability. Certainly embryos themselves can be frozen for years before being implanted. The entire process of fertilisation, pregnancy, and childbirth are being revolutionised before our eyes.

Internet Sperm, Internet Eggs, Internet Sperm and Eggs?

For many years, a woman wanting to be a parent could buy human sperm on the internet. More recently, human eggs were offered for sale on the internet. But now, eager parents-to-be can mix and match sperm and eggs, and order designer embryos. With viable embryos, even women past menopause can receive hormone treatments, and get their uteri in shape for another pregnancy.

For now, though, the biggest market is for sperm. Single mothers and lesbian mothers are particularly interested in buying the highest quality of sperm for their progeny.

After her divorce, Melissa went looking for a guy who could be a good father to the children she always hoped for. When pickings proved slim, she started searching instead for the perfect donor. "I was 39," says Melissa, who chose not to reveal her last name. "I was running out of time."

His codename was "Finn," and for $1,250 payable to the Scandinavian Cryobank office in New York City, Melissa walked away with 5 vials of his sperm. After shelling out another $15,000 for hormone drugs, doctor consultations and her in vitro fertilization process, Melissa is now the proud mother of 13-month-old twin boys.

Melissa's twins are just two of the estimated 30,000 babies born each year from donated sperm. Melissa herself is among the growing ranks of single moms and lesbian couples that now make up around half of the market for gamete donation, which, until the 1980s and 1990s, had been available almost exclusively to married, heterosexual couples.

Throw in an array of new reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization and the advent of the Internet, where soon-to-be moms can go "shopping" for donors, and you get a whole new kind of baby boom. Today, the U.S. fertility industry is worth some $3.3 billion.

Source

Until women learn to make their own sperm, they will need to buy it or otherwise convince a male to hand over the goods. But successful women can afford to buy the best, and with carefully screened sperm, there are no strings attached. Single and divorced males who wish to have children must seek out surrogate mothers--which is often a very chancy proposition. Normal contract law does not always carry the day, when a change of heart occurs.

Of course, when artificial wombs are perfected, the whole reproductive game will change. Until then, single and gay women will have the advantage over single and gay men, in procreation.

Sperm Cells from Mesenchyme: Can Women Produce Sperm?

Human germ cells have been created from bone marrow stem cells for the first time. The researchers used bone marrow from male volunteers in this case, but could female donor stem cells work as well? Here is what the researchers did:

The research published today (Friday, April 13 2007), in the academic journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, was carried out in Germany* by a team of scientists led by Professor Karim Nayernia, formerly of the University of Göttingen but now of the North-east England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI), based at the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne.

For the experiment, Prof Nayernia and his team took bone marrow from male volunteers and isolated the mesenchymal stem cells. These cells have previously been found to grow into other body tissues such as muscle.

They cultured these cells in the laboratory and coaxed them into becoming male reproductive cells, which are scientifically known as ‘germ cells’. Genetic markers showed the presence of partly-developed sperm cells called spermatagonial stem cells, which are an early phase of the male germ cell development. In most men, spermatagonial cells eventually develop into mature, functional sperm but this progression was not achieved in this experiment.

Earlier research led by Prof Nayernia using mice, published in Laboratory Investigations, also created spermatagonial cells from mouse bone marrow. The cells were transplanted into mouse testes and were observed to undergo early meiosis - cell division - the next stage to them becoming mature sperm cells, although they did not develop further.

Source

Stem cell researchers are becoming very adept at leading various types of stem cells down differentiational paths. Notice that these stem cells were taken from adult human males. They did not differentiate into functioning sperm, perhaps because they were not implanted into living testicles. Soon, however, it should be possible to produce sperm from stem cells in vitro--without the need for testicles.

If stem cells from the bone marrow of human females could eventually be coaxed into becoming functioning sperm, the dreams of creating a sustinable all-woman society could at last be within reach.

Men: The Disposable Sex

Many of you have read this article in today's issue of The Economist. The article is slick and provocative, an excellent example of modern journalism. (it may be necessary to view a short advertisement before viewing the premium content)

....Girls get better grades at school than boys, and in most developed countries more women than men go to university. Women will thus be better equipped for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains count a lot more than brawn. In Britain far more women than men are now training to become doctors. And women are more likely to provide sound advice on investing their parents' nest egg: surveys show that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do.

Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.... It used to be said that women must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily that is not so difficult. Source.

It is fascinating to contemplate the continuing need for strong "affirmative action" programs for women in academia and the workplace, in the face of such obvious female superiority of achievement. But I digress.

I doubt if many readers here are privy to the triple ultra premium content of The Economist. Probably few would even know where to find it. Fortunately, we at Al Fin read all, so that you do not have to. Here are excerpts from the 3UPC edition of The Economist:

...In fact, the only reason men are tolerated at all, is that women scientists have not quite perfected cloning. There is still a need for human sperm, and for now, only human male testicles are capable of reliably supplying that need. Currently there are projects supported by UNESCO and the EU, which will allow scientists to create sperm-producing human testicles in the laboratory from male embryos....

....Some male scientists have suggested that male humans are overrepresented on the high end of cognitive ability, particularly in math and spatial abilities. Fortunately, Liz Spelke has totally refuted that bit of obsolete patriarchal folk psychology. Once the effects of millenia of prejudice are allowed to wear off, women will outperform men in math and spatial abilities, just as they have in all the other fields of human endeavor....

....In summary, men are a total waste of resources, if not for sperm. It should be a top priority to, in the short term, create alternate sources of sperm. In the intermediate term, the perfection of cloning will allow the total elimination of any need for men at all--in the long term.

There you have it, the master plan. I would like to be able to provide links, but the triple ultra premium content is quadruple-encrypted, preventing the use of ordinary links. I cannot help but think back to Al Fin's fascinating interview with two of the leading members of the movement referred to in the 3UPC article above.

For more detailed information on why men have become the disposable sex, consult Warren Farrel, Lionel Tiger, and Cristina Hoff Sommers.

Oh, Brave New Womb

Scientists have been on the trail of the artificial uterus for decades. Since Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, science fiction writers have used the device (scroll) frequently. So, we have test-tube babies now, in vitro fertilisation, but no artificial wombs.

It is not for lack of trying. Hung Ching Liu, a fertilisation specialist, has been working on the problem for years, and making genuine progress.

In 2002, Liu stunned the world of reproductive medicine by claiming to have recreated a woman's womb, using uterine cells grown on a biodegradable scaffold bathed in a broth of hormones and nutrients.

When Liu placed fertilised human embryos created during IVF treatment inside, they nestled into the wall of the womb and began to attach themselves to the endometrial cells that make up the lining — just as in the early stages of pregnancy. Liu stopped the experiments after a week because regulations prevent human embryos being developed much further.

No such restrictions apply to animals and, in unpublished work, Liu says she has now grown mouse foetuses in her artificial womb for 17 of their 21—day terms. This is equivalent to about 31 weeks in humans, at which point babies have been viable for more than a month and can routinely be nurtured to normal development if born prematurely.

Just as with the human embryos, the tiny bundles of mouse cells nestled into the artificial womb lining and began to attach themselves. Liu watched as blood vessels formed, then miniature placentas and, eventually, the amniotic sac — an embryo's personal protective bubble.

A different approach has been taken by Yoshinori Kuwabara at Juntendo University in Tokyo. His team has removed foetuses from goats and placed them in clear plastic tanks filled with amniotic fluid stabilised at body temperature. In this way, Kuwabara has kept goat foetuses alive and growing for up to 10 days by connecting their umbilical cords to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste.

While Liu's work is aimed at helping those having difficulty conceiving, Kuwabara's is designed to help women who suffer miscarriages or very premature births. In this way Liu is extending the time an embryo can exist in a laboratory before being placed in a woman's body; Kuwabara is trying to give a foetus a safe home if expelled too early from its natural womb.

Crucially, both believe artificial wombs capable of sustaining a child for nine months will become reality in a few years.

This Slate article looks at artificial wombs as a way of incubating embryonic tissue for use in regenerative medicine, not as a way to create a new person. There must be many uses for working artificial wombs, if you think about it.

Ethicists have lined up on every conceivable side of the issue. Some feminists see the development as an emancipation of women, and some see it as a threat to the existence of all women. Choose your sides. Some religious fundamentalists see artificial wombs as the end of abortion, and some see them as a threat to the idea of "human essence." Like a rorschach blot test, the artificial womb concept has a way of causing people to define themselves in unexpected ways.

Embryos have implanted inside the abdominal cavities of women, on the outer surface of viscera, and developed to a surprising degree. Here is a report of a successful abdominal pregnancy and delivery. This suggests that an artificial womb constructed of living tissue, well perfused with nutrient and oxygenating fluid, should do just as well as this woman's abdominal organs, and create much less risk for the mother. The problem of providing an in utero like environment should be solvable.

It will happen, sooner or later, ethics or no ethics, laws or no laws. What we choose to make of the possibilities created by the artificial womb is up to us.

Far into the future, I foresee an artificial womb in every home, where the proud parents-to-be can keep close track of thousands of parameters in the developing fetus. The A.W. could even be fitted with a 2-way communications (cell phone with remote antenna for radiation safety) device and high fidelity speakers so that the fetus can listen to Mozart, a soothing heartbeat, or even the mother's voice from half a world away, if need be.

Brave Feminists Rage against the Testicle

Recent news stories about finding stem cells in the testicles of mice and humans has prompted a backlash from courageous feminist professors of Women's Studies at Balwynne College. Dr. Letisha Snotsberry and Dr. Nadine Bulsnort have graciously agreed to be interviewed by Al Fin, on this important issue.

AF: Thank you for speaking with me today. I wonder if you can each summarize your objections to the latest stem cell news, starting with Dr. Snotsberry.

LS: The issue is very simple, Al. Feminism in the western world is based upon the fact that all bad things in the world come from the human testicle. Testosterone is the maker of war, the source of domestic abuse, and the reason for the subjugation of women everywhere . . .

NB: . . . Not only that, but the testicle produces sperm, and sperm causes pregnancy which stops many women from achieving their potential. You have no idea how many women drop out of school, or even careers, just to have a sniveling little baby. It's uncivilized.

AF: But surely you can see the necessity of propagating the species, after all if there were no babies, the entire human race would . . . .

NB: . . . Don't give me that nonsense, Al. If women stopped allowing men to use them as babymakers, men would have to invent another way to have babies. Women are just too convenient . . .

LS: . . . Getting back to the topic of the human testicle, I think it's pretty clear that it already had two strikes against it. Now with the news of stem cells being derived from the human testicle--well it's simply too much! The testicle simply contains too many things--it could lead us all back to the patriarchy again.

AF: Excuse me, you are saying that because the human testicle is turning out to be the Swiss Army Knife of human organs, it should be downgraded somehow?

LS: Well, obviously, Al. For one thing, why do all men have two testicles?

NB: Exactly, Tish! It's total overkill. One testicle is plenty--maybe even too much. We've had discussions in national committee about a "Testicles-Optional Policy", or TOP for short. All newborn males would come under the policy, all overseen by a Bioethics Committee staffed by professors of Women's Studies from the local college or university.

AF: Wait a minute, Doctor. Are you suggesting neutering baby boys when they are born?

LS: Let me answer that. No, Al, you are making it sound worse than it is. The informed consent would clearly give the option of retaining one testicle or none. The parents are given a vote in the matter, along with each member of the Bioethics Committee. It is all quite democratic.

AF: But what would be done with the testicles that are removed?

The two professors exchange a quick glance, then check their watches for the time.

LS: Oh dear, Al, it seems to be getting quite late. We have another appointment--if you'll please excuse us . . .

NB: . . . Yes, we're in a big hurry Al, sorry.

AF: But surely you have some plans for the little boys' testicles?

NB: You're making too much of a big deal out of this, Al. We already told you that testicles are the source of everything bad in the world. What would we want with testicles? You seem to be insinuating . . .

AF: . . . No, not at all. I am simply curious . . .

LS: Thank you so much, Al. We have both really enjoyed this.

The professors walk away whispering furiously to each other.

AF: Well, ladies and gentlemen, I certainly appreciate the professors' sharing their thoughts. Apparently the human testicle is more controversial than I had thought previously. Please stay tuned for further developments.

Frozen Egg Baby Born Healthy

A 41 year old nurse in Kentucky gave birth 31 Dec., 2005, to the first frozen donor egg baby from a commercial egg donor bank. Now women can receive donor eggs that have been preserved by freezing, just as they have long been able to receive donor sperm that had been frozen.

Well over 100 babies have been born from frozen human eggs, but the technology has now gone commercial, allowing recipients to match egg donors for physical similarities with the birth mother. With new technology that allows women to have ovarian stem cells frozen and later converted to eggs, along with the new frozen egg technology, women are acquiring more options for conception than ever. The "biological clock" may be slowing just a bit.