I usually start these blog entries with an idea and then see where the research takes me. Certainly I go down many rat holes. Thanks to the recent reversal of reproductive rights by the SCOTUS, with perhaps more to come, I wondered what SCAM alternatives were available when/if reality-based reproductive interventions were no longer an option. I wonder no longer.

There are four aspects of reproduction I will consider, along with some rat holes: contraception, infertility, erectile dysfunction, and pregnancy termination.

As I start this, my assumption was there would be few SCAM approaches to pregnancy prevention, as SCAMs have no efficacy when there is a hard end point to the intervention. There are no SCAM therapies for the infections I see most days as many have almost 100% mortality rates. No one, I would hope, would use a SCAM for the sole treatment of endocarditis or meningitis although there is the occasional person who will rely solely on SCAMs for cancer treatment. It does not end well.

I have told this story before, but I first learned about SCAMs early in my practice when I was called to see a case of wet gangrene of the leg. A young female had a sarcoma of her leg that would have likely been cured with amputation. She chose naturopathy instead and the cancer advanced until most of her leg was cancer, much of it dead and putrefying. That is why they called me, not there was anything I could do. She refused any care (she was admitted because she had passed out) and that night the cancer eroded into an artery and she bled out. That is where I first encountered naturopathy and the first of many cases where cancer denial was an important aspect of the patients care.

Like SCAM cancer therapies, it is obvious when contraception fails. I would think pregnancy would be harder to deny than cancer, but I will not be surprised if the comments have stories that demonstrate otherwise. The if only they had used our SCAM sooner gambit is unlikely to be a convincing argument as to why birth control failed.

Before I wander the SCAMs, though, I wondered how people avoided pregnancy in the era before oral contraceptives. Sure, there are barrier methods, abstinence (like that ever works), and the rhythm method. And you know what we call people who use the rhythm method for contraception? Parents.

If you visit the old towns of the West, it appears that most of the hotels and restaurants were once bordellos. I wonder where they found all the workers for these bordellos. It would seem that most of the female population of the Old West would have to be employed in these houses of ill repute.

But how did the prostitutes, and others, avoid pregnancy? Were there, for lack of a better term, natural forms of birth control? Or were the bordellos filled with their offspring? Besides a variety of barrier methods (half a lemon used as a cervical cap!), the techniques used were not that different than modern SCAM ideas:

Roman women put a leather pouch filled with cats liver on their left foot during sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Some women believed that spitting three times into a frogs mouth was a good method of birth control. European women thought that they could prevent pregnancy by turning backwards a wheel of a mill at midnight. And, in many cultures women constantly wore various necklaces and amulets, which were supposed to have the power of controlling the act of conception. Women were advised to hold their breath and draw their bodies back during sex in order to stop the sperm from entering her body. It was also suggested a woman to jump backwards seven times after sexual intercourse or take something to cause sneezing.

As one website noted:

Until modern contraceptives were invented, women relied on all kinds of ancient birth control methods that had inconsistent results. Some were even dangerous, including the use of heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic, which did prevent conception but also led to organ failure and brain damage.

I was also amazed to learn that the relationship between ovulation and menses was not discovered until the 1930s, so that method of contraception was unknown for most of human history.

Also used were:

syringes to inject mercury, arsenic, and vinegar into the body to induce abortions or treat diseases.

Much to my amusement, one Boston brothel had:

a homeopathic doctor considered to be crackpotty at the time, according to Beaudry. He prescribed unusual remedies for the women, most likely for treating sexually transmitted diseases and inducing abortions.

He would likely be considered crackpotty today.

One would think, wouldnt one, that if acupuncture is efficacious in aiding in pregnancy and given its numerous alleged salubrious effects on female and male reproductive physiology, acupuncture and traditional Chinese pseudo-medicine could also be used for contraception. I can think of one application where acupuncture might be efficacious, but there are no acupuncture points on the genitals.

While I was not surprised to find zero papers on the Pubmeds on using acupuncture for birth control, I could also not find any with a general Google search.

There are no SCAMs that are touted for contraception. Not acupuncture, not homeopathy, not chiropractic, not naturopathy. No surprise. There would be no way to rationalize away pregnancy.

One site mentioned in passing, stone seed root, thistle, wild carrot seed, and ginger root as potential contraceptives. I would suggest not.

Since, as noted above, the goal is to adjust and harmonize the state of the female body from a holistic approach and there is no useful form of SCAM contraception, the harmonized state appears to be barefoot and pregnant.

Infertility has a complex differential diagnosis with a variety of anatomical and hormonal abnormalities leading to an inability to conceive. It also makes for a huge literature, although like most of the SCAM literature, high-quality studies are few and far between. I am going to discuss a few I find instructive and or amusing.

SCAM providers are fond of claiming that their raison detre is to help return the body to its optimal state of homeostasis or as one review noted, to adjust and harmonize the state of the female body from a holistic approach.

There are a vast number of SCAMs that are used as an adjunctive therapy for infertility. In China, not unsurprisingly, Traditional Chinese Pseudo Medicine, especially acupuncture and moxibustion, are used as primary treatment for infertility. And, as is always the case in studies out of China, the studies are uniformly positive.

It is a massive literature of Tooth Fairy science and I will note here an infertility study that was randomized and double-blind comparing real acupuncture with placebo acupuncture (same thing) in patients undergoing IVF treatment. The results? No difference, really; p=0.038. But what was amusing was that the pregnancy was increased in the placebo group:

The overall pregnancy rate was significantly higher in the placebo acupuncture group than that in the real acupuncture group (55.1 versus 43.8%, respectively).

But there is no real acupuncture, as I have argued before. And their conclusion? Not that doing two interventions with no reality-based reason for efficacy is going to lead to random noise that looks significant. Nope:

Placebo acupuncture was associated with a significantly higher overall pregnancy rate when compared with real acupuncture. Placebo acupuncture may not be inert.

LOL. What is inert is the critical thinking functions of the researchers.

Reading even the meta-analysis is the usual mess, because acupuncture, as always, is a heterogeneous intervention, with traditional, electro, cat gut, and warm being some of the variations used and compared. It is quite the mess for drawing any conclusions about whether a specific intervention is effective. But as I have mentioned before, it is not the specific intervention that is allegedly useful, it is the concept of acupuncture that is allegedly effective.

But if limited to quality studies, the efficacy of acupuncture is not impressive:

There was no statistically significant difference between the acupuncture group and no acupuncture (intervention) controls around the time of embryo transfer (ET; risk ratio, RR, 1.24, 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.02-1.50) or in unblinded trials, trials blinded to physicians and double-blind trials (95% CI 1.26-1.88, 0.82-1.33 and 0.89-1.25, respectively). This was also the case when comparing acupuncture with sham acupuncture controls around the time of ET (RR, 1.03, 95% CI 0.87-1.22) or when restricting to unblinded trials, trials blinded to physicians and double-blind trials (95% CI 0.80-2.02, 0.82-1.18 and 0.77-1.17, respectively).

Much of the primary literature is in China and, for example, I could not find the Chinese Journal of Family Planning and similar journals to see the details about the effects of TCM retention enema on tubal obstructive infertility. Yes. Really.

A warm enema containing Chinese medicine is administered before going to bed to treat fallopian tube adhesion. The drug can be absorbed directly by rectal mucosa, which is beneficial to improve the congestion, edema, adhesion, and hyperplasia of local tissues, and thus restoring the function of the fallopian tube.

What continues to amaze me is how health care professionals, well versed in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, etc., apply the techniques of reality on fiction. It only happens in medicine. You do not see engineers trying to apply the physics of Warner Brothers cartoons to the building of bridges and tunnels. There is no alternative engineering or aviation but doctors continue to act like acupuncture and other SCAMs are not ludicrous.

Huge numbers of herbal preparations have been tried for male and female infertility, more than I have time to review except to note the efficacy is often secondary endpoints like cervical mucus consistency or sperm motility and concentration, not conception rates.

Chiropractic has been used for infertility but:

There are very few original data articles documenting responses of infertile females treated with spinal manipulation.

And:

In the absence of a robust body of primary data literature, the use of spinal manipulation the management of female infertility should be approached with caution.

The Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research (not on Pubmed as Pubmed does not list science fiction) has papers purporting to show benefit of chiropractic in infertile patients. And, to no ones surprise, chiropractors tout the benefits of their interventions on the web.

I can find next to nothing on Pubmed using homeopathy or naturopathy for infertility. Well, for homeopathy preparations it would be exactly nothing.

The acupoints for erectile dysfunction are distant from the problematic organ, in one study being, slightly below the navel, slightly above the hairline at the back of the head, between the inside ankle bone and the achilles tendon, in the inside wrist. And the results?

No definite conclusions can be drawn.

A conclusion supported in the most recent meta-analysis where:

Low quality evidence shows beneficial effect of acupuncture as adjunctive treatment for people mainly with psychogenic ED.

And the best results were:

Acupuncture combined with tadalafil appeared to have better effect on increasing cure rate.

Lol. It takes a Western medicine to get the best results.

There is the also creepy Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Sexology and Acupressure Through the Vagina (Hippocratic Pelvic Massage).

Noted in one clinical study:

The most difficult problem of this procedure seems to be that it makes it very difficult to be sure that the procedure and all the involved steps are always necessary and rational.

Eye roll and head shake.

There is nothing on the PubMeds for using chiropractic, homeopathy or naturopathy for ED, but no shortage of websites promoting their use.

I wondered about homeopathy, so I picked a website at random. The first suggestion is Agnus castus:

This remedy may be helpful if problems with impotence develop after a man has led a life of intense and frequent sexual activity for many years. A cold sensation felt in the genitals is a strong indication for Agnus castus. People who need this remedy are often very anxious about their health and loss of abilities and may have problems with memory and concentration. This remedy is one of the best homeopathic medicine for ED.

Agnus castus is the chaste berry, which one site says:

The fruit has been historically used for reducing sexual desire.

As one site notes:

The leaves of this plant were used to adorn the beds of Greek women during the absence of their husbands so as to prevent any impure thoughts from entering their minds and also by medieval monks to repress sexual desire. In the actual provings the remedy has shown that it does repress sexual instinct and desire.

And:

Agnus castus is indicated for promiscuous young people who have abused their sexual energies through either homosexual or heterosexual multiple contacts and who have contracted repeated venereal infections, especially gonorrhea.

Huh? Homeopathic teaching is that a product that causes the symptoms undergoes serial dilution and succussion to make a more potent medication. Somehow a medication that reduces sexual desire increases libido when homeopathized? Writing these entries leads to some of the weirdest stuff.

While no trials can be identified in the Pubmeds, acupuncture was used for abortions in China although it was unreliable. Cue Louie. Acupuncture does have forbidden points. Specifically if you stimulate:

San Yin Chiao (SP6) in conjunction with He Gu (LI4). The abortion is generally realized within 24 hours.

But thats in humans, in Wistar rats stimulating the forbidden points does nothing:

We found no evidence that acupuncture in LI4-SP6 and sacral points could be harmful to the pregnancy outcome in Wistar rats.

But then, why would it? Was trying to confirm or deny a fiction worth abusing and killing rats? I doubt it.

I have often wondered how they map human acupoints and meridians onto animals; evidently so do acupuncturists in search of One Acupuncture. One Acupuncture to rule them all, One Acupuncture to find them, One Acupuncture to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, I suppose.

Moving toward a neuroanatomically accurate veterinary acupuncture system requires rethinking current atlases and embarking upon a systematic analysis of the human points in terms of where, if at all, corresponding sites exist in the nonhuman.

Good luck with that. Because you might run into issues such as those with Boa constrictors, although why one would want to torture a snake with acupuncture is uncertain.

Thus, the objective of this study was to map and describe the main points of acupuncture in the species Boa constrictor, and their indications to promote the balance of this species. The unprecedented result of the mapping was the discovery of specific acupoints with individual location indications without distribution in specific meridians and dispersedly distributed in the body.

Careful, clever, scientists, they measured the heart rate:

HR was obtained by counting heart rate.

And if you wondered how they found acupuncture points?

Use of the electrostimulator and location of EL points 30 10/100 Hz NKLpoints of Brazilian origin. The EL30 is an electronic device that is intended exclusively for non-invasive applications in the technique called electro-acupuncture. It was conceived as a point detection instrument, where an electrostimulation therapy, used in different media with a purpose of detection and determination of qualities as stimulus conditions for different species and for different points. It was traversed with an exploratory tip of the animals body points to an occurrence of an audible signal indicating the localized point and an impedance. The sensitivity controller has been adjusted to find a better setting.

More animal abuse for no good reason. But I digress. Again.

Consistency not being a strong point in acupuncture, when acupuncture was used as an adjunct to medical abortion they used Hegu (LI 4), Sanyinjiao (SP 6), Neiguan (PC 6) and Kunlun (BL 60). I suspect the increased efficacy was due to BL 60.

Acupuncturists can get quite wiggens over the forbidden points, going as far as to suggest the auricular acupuncture should be avoided in pregnancy. I would add it should be avoided when not pregnant as well. Several reviews suggest acupuncture is safe in pregnancy when correctly applied, whatever correctly applied might be.

While I can find papers where acupuncture is purported to prevent spontaneous abortion, and I can find nothing to confirm the abortifacient effects of acupuncture.

I can find nothing on using homeopathy, chiropractic or naturopathic techniques to induce abortion, although they allege they can help prevent spontaneous abortion/miscarriage. The one-way street that is SCAM.

Herbs? Theres a problem. I will admit, I am not one for social media. Twitter is a time suck and Facebook opaque and pointless. I certainly do not grok the concept of influencers. So TikTok? So out of my geezer understanding. But, per the Rolling Stone (geezer cred?) TikTok is a popular source for information on DYI abortions using pennyroyal, blue cohosh, and mugwort. Herbs that are not efficacious but are certainly toxic and could be fatal. As one PubMed review noted:

the ingestion of plants to induce abortion involves the risk of severe morbidity and mortality.

Hard to believe, but when it comes to medical advice it is suggested:

not to listen to what you hear on TikTok.

It is a question with no real answer: would a SCAM provider be any better?

It turns out self-managed abortion is not that uncommon, with 7% of US women of reproductive age (kind of redundant, women not in their reproductive age are unlikely to need an abortion) going the DYI route, often with herbs and without success.

With the Handmaidens Tale decision this year, I expect DYI abortions will only increase with resultant morbidity and mortality. Desperate people will do desperate things.

Mark Crislip, MD has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon, since 1990. He is a founder and the President of the Society for Science-Based Medicinewhere he blogs under the name sbmsdictator.He has been voted a US News and World Report best US doctor, best ID doctor in Portland Magazine multiple times, has multiple teaching awards and, most importantly, the Attending Most Likely To Tell It Like It Is by the medical residents at his hospital.His growing multi-media empire can be found at edgydoc.com.

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Alternative Reproduction? - Science Based Medicine

The Department of Health has not ruled out including the regulation of international surrogacy in the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill.

In a statement it said an inter-departmental group was established to review a special Oireachtas committee's report recommendations.

Earlier this year, the special committee was set up to examine how legal relationships could be established between children who have previously been born through surrogacy to Irish parents and those that will be born in the future.

In July, the committee published a report which was received by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly - who is the lead minister on the issue - Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, and Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman.

Today, the Department of Health said the clear intention of the group, and that of the three main Ministers concerned, was that the appropriate vehicle for accommodating legislative proposals in respect of international surrogacy would be through "the insertion of relevant provisions into the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 at Committee Stage".

The clarification comes after the Minister of State Mary Butler gave an update to the Seanad on behalf of the Department of Health.

She said the undertaking of surrogacy arrangements in other jurisdictions raised "complex ethical questions" concerning areas of law that intersect across the remits of several government departments.

She noted that there was no international consensus or multi-lateral instrument on the issue but pointed out that an expert group appointed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law would report next year, following a formal study of the private international law issues being encountered.

Senator Mary Seery-Kearney said it was "unacceptable" that after all the work that had been done that "all they're doing is developing a policy position".

The department has said that any policy and legislative proposals that may arise following the completion of the departments' examination of the committees recommendations will require consideration and approval by Government.

Continue reading here:
Committee report on surrogacy examined by health dept - RTE.ie

Subterfuge has many faces, both facile and facetious. The Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh waited over twenty years to give an alternate home to the endangered Asiatic lions and found itself hosting the India- extinct cheetahs instead." The long wait is over. The Cheetahs have a home in India," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi referring to the Namibian feline, adding that "the experiment must not be allowed to fail".

The arrival of the eight radio-collared African cheetahs coincided with the 72nd birthday of Narendra Modi, who was personally present to release them into the park. If cheerleaders for the government termed it the return of the prodigal, critics called it the PM's vanity project.Be that as it may, to put the record straight, this is not the return of the prodigal - the Asiatic cheetah- who roamed the heart of India in large numbers in the days of yore. There are very few specimens of the Asiatic cheetah left, and they exist only in Iran, though, during the 16th century, 10,000 roamed the country, according to Emperor Akbar's chronicled accounts. The experimental release at Kuno by the PM is the African variant.

Explained | Factors that pushed cheetah, the docile cat, to extinction in India

"Cheetahs return to India after 70 years absence," ran international news headlines. This was not entirely true either, for it was during Modi's chief ministership of Gujarat that the state had brought two pairs of cheetahs from the Singapore zoo in exchange for an Asiatic lion and two lionesses. These were accommodated in the Sakkarbaug Zoo, the country's oldest such facility, in Junagadh on March 24, 2009, after a public function presided over by Modi himself." It is part of the state government's efforts to breed them successfully in the country," he had told the media on the sidelines of the event. The pair failed to mate till 2012, and a proposal for assisted reproduction under an expert embryologist could not be implemented because of their age. The two pairs died of natural causes after attaining the age of 12, the last one in 2017. Interestingly in the 1980s, a number of Indian zoos received the African cheetah from abroad, but efforts to breed them in captivity failed.

Published reports aver that the last three Asiatic cheetahs were hunted down in 1948, and four years later(1952), India officially declared the cheetah extinct in the country.

The UN World Wildlife Day official website states that cheetahs have vanished from approximately 90 per cent of their historic range in Africa and are extinct in Asia except for a single isolated population of perhaps 50 individuals in central Iran. Listed as 'vulnerable' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) Red list of Threatened Species and considered critically endangered in North Africa and Asia. Thus the planet's fastest land animal, also considered the least dangerous big cat, now stands reduced to about 7100 in the wild and the Asiatic cheetah to a mere 50. A century ago, there were one lakh cheetahs, points out the World Atlas.

The cheetahs are divided into four sub-species: the Southeast African cheetah, the Northeast African cheetah, the Northwest African cheetah and the rare Asiatic cheetah. African and Asiatic cheetahs diverged about 67,000 years ago, each evolving differently. The Asiatic feline is slightly smaller and slender than the African one, with a smaller and longer neck and legs and lesser weight.

It was the Congress-led UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh that established the project cheetah in 2009 and initiated efforts to revive its population in India by bringing in African Cheetahs. Site surveys conducted by global experts and government officials in the cheetah ranges of yore led to the selection of Kuno-Palpur in Madhya Pradesh. However, matters ground to a halt in 2013 when the Supreme Court hauled the Union ministry of forests and climate change (MOEFCC) over the coals for the plan to introduce the African cheetah into India, noting that Kuno-Palpur was not a historical habitat for this foreign feline and also for not initiating a detailed scientific study before doing so. The apex court quashed the order of the MOEFF, holding that it did not stand up to judicial scrutiny.

Thereafter in 2020, the National Tiger Conservation Authority approached the apex court with a plea for the experimental introduction of cheetahs in India in a carefully chosen habitat. The court relented but appointed an expert committee to decide on the viability of introducing the cheetah. The panel comprised M K Ranjitsinh, former director of wildlife preservation, Dhananjai Mohan, chief conservator of forests (Uttarakhand) and director general (wildlife). The Indian government released a cheetah action plan in 2021, and lo and behold, the first batch of the feline is here, with more to follow soon.

The expert committee's report assessing the potential for reintroducing the cheetah had recommended Shahgarh as its first choice, with Kuno-Palpur only as the second choice. It states, "based on the overall assessment inclusive of prey densities, human pressures and potential for conflict, we rate the surveyed sites in the following order for cheetah re-introduction.

1. Shahgarh: This landscape on the international border in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan was found to be suitable for introducing cheetah. Taking all aspects into account, this is the most appropriate sight, provided the area is enclosed by the proposed fencing, and the livestock is excluded. As the area is fenced along the international border, we propose to additionally fence off the bulge area by constructing another 140 km long chain-link fence to encompass about 4000 sq km of xerophytic habitat. Within this area, about 80 seasonally used human settlements, each having 5-10 households, would need to be relocated with adequate and generous compensation and alternate arrangements provided. Though the prey species diversity was less (primarily chinkara) in Shahgarh, the area could currently support about 15 cheetahs and had the potential to sustain 40 cheetahs with habitat management within the large fenced ecosystem.

2. Kuno-Palpur wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh was the second choice. Being readied for the lions for nearly two decades, the site was therefore found to be ready to receive a large carnivore. "We rate this second only for its smaller size. The buffer area requires inputs of relocation, enforcement and eco-development."

3. Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary has been rated third despite its very high potential as substantial investment and time required to make the 700 sq km inviolate by relocating 21 villages. The report warned re-introduction effort takes time, often with several failed attempts. "We envisage periodic bringing in of cheetahs to stock the sites for the next 15 years. After this time, resources will be needed to manage the established populations and their habitats. Long-term commitment of intent and resources are required for the program to be successful," it noted.

(The author is a senior journalist based in Ahmedabad)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

More:
The genesis of the cheetah relocation - Deccan Herald

Palm Beach, Florida (Newsworthy.ai) Friday Sep 23, 2022 @ 7:00 AM Eastern

Dr. Naomi Wolf, Best-Selling Author, Journalist, and the CEO of Daily Clout released new information on her Substack. Her post, Destroying Women, Poisoning Breast Milk, Murdering Babies, and Hiding the Truth was posted this week. The following excerpts are from Dr. Naomi Wolfs latest Substack Outspoken with Dr. Naomi Wolf.

Conflicted wire services, a press release distributor and Spotify censored us and the BBC attacked us to cover up our Pfizer Reports that show the destruction of pregnant women, fetuses, and babies.

The War Room/DailyClouts Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers a group of experts who have selflessly stepped up to analyze the tens of thousands of formerly internal Pfizer documents released under court order subsequent to a lawsuit by Aaron Siris firm, Siri & Glimstad, and a FOIA by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency have now fully demonstrated that Pfizers mRNA vaccines target human reproduction in comprehensive, likely irreversible ways

Dr. Wolf released the following statement to accompany this Substack post.

Soon humanity will realize that the miscarriages and the drops in birth rate worldwide documented by Igor Chudov; the drop in life expectancy; the neonatal deaths; the ruination of eggs and ovaries; were done to them with knowledge aforethought, and that, in many cases relating to fertility, the means for healing the bodies of women is not clear.

Every day my inbox seethes with women asking questions like

But mainstream news outlets, let alone our government agencies, are not helping women with this crisis. Rather, they are seeking to gaslight us about it, and to kill off reputationally or to censor those of us bringing the evidence to the light of day.

It is not just babies in utero or babies in the next generation, who are being harmed by the mRNA injections.

Babies alive now are being harmed in the very act of nursing the most sacred and primal way a newborn human experiences support, sustenance, and love. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is entering breast milk, and NIH studies confirm this. What does it do to feed mRNA in breast milk to newborns? We do not know. It is certainly making babies unwell and inconsolable: An online survey of 4455 nursing mothers who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine found that 7.1% of mothers reported an adverse effect in their breastfed infant. The most frequent symptoms were increased sleepiness and increased fussiness, both at about 3% of infants, with the frequency greater after the second dose. Less frequently reported side effects included fever, rash, diarrhea, vomiting, changes in feeding frequency, and other miscellaneous symptoms. All were numerically, but not statistically more frequent after the second dose. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK565969/

Are these mRNA injections ruining women and murdering babies?

Yes, AP and Reuters the Guardian and the BBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post indeed, all the Gates money, and Cares Act money, should all be asking those questions.

Not Just a Womens Issue

Male reproductivity is also under attack. War Room/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers Project Director and DailyClout COO Amy Kelly found that the Pfizer vaccine ingredients permeate the testes and affect the epididymis, the Sertoli cells the nurse cells of the testicles the Leydig cells, which are the primary sources of testosterone in males, and the germ cells. In other words, beyond just suppressing sperm count and sperm motility, the injections damage baby boys and small boys, and teenage boys ability to grow up normally in terms of the development of masculinity itself.

Daily we shoulder the burden of telling this dark but vital story. Because the ones who call themselves journalists, the ones who call themselves wire services, who call themselves press release services are, sadly, so corrupt as to be unavailable.

As the abyss of human survival itself yawns open, these traitors to humanity are too preoccupied to document it; because hey, they are busy.

They are busy, cashing the checks.

Dr. Naomi Wolf

About Dr. Naomi Wolf

Dr. Naomi Wolf is a bestselling author, columnist, and professor; she is a graduate of Yale University and received a doctorate from Oxford. She is co-founder and CEO of DailyClout.io, a successful civic tech company. Since the publication of her landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, which The New York Times called one of the most important books of the 19th century, Dr. Wolfs other seven bestsellers have been translated worldwide. The End of America and Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, predicted the current crisis in authoritarianism and presented effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement. She was a Rhodes scholar herself and was an advisor to the Clinton re-election campaign and to Vice President Al Gore.

About DailyClout.io

DailyClout is a company that builds digital tools and produces media to help anyone, from any walk of life, use and affect democracy more powerfully. Our mission is to empower all people with information, facts, and opinion from all viewpoints, that when combined with DailyClouts proprietary platform, enables them to be well informed and to exercise their rights to directly weigh in on issues and legislation so that their voices are heard at the local, state or federal level.

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The Worst Thing That Can Happen to the Human Species, is Happening Dr. Naomi Wolf is Available for Interview - Digital Journal

Image by Getty / Futurism

Sexin space is a fascinating topic but the boffins at NASA are apparently more concerned about reproduction.

In interviews with The Daily Beast, space health experts discussed NASA's official space sex and conception policies, which forbid astronauts from getting it on.

"NASAs official policy forbids [sex and] conception in space," one space medicine expert told the Beast, "and for good reason."

The particular reason? According to theBeast's reporting, NASA is concerned that someone will suffer an unintended pregnancy in space, opening up the messiest possible questions around reproductive health and the wellbeing of an unborn fetus in an off world environment.

That's with good reason. According to the Beast's reporting, though experiments have seen "limited success" with the offspring of invertebrates and insects, mammals have yet to conceive babies in space that would be able to survive on Earth.As far as we know, though, you pregnancy is absolutely possible.

"Anatomically and biologically," Baylor space medicine expert Jennifer Fogarty told the site, "there are no known impediments to human conception in space."

But there are "serious concerns,"she said, that the microgravity and radiation could mess up or even kill a fetus.

As a point of fact, we don't even know that much about how space effects grown human bodies.And what little we do know suggests that overall, space is pretty hostile to human health.

To learn more, though, science will have to figure out more about sex in space. While there's no official record of sexual activity off world, there are some indicators as to how it may go and those inklings are, shall we say, intriguing.

"Former NASA astronaut Mike Mullane has gone on record saying that, during missions, he would wake up to erections that could have drilled through kryptonite, Kinsey Institute researcher and space sexologist Simon Dub told the Beast.

While there are concerns about microgravity reducing blood flow, Mullane's zero-gravity morning wood anecdote suggests that it may actually aid sex.

The report also notes that Jonathan Miller, a longtime NASA engineer who's worked with the agency for over 30 years, once joked about the peculiar difficulties of having sex where gravity is not present.

"Sex in space is overrated," Miller joked in response to a Quora thread. "For one thing, the number of positions is cut in half And then you have to add in tie downs and restraints well on second thought, nevermind.

More space sex: We Need to Talk About Gay Sex in Space

Read more:
NASA Reportedly Concerned That Astronauts Will Get Pregnant in Space - Futurism

In his interview with GLHF, Agiomyrgiannakis argued that AI generated voicesare good for the industry as they fill in background characters, freeing up budget for more real actors. Speaking with GLHF, "Horizon: Zero Dawn" voice actor Ashly Burch pointed out that the Screen Actors Guild offers agreements "designed so indie developers can get access to quality VO without breaking the bank." Bursch went on to say, "You're never going to get a truly dynamic and compelling performance from an AI," and said that it could be used for "combat barks."

Another voice actor interviewed by GLHF, "Red Dead Redemption 2" voice actor Roger Clark, said "I am interested in what AI can do, but its capacity for imitating real people is alarming." Clark then argued that when AIcan listen and respond to a real actor, "we're in trouble." In the same interview,"Firewatch" voice actor Cissy Jones said, "a synthetic performance is soulless by definition, thus losing... the creative spark that comes from people working together."

Altered AI features demonstrations of its tech on their YouTube channel notably one that shows off AI voices in "The Ascent."The full impact of AI on the voice acting industry is yet to be felt, but several developers and even modders are already using AI technology. But if gaming voice actors are to be believed, there's a thin line between AI being a useful tool, and being a roadblock for aspiring VO artists.

Read more:
Why Voice Actors Are Concerned By This AI Tech - SVG

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Original post:
Enrichment and proteomic identification of Cryptosporidium parvum oocyst wall - Parasites & Vectors - Parasites & Vectors

Turner syndrome is a chromosomal condition involving a persons sex chromosomes. Turner syndrome results when one of the X chromosomes (sex chromosomes) is missing or partially missing following conception.

In mosaic Turner syndrome, an X chromosome is missing in some cells in people assigned female at birth.

Keep reading to learn more about what causes mosaic Turner syndrome, what the symptoms might be, and what treatments are available.

Chromosomes are what carry genetic information (also called DNA) from each cell throughout the human body. Each person is born with 23 pairs of chromosomes 46 total including one pair of sex chromosomes, X and Y.

Turner syndrome affects people who were assigned female at birth. While people assigned female at birth typically have two X chromosomes (XX), people with Turner syndrome have just one X chromosome.

Because so much genetic information is missing at such an early stage of development, Turner syndrome can cause a variety of medical and developmental concerns, including failure of the ovaries to develop, heart defects, and short height.

There are two main types of Turner syndrome:

In general, symptoms for people with mosaic Turner syndrome tend to be less severe than symptoms for people with complete Turner syndrome. This is because the number of cells that are affected by the missing or deficient X chromosome is fewer with mosaicism.

Some cells contain the usual two XX chromosomes and, therefore, do not contribute to health issues.

Symptoms may vary greatly between people with mosaic Turner syndrome. Some people may not even realize they have this condition until puberty or later in life.

Symptoms may include:

In addition to these symptoms, a person with mosaic Turner syndrome may have certain physical characteristics, including:

Again, these symptoms may be milder than people experience with complete Turner syndrome. A 2018 study revealed that people with the mosaic (partial) form tended to be closer to average height with fewer reproductive and heart issues.

Turner syndrome is rare. It affects roughly 1 in every 2,000 to 2,500 female births across the globe.

The mosaic form of this condition is caused by a partial loss of the second X chromosome. The one-chromosome form is caused by a complete loss of the second X chromosome.

A 2013 study found that between 30% and 40% of people with Turner syndrome have the mosaic form.

What causes the loss of this second sex chromosome isnt fully understood yet. Researchers believe it may happen at random during reproduction. It could occur soon after the sperm meets the egg or early in fetal development.

Turner syndrome does not appear to be genetically inherited. This means it does not run in families.

Diagnosis is often made after a baby is born, in either childhood or adolescence. The physical features of infants with Turner syndrome may be recognizable at birth or emerge during infancy.

If your child shows signs after birth, their pediatrician may order tests, such as:

In some cases, a doctor may diagnose Turner syndrome before a baby is born through prenatal genetic testing. In particular, karyotyping may be performed by sampling a mothers blood, bone marrow, or other tissue that can identify any chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus.

Ultrasound may also help doctors diagnose Turner syndrome during pregnancy. Some babies may have lymphedema (swelling) or issues with the kidneys or the heart that are visible on prenatal ultrasounds.

Theres no cure for Turner syndrome. Instead, treatment aims to address whatever signs or symptoms a person with Turner syndrome is experiencing. Treatment varies by the person and their needs.

A 2018 study involving people with mosaic Turner syndrome found that treatment may not be necessary particularly in cases when the syndrome is found by chance.

This means some people may have mosaic Turner syndrome that doesnt cause symptoms or health issues, so theres no need for any treatment.

Otherwise, treatment options may include:

Symptoms of mosaic Turner syndrome tend to be milder than those of complete Turner syndrome. As a result, people with this condition may lead relatively healthy lives.

Early diagnosis and treatment can help with growth and development issues before and during puberty. That said, not all people with mosaic Turner syndrome will have delays in their development. Or if they do, these issues may only be minor.

Most people with mosaic Turner have either reduced fertility or infertility. In vitro fertilization may help address fertility issues.

However, people with mosaic Turner syndrome who do become pregnant are at risk of blood pressurerelated complications, which can lead to premature birth or fetal growth restriction.

Pregnancy in people with mosaic Turner syndrome is also associated with an increased risk of maternal complications, including heart conditions like aortic dissection and aortic rupture.

Researchers are exploring the potential link between Turner syndrome and autism. In one British study from 2018, the rate of autism in people with Turner syndrome was 21% compared with the U.K. rate in females of 0.3%.

Mosaic Turner syndrome is a developmental abnormality involving the sex chromosomes. Turner syndrome results when one of the X chromosomes (sex chromosomes) is missing or partially missing following conception.

Treatment can help with a persons specific health issues but may not be necessary if symptoms are mild.

People with this condition may have a range of health and development issues, but they generally may lead healthy lives.

See the original post here:
Mosaic Turner Syndrome: What It Is and How It's Treated - Healthline

By Robert G. Marshall (bio - articles - email ) | Aug 02, 2022

In what is surely an American First, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, His Excellency, Salvatore Cordileone, informed Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and third in line to be President, that she is not to receive Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.

The San Francisco Examiner, a very Leftist newspaper, editorialized, In open defiance of Pope Francis, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Friday banned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from taking Holy Communion here in her home diocese. The reason? Her strong support of womens abortion rights.

Actually, Pelosi is more than just a strong supporter of abortion. Pelosi described herself at a Catholic Georgetown University meeting, I am a rabid supporter of a womans right to choose. San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone had previously alerted House Speaker Pelosi (4/7/22) that she had crossed a line by announcing that she would support codifying the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision in Federal law, noting, should you not publicly repudiate your advocacy for abortion rights or else refrain from referring to your Catholic Faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

The timing was not political. Archbishop Cordileone had been in dialogue with the Speaker on the abortion question for at least ten years. The Archbishop said Ive been debating this within my own conscience for many years. Ive consulted with people...who would have different perspectives on the situation.... Ive done a lot of prayer and fasting.... I really would prefer not to do this. But I cannot in my conscience allow the situation to continue and cause this scandal.

Pelosi Tries to Defend Herself

Speaker Pelosi was a guest (5/24/22) on MSNBCs Morning Joe TV program hosted by former Democrat Congressman Joe Scarborough and his wife, Mika Brzezinski. Joe Scarborough asked Speaker Pelosi, ...what do you say to Catholics who see whats happening to you...why you have an archbishop taking a step like this?

Pelosi claimed that Archbishop Cordileone, in denying her Holy Communion, was not consistent with the Gospel of Matthew, which she identified as the agenda of the Church. However, the Gospel of Matthew undermines Pelosis case as it states (18:1517) If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church.

Pelosi questioned the consistency of Archbishop Cordileone in denying Communion to Catholic public officials for abortion support, but not for death penalty support. I wonder about death penalty, which Im opposed to. So is the Church, but they take no action against people who may not share their view. But in 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger , writing specifically on the question of Catholic politicians who support the death penalty noted:

When Pope Francis modified the Catholic Catechism to say capital punishment should not be used, he did not state that the death penalty was ever lacking in justice or that it was evil in itself, as popes have said about abortion for centuries.

Cardinal Ladaria, who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and therefore speaks for Pope Francis, sent a letter (8/1/18) to the U. S. Catholic Bishops explaining Franciss death penalty change: the death penalty...can be justified if it is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor, even if in reality cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today are very rare, if not practically non-existent. (n. 2267).

One commentator noted that while Pope Francis teaches the death penalty is, no longer admissible as a general norm...it is not infallible; and therefore, it does not require the assent of divine faith on the part of the faithful....the new formulation of...the Catechism...desires...respectful dialogue with civil authorities, to encourage the creation of conditions that allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect.

Pelosis Catalog of Abortion Support

MSNBC Morning Joe co-host, Mika Brzezinski referred to recent Senate action on the grossly misnamed Womens Health Protection Act (WHPA) (S 4132) which most assume codifies Roe. Neither the Senate (S 4132) nor the House version (HR 3755) of the morally grotesque Womens Health Protection Act merely codify the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Both versions of the bill expand abortion way beyond Roe.

The Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro Life Activities compiled a list of present federal court approved state or federal laws legal even under Roe v. Wade . All of these current state and federal provisions would be illegal under Pelosis WHPA pro abortion legislation:

Nancy PelosiAbolishing Catholic-Christian Health Care

The Charlotte Lozier Institute notes that private Christian health care is especially undermined under the Womens Health Care Protection Act from 2019, H. R. 2975. Law Professor and religious freedom expert Mark Rienzi points out that virtually every state in the country has some sort of statute protecting individuals and, in many cases, entities who refuse to provide abortions and [s]ome states expressly limit this protection to the practice of abortion, which is treated specially. Moreover:

H. R. 3755, the current House version of the Womens Health Protection Act, could have been written by Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin. Pelosis bill states, Abortion-specific restrictions are a tool of gender oppression. The findings section on page 3 of HR 3755, which judges are supposed to reference to determine the meaning of the text of the statute states:

Pelosis affirmation that reproductive rights belong to all individuals to define and make decisions about their bodies, health, sexuality, will make statutory rape and consent laws illegal in all fifty states and US Territories. This is a goal of abortionists and transgender zealots. Pregnancy from artificial reproduction outside the womb or marriage will become a right of individuals, threesomes, etc.

Pelosis radical policy is miles beyond codifying Roe v. Wade and she certainly knows that. Under Pelosis bill, LGBTQ+ persons would have a right to an abortion and to demand under a surrogacy pregnancy contract that a surrogate mother would be required to abort a child for any reason if the owners of the child were not satisfied. Note also that while Abortion services is defined in Section 3 under definitions, Abortion is not defined anywhere in the bill. Section 3 on page 16 states, The term pregnancy refers to the period of the human reproductive process beginning with the implantation of a fertilized egg. The end of pregnancy is not defined.

A legislator who wanted to authorize infanticide but who did not want use the word, could employ that verbal tactic. Further, H. B. 3755 (Section 7, page 24) contains a Rule of Construction which allows no government interference, with a persons ability to terminate a pregnancy, to diminish or in any way negatively affect a persons constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Other Findings on page 2 state, Since 1973, the Supreme Court repeatedly has recognized the constitutional right...to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability....

The Churchs Response to Pelosi, and Pelosis Response to the Church

The San Francisco Examiner (5/21/22), eager to defend Pelosis self-affirming and contrived Catholic Faith, used inflammatory words to tag Archbishop Cordileone as an insubordinate saboteur acting in open defiance of Pope Francis for ruling that Speaker Pelosi is ineligible to receive Holy Communion.

But Cardinal Luis Ladaria , Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, suggested to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez (5/7/21), President of the USCCB, that if the bishops wanted to establish nationwide standards relating to abortion-supporting Catholic politicians, the bishops should undertake a two-stage dialogue, first among the bishops themselves, and then between bishops and Catholic pro-choice politicians within their jurisdictions. Such a national policy on worthiness to receive Communion, should be applied to all the faithful, rather than one category of Catholics.

Pope Francis was cited in the Tablet (5/23/22):

In many respects, the Popes actions regarding Catholic politicians Pelosi and Biden have been disappointing. U. S. Pro Life Bishops Chairman Archbishop Naumann (Kansas City, Kansas) stated that the Pope does not understand the Church in the United States, and he also noted that when the Pope publicly received Pelosi, the meeting was politically exploited. In allowing this, Pope Francis is doing exactly what he warns others not to do. During a recent papal interview with Spanish language Univision the Pope was asked about Nancy Pelosis reportedly receiving Communion in Mass at St. Peters, despite Archbishop Cordileones barring Pelosi from Communion. Pope Francis noted that Pelosi continues to receive the Eucharist in Washington, D. C. as well.

Yet during the interview, the Pope described Bidens abortion position as an incoherence with the Catholic Faith. Archbishop Naumann commented in the National Catholic Register , Its very helpful because I think thats exactly true, that his (Bidens) position is incoherent with Catholic teaching. So Im grateful for that clarification by the Holy Father. We must pray that actions will follow the Holy Fathers words.

In June, 1990 the New York Times reprinted excerpts of comments made by John Cardinal OConnor in his New York Archdiocese newspaper:

Pelosi responded: There is no desire to fight with the cardinals or archbishops.... But it has to be clear that we are elected officials, and we uphold the law and we support public positions separate and apart from our Catholic Faith. Yet, she also claims that her abortion votes are compatible with her Catholic Faith.

Some of Pelosis Faith-based claims about abortion being consistent with her Faith are linked below:

After one of Speaker Pelosis I am a Catholic and support abortion interviews on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw (8/24/08) Speaker Pelosi was rebuked by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput: Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate...seem comfortable in the role of theologian.... The Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm anti-abortion attitude The condemnation of abortion did not depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding the time of fetal animation.

Pelosi Claims to Not Impose Her Views on Others

Nancy Pelosi claimed on the Morning Joe program (5/24/22) that, I come from a largely pro-life, Italian-American, Catholic family, so I respect peoples views about that. But I dont respect us foisting it onto others.

However, Speaker Pelosi foisted her pro-abortion views on others by strongly supporting and voting for H. R. 5, the so-called Equality Act, promoted by homosexual activists who seek to impose their radical demands on individuals and institutions governed by the morals of Moses and Jesus. Pelosis misnamed Equality Act will compel doctors and health care institutions to perform abortions and sex-change operations, and furnish puberty blockers for minors or lose their medical licenses or accreditation.

Private conscience and religious rights are presently protected under various Federal and State conscience laws which exempt doctors, nurses and health care establishments from having to comply with such immoral practices, but Speaker Pelosi wants to strip away all conscience and privacy protections for girls and women, and destroy female sports. Under Pelosis alleged Equality Act, a person, business, church, private school or religious group that does not comply with or support the LGBTQ+ agenda will be charged with discriminating under the Civil Rights Act, equal to violating the civil rights of African Americans. Fines can be $500,000 per incident depending upon the size of the organization accused of discriminating.

Background Resources

Archbishop Cordileone wrote a succinct, well-reasoned letter to Speaker Pelosi. The Archbishops second letter explains to Catholics in the San Francisco Archdiocese (and beyond) how he reached his decision. His third letter was sent to priests in which he details the Canon law background for his decision, with which priests and deacons must comply. Interestingly, the very liberal Jesuit America magazine had an excellent, thorough interview with Archbishop Cordileone hosted by Gloria Purvis, available as a podcast and a shorter print version.

Bishops honoring Archbishop Cordileones Communion directive regarding denial of Holy Communion for Speaker Pelosi include as of May 24, 2022 (source: National Catholic Register):

Recent Abortion Votes in Congress

To find out which Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate voted for the their respective versions of the Womens Health Protection act, go the following links.

Did your Catholic member of Congress vote in favor of this abortion legislation? St. Paul (1 Timothy 2:14) urges us to pray for those in authority. In addition to praying, we should make immoral positions known to others, and vote in every special, primary and general election only for pro-life candidates. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe we must work to convince state legislatures to pass legislation to secure legal protection for the lives of all innocent children before birth.

Bob Marshall served 26 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the chief House sponsor of the 2006 voter-approved Virginia Marriage Amendment and a ban on late term abortion. He recently wrote Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America (TAN Books). Previously, he co-authored Blessed are the Barren, a social history of Planned Parenthood (Ignatius Press). Finally, dont miss Bobs Civics Lesson for Catholics in the Catholic Culture Podcast Episode 17. See the full bio.

Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.

All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

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The grim realities behind barring Nancy Pelosi from Communion - Catholic Culture

Children born to mothers with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have an increased risk of developing infections, allergies and other childhood illnesses by the age of 13, according to the largest study to investigate this.

The study, which is published today (Thursday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the worlds leading reproductive medicine journals, looked at 1,038,375 children born in Quebec, Canada, between 2006 and 2020. Of these, 7,160 children were born to mothers with PCOS.

The researchers found that children of mothers with PCOS were 32% more likely to be admitted to hospital with a variety of health problems than children of mothers without PCOS. They were 31% more likely to be admitted for infectious diseases and 47% more likely to be admitted for allergy-related problems, such as asthma.

The risk of hospitalization was increased for problems relating to metabolism (up by 59%), the gut (72%), central nervous system (74%), and ears (34%); it was also increased for respiratory problems, such as pneumonia (32%), and mental and behavioural problems (68%). There was no link with cancer, and there was little difference between boys and girls in the association of PCOS with hospitalisation.

PCOS is a common disorder of the ovaries that can affect up to 10% of women of reproductive age. The main features are irregular periods, high levels of the male hormone androgen, which may cause excess facial or body hair, and the ovaries can become enlarged and contain fluid-filled sacs (follicles) that surround the eggs. PCOS can make it difficult for women to become pregnant, and can cause weight gain, thinning hair and oily skin or acne. Women with PCOS are at risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Several studies have shown links with problems in pregnancy and birth, such as gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and preterm birth. However, the long-term effect of PCOS on offspring is poorly understood and has received little attention.

Dr Nathalie Auger, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Montreal, Canada, who led the study, said: These findings fill a big gap in what we know about the long-term health of children whose mothers have PCOS. Primary care doctors and obstetricians should consider identifying women with PCOS before conception and offering early interventions such as weight management and strategies to help prevent problems such as diabetes and heart and blood vessel diseases. Family doctors and paediatricians should consider monitoring children more closely after birth to minimise morbidity. Greater parental awareness may help improve outcomes in children.

As this is an observational study, it is unable to show that PCOS causes health problems in children, only that it is associated with them, and it cannot show what mechanisms may be involved. However, Dr Auger said: Women with PCOS may have high levels of androgen and insulin resistance, which have been linked to problems with the placenta, such as inflammation of the membrane surrounding the foetus, damage to tissue and impaired function of the placenta. These create a suboptimal environment in the womb for babies that could lead to impaired immune function and low-grade systemic inflammation.

She said genetic factors could also play a role, with the environment in the womb causing modifications in how some genes work in offspring.

The researchers adjusted their findings to take account of factors that could affect the results such as mothers other health problems, age, parity, alcohol and tobacco use, and socioeconomic deprivation. They found that the associations between maternal PCOS and the health of offspring were not explained by fertility treatments, multiple births, preterm births or the mothers other health problems.

Strengths of the study include its size and the fact that it evaluated a wide range of infections, allergies and malignant disease, as well as specific health problems such as respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, gastrointestinal, urinary, genital, musculoskeletal, central nervous system, ear, eye and mental and behavioural disorders.

Limitations include the fact that the researchers used data from the Maintenance and Use of Data for the Study of Hospital Clientele repository, which contains discharge records for all inpatients, which meant that they only analysed outcomes for children that were admitted to hospital. They could not identify women with mild PCOS who were never diagnosed or children with less severe illnesses who were not treated in hospital. They also lacked data on ethnicity, education, pre-pregnancy body mass index, weight gain during pregnancy, physical activity, information about the use of medications such as metformin, and the age of fathers.

We believe that further research is needed to see if effective management of maternal PCOS can reduce the risk of health problems in offspring and improve long-term health. We need to know if exercise, dietary changes and medications can make a difference, said Dr Auger.

In future work, we intend to examine outcomes of pregnancy, as well as future outcomes of women with PCOS. These women may be at risk of developing cardiovascular disease or other health problems, and epidemiologic research documenting this possibility is needed to help improve the management of these patients.

(ends)

[1] Association of PCOS with offspring morbidity: a longitudinal cohort study, by Shu Qin Wei et al. Human Reproduction journal. doi:10.1093/humrep/deac154

Human Reproduction

Observational study

People

Association of PCOS with offspring morbidity: a longitudinal cohort study

14-Jul-2022

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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PCOS in mothers is linked to increased risk of health problems in their children - EurekAlert

SINGAPORE - A girl - who was sexually assaulted by a family friend when she was nine to 10 years old - was so badly traumatised that her science lessons and examination paper had to be modified to avoid the topic of human reproduction.

The girl, now 17, continues to display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) connected to the assaults, the High Court heard on Monday (July 18).

Her assailant, now 60, was sentenced to 11 years' jail.

He pleaded guilty earlier to one count each of sexual assault by penetration and outrage of modesty committed in 2015.

Five other similar charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.

He cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victim's identity.

The court heard that the girl, whose parents were divorced, lived with her father and maternal grandmother.

In January 2015, her grandmother agreed to take care of the accused's daughter, who moved into their three-room flat.

Between January 2015 and March 2016, the accused would visit his daughter at the flat, usually during weekends.

During these weekly visits, he would ask the victim to chat with him on the sofa in the living room and took the opportunity to sexually assault her when no one else was around.

In the final incident, the victim was looking out of the kitchen window when the man whispered into her ear and molested her.

She managed to pull away, locked herself in her room and began crying and having panic attacks.

On hearing a knock, she opened the door thinking it was her grandmother, but found the man standing there instead.

He hugged and kissed her but she escaped to the toilet, where she washed away his saliva and stuffed toilet paper into her mouth.

She opened the door only when she heard her grandmother's voice.

See the rest here:
Girl traumatised by sexual abuse had to take modified science exam, assailant jailed 11 years - The Straits Times

To understand how the United States of America became a country without the constitutional right to abortion, look to the history of Black womens long fight for reproductive autonomy.

The reproductive coercion of Black women is a thread running through American history, one that predated and presaged the Supreme Courts recent decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade. Enslaved Black women were forced into pregnancy to help build Americas budding economy. Pregnant Black moms are criminalized or excluded from abortion on the basis of poverty. The state takes away Black children from Black mothers at a disproportionate rate.

Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts chronicled this history in her seminal book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts defines reproductive justice as the human right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to parent your child in a supportive, humane, and just society. Her latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

For Roberts, reproductive rights and the fight for abortion access shouldnt just be about the existence of a choice, but about the right to live in a society that allows for the freedom to make it. Just having a legal choice that you dont have the means to effectuate is not true freedom, Roberts told me.

I reached out to Roberts to talk about the key moments throughout history, like the passage of the Hyde Amendment barring federal funds from paying for abortions that suggested abortion rights were never fully secure. We talk about why adoption is not and has never been a solution to inequality, why Black women have historically used abortion as resistance, and why American history is a better source of analogies than The Handmaids Tale. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

As someone who has studied the historic fight for reproductive justice, particularly through what Black women have experienced, what was your reaction when you saw the leaked draft opinion in May and then when the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe in June?

I cant tell you how many panels Ive been on over the last couple of decades where the issue was what to do in the post-Roe world. So there was a lot of preparation for it, but I was still shaken by it. I happened to be with my daughter and her two best friends theyre all in their 30s and my thought was, My goodness, they have fewer rights to autonomy over their bodies than I did at their age. When I was their age, I thought that I had good control over my body.

At the same time, though, theres a reproductive justice movement thats so much stronger than it was when I was their age. We are in a contradictory time because with the fight for justice, it seems like were going backward while at the same time building movements that are so much further than we were when we were growing up.

You had more autonomy over your body in the past than your daughters do now. But was there something you observed back then that suggested that reproductive rights were not actually secure?

I could see that even though we were legally protected from government laws that barred abortion, there was no legal right to demand government support for abortions due to the Hyde Amendment. So we had the legal right to an abortion, but it excluded funding for women who were poor. This was all happening while there was a bipartisan effort to end the federal entitlement to welfare. Plus, in the late 1980s, I watched the prosecutions of Black women for being pregnant and using drugs.

Those two aspects of reproductive regulation, which disproportionately affected Black women, made me think the fight wasnt over.

The advocacy around abortion was focused mostly on the framework of being able to make a choice, without taking into account these structural impediments to having reproductive freedom.

It also didnt take into full account the devaluation of Black womens childbearing and the punitive policies surrounding it. I was an advocate for abortion rights, but I was more concerned about the failure to advocate with the same force for the human rights of impoverished people, or Black people and other people of color in the United States. Once I started thinking about the Hyde Amendment and the prosecutions of Black women who were pregnant and using drugs, I began to see a whole host of reproductive violations that werent at the forefront of the mainstream reproductive rights movement. That really changed the narrative about progress toward reproductive freedom in America.

I can see today how those infringements of human rights are coming together to create the moment were in now, where pregnancy is criminalized and where we are going to see the arrests and incarceration of people who manage their pregnancies, have miscarriages, or have stillbirths. Theyre all going to be punished under one agenda of controlling womens autonomy over their bodies and participation in society, and also punishing anyone whos capable of being pregnant.

Id like to back up then. It sounds like theres almost a straight line from the 17th century to now that has long told us that these rights were never fully secure. And it sounds like it is specifically bound up in a struggle that Black women have faced for reproductive freedom. Can you walk me through some key historical moments that you think speak directly to the Supreme Courts decision and the ensuing trigger bans?

Id first go back to the institution of slavery to look at the connection between reproduction and bondage. The experiences of the enslaved Black woman and the exploitation of Black womens labor were foundational to the state regulation of reproduction in America.

It still is staggering to me when I think about the very first laws in the colonies that were so directed at regulating Black womens sexuality and reproduction, and how that reverberates today.

Black women, during the slavery era, resisted control of their bodies, including by having abortions. Abortion has been a means of resistance for Black women in the same way that exploiting Black womens reproductive labor has been a form of racial and gender oppression from the very founding of this nation.

That was an aspect of the history of reproductive policy and rights in the United States that I didnt think was getting enough attention. I dont think you can understand where we are today without taking into account the historic regulation of Black womens childbearing, which has its roots in enslavement.

And what would you highlight next?

After the Civil War, white supremacists who wanted to take back control of the South, enforce white domination, and effectively re-enslave Black people used the apprenticeship system to violently capture and take control of Black children again by exploiting their labor against the will of their parents. In many of the narratives about this, Black mothers describe how they fought to get their children back. To me, that system is the root of our current child welfare system, or what I call a family policing system, that also disproportionately tears apart Black families and is especially punitive to Black mothers.

I would also highlight the activism of Black women, demanding welfare rights and government funding for their childbearing decisions and for the care of their children. Because Black women were successful at being included in welfare programs, the state reacted by making those programs more punitive and vilifying, eventually leading up to the abolition of the federal entitlement to welfare. This was fueled by the myth of the Black welfare queen. So theres that.

What else stands out to you?

The way in which prosecutors and policymakers turned drug use during pregnancy from a health care issue into a crime, with the prosecutions of Black women who are pregnant and smoked crack cocaine in the 1980s. I see that as the beginning of this latest chapter of the right-wing criminalization of pregnancy.

This is the chapter in which they criminalize pregnant people who dont produce a healthy baby, whether its by abortion or by alleged behaviors during pregnancy that are seen to risk a fetus. That strategy begins with the prosecutions of Black women and also the taking of their newborns. And that is a prelude to what is happening today.

And how have things shifted to what we are seeing today?

One way in which the conditions now are different from when Roe was decided [in 1973] is that we have medication abortion and its easier for people to self-manage their abortions. But on the other hand, we have this buildup of criminalizing pregnancy with fetal protection laws, prosecutors prosecuting and getting convictions of women who have stillbirths. We see the arrest of women who had self-managed abortions prior to the Dobbs decision. That foreshadows a future where women and girls and people who are capable of pregnancy are going to be arrested and incarcerated for pregnancy outcomes. So again, criminalizing pregnancy whether you want to have a child or you want to terminate the pregnancy those prosecutions are a pivotal point in the story of how we got to where we are today, and how Black women were both targeted and fought back again.

During a period in the 1990s, Black feminists got together and developed the framework of reproductive justice. Thats certainly another key moment though, of course, we can also go back to enslaved women who started this work, and the Combahee River Collective of the 1970s that wrote about interlocking systems of oppression and how Black womens position in society is oppositional to white male rule.

So the crafting of reproductive justice analysis is built on that history that recognizes the human right to not have a child but also to have a child, and to parent a child in a nurturing and supportive and just and humane society. That looks beyond the question of whether there is a legal choice to look at the societal conditions that allow people to actually exercise true reproductive freedom and autonomy.

Youve said that forced pregnancy and family separation taking children away from their parents through the child welfare system are connected and that understanding this connection is key to understanding the struggle for reproductive justice. How are they connected?

One way that we can see they are connected forms of state violence is that the right is arguing that adoption is the solution to both of them. And, unfortunately, some liberal people are also arguing for adoption as a solution to the struggles of families who are feeling the brunt of an inequitable society. I dont think its a coincidence that were seeing adoption thrown around as the solution to what really is state violence and state oppression.

Yeah, Ive been seeing what looks like mostly white or foreign couples or white women holding up signs that say, We will adopt your baby. Yet when asked if they actually will, the answer seems to be, No. What is this about?

Compelling pregnancy and taking peoples children away from them are both ways of upholding a system of white male elite rule where you divert attention away from structural inequities that need to be demolished and replaced and point to private mechanisms, which is what adoption is.

In the case of family separation, we have a family policing system that instead of helping families, blames family caregivers especially Black family caregivers and relies on taking children away. To me, that is a neoliberal form of privatizing issues. Instead of a society that supports families needs, it turns to private citizens taking children and claiming them for their own. That is exactly the same response of a regime that now wants to force people to carry pregnancies to term. They turn to this private response of adoption in place of facing the fact that one of the main reasons that people have abortions is because they dont have the means at that time to take care of children.

For state legislators and the Supreme Court justices to pretend that adoption is going to take care of it is just blatant mendacity.

Every aspect of that is just false theres not going to be enough people to adopt all of the children whose needs cannot be met because of poverty in this nation, because of the structural racism, because of discrimination against women. Children will either grow up in families that dont have the means to meet all of their needs on their own, or theyre going to go into a dangerous and harmful foster system.

Its all about blaming people who are unable to meet childrens needs. Its about denying them freedom to make decisions for themselves and then punishing them for whatever outcomes befall their children. Under this regime, they include the fetuses where there isnt a healthy baby.

This also sounds connected to the idea that abortion for Black women is a form of genocide, an idea thats been repeated for a long time. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even cited this idea.

Yes, this is also related to the false accusation that abortion is a form of genocide that Black mothers are complicit in. Abortion hasnt been used historically as a form of controlling Black reproduction. Sterilization has. Theres a big difference between forcible sterilization and upholding the human rights to control your body and not be compelled to be pregnant. Those are two radically different things. One is about compulsion and unfreedom. The other is about freedom and resisting compulsion. Those arent the same thing.

Clarence Thomas is just wrong. And so are others like him who say that abortion is a tool of Black genocide and that Black women are participating in the destruction of the Black community when they have abortions. And they refer to the eugenics era as a historical reference. Thats just false.

The historical reference is compelled sterilization of Black women, which is akin to compelled pregnancy. Theyve got the references all screwed up when they make that argument. The billboards that went up [10 years ago] to shame Black women for abortion that said, The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb that message supports sterilizing Black women, as well as compelling pregnancies. Its a message about reproductive control. Its a false message that isnt about any kind of liberation for Black people.

And is this another reason why some people claim that abortion still feels like a white woman issue?

Ive heard that, too, believe me. At the time when the Webster decision was being considered and we thought that Roe might be overturned, I was speaking about it at a church and a Black man came up to me and said, Thats a white womans issue. Why are you talking about it? And there is a history of some Black nationalists chiding Black women for any kind of family planning, contraceptives, or abortion. Its just ridiculous to say its a white womans issue when Black women are more likely to seek and have abortions.

Black women have been advocating for reproductive freedom for just as long as white women have been. We have included the right to abortion in our fight, but its just that we havent focused on it since we recognize that sterilization, abuse, and being prosecuted for having babies, and Black maternal mortality, and so many other issues involving our reproductive lives are equally as important.

Theres a long history of Black women advocating for abortion rights. Loretta Ross has been advocating for abortion rights for decades. Shirley Chisholm, in her autobiography and advocacy, championed abortion rights and spoke out against Black men who said that it was a white womans issue. Black women use abortion as a form of resistance against slavery.

Its wrong to say that its a white womans issue. And its also wrong to say that it is a form of Black genocide. Those are false in terms of politics, history, in terms of what Black women have been advocating for for centuries. Theyre anti-freedom. Theyre anti-freedom, and they are inconsistent with the history of Black rebellion and abolition activism.

I also want to get your thoughts on The Handmaids Tale references and memes and the people who declared, Welcome to The Handmaids Tale! when the Supreme Courts decision came down. This is the reference that seems to be the most widespread whenever womens rights are on the line.

But lately some people have been pushing back, arguing that the meme erases the realities that marginalized groups of women have faced for centuries in America America has already been a Gilead for Black women, for example. Why do you think The Handmaids Tale meme is still prevalent?

Mainstream US society has never taken full account of Black womens lives and autonomy and imagination and vision. So the response to any current trend is often to look to white people as the victims and as the visionaries. But as Ive been saying, Black women have been at the forefront of movements to both contest oppression and also reimagine a society that is more just and humane and caring and equal. I think thats just one reason why we would get The Handmaids Tale before we get the very real history of Black womens reproductive labor being exploited or Black women being compelled to be pregnant for the profit of white enslavers. Its not an imagined story. Its an actual history that continues to shape policy today.

Theres a big difference between saying this fictional dystopia is a metaphor for our reality and saying, lets look at the real history of the reproductive violence against Black women and how it actually has shaped policy in the United States since the time of slavery until today.

Its also prevalent because white people dont have to grapple with the reality of how we got to the overturning of Roe. It is a result of the dehumanization of Black people, and it is a white backlash against every advance for liberation that Black people have made. It is a result of policies that have put Black women at the center.

Its mind-boggling but so important to recognize that we can name all these moments of history where thereve been these regressions in freedom, where stereotypes about Black women and policies geared at controlling Black womens sexuality and childbearing have been at the center over and over again. One of the reasons for ignoring this is that its a way to skirt radical social change. Its a way of pretending that America is built on principles of equality and liberty when you ignore the deep roots of inhumanity and slavery and coercion and punishment that are still critical to understanding where we are today.

As someone whos examined and been a part of this fight for a long time, what gives you hope right now?

What gives me hope today that we can continue with a reproductive justice framework is fighting back against these assaults on our freedoms while building a radically different society that doesnt rely on carceral approaches to meeting human needs. This means it doesnt police people or force people into compelled pregnancy. It doesnt take peoples children away from them as a way of meeting childrens needs. I see all of these carceral, punitive, inhumane approaches as part of a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist approach to meeting human needs. Theyre all interconnected.

I find hope in the fact that we have a reproductive justice movement that has been active and flourishing. Im also finding a lot of hope in the very quick action by abortion funds that are taking immediate steps to help people who need abortions.

See the article here:
Americas long, cruel history of reproductive violence against Black women - Vox.com

SpaceX launched its 25th contracted supply mission for NASA, delivering new science experiments for the astronauts aboard the ISS. The spacecraft will make a return to trip to Earth with cargo and research from space station in about a month.

Just before 9 a.m. EST on July 14, 2022, SpaceX launched its Dragon cargo spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, headed toward the International Space Station (ISS) (see image below). Two days later, the spacecraft autonomously docked to the forward-facing port of the space station's Harmony module. Aboard the spacecraft were new science experiments for the astronauts aboard ISS.

One of the experiments that arrived, deals with how aging is associated with changes in the immune response known as immunosenescence. As astronauts spend long periods of time in microgravity, it causes changes in their immune cells that resemble this condition, but happen faster than the actual process of aging on Earth. The investigation, sponsored by the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, will attempt to use tissue chips in order to study how microgravity affects immune function during flight and whether those immune cells recover post-flight. The tissue chips being utilized are small devices that contain human cells in a 3D structure, allowing scientists to test how the cells respond to things such as stress, drugs, and genetic changes.

Another study that arrived deals with how microgravity affects metabolic interactions in communities of soil microbes. Soil on Earth has complex communities of microorganisms that carry out important functions in the soil. These functions include cycling of carbon and other nutrients, along with supporting plant growth. This particular study will look at microbe communities that decompose chitin, a natural carbon polymer on Earth.

Other studies that arrived aboard ISS include a high school student weather study called BeaverCube, a study into cell-free technology, and another looking at how microgravity affects the process of creating a concrete alternative made with an organic material and on-site materials.

Top Image Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Originally posted here:
SpaceX Dragon Resupply Ship Docks With ISS To Deliver Science Benefitting Human Race - Hot Hardware

What seems like a sci-fi movie can be turned into reality if Japans technology is to be believed. Humans can travel across different planets on a train in the near future! Yes, you read that right. Japan has laid out plans in a bid to send humans to Mars and the Moon, according to The Weather Channel India.

Japan has made plans to build a glass habitat structure that would copy Earth's gravity, atmosphere and topography to make us feel like home.

Researchers from Japans Kyoto University in collaboration with Kajima Construction are working on this plan that might shake up space travel, the Weather Channel reported. The researchers announced this last week in a press conference, the EurAsian Times reported.

The interplanetary transportation system by Japanese researchers is called 'Hexatrack'. Hexatrack would maintain a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to lessen the effects of extended exposure to low gravity.

The trains will also have hexagonal-shaped capsules called the 'Hexacapsules' with a moving device in the middle.

According to the proposal of the Japanese researchers, a mini-capsule with a 15-metre radius will link the Earth and the Moon. For connecting moon and Mars, a 30-metre-radius capsule will be needed.

Now, the capsule will employ the kind of electromagnetic technology used by the Maglev trains in Germany and China.

While the station on the moon will use a gateway satellite and will be known as Lunar Station, the train station on Mars will be called Mars Station. It will be situated on the Martian satellite Phobos.

According to the Human Spaceology Centre, the Earth station will be called Terra Station and will be the successor space station to the International Space Station (ISS).

The space train, known as Space Express, would operate on standard gauge track, reported Mashable India.

Most of the space transportation system overlooks the importance of terrestrial natural capital. However, researchers at the Kyoto University plan to build a habitat that would recreate the facilities on Earth.

The researchers aim at building a narrowed living structure in the shape of a champagne flute with artificial gravity, green areas and water bodies, and complete with public transportation. The structure will be known as The Glass.

Low gravity is a major concern as it can affect reproduction. The researchers at the university aim at curbing this concern. The structure will create artificial gravity capable of generating gravity that would be equivalent to Earth's environment by utilising centrifugal force caused by the rotation of moon and Mars in space.

According to Japan's The Asahi Shimbun, the plan might take a century to be a reality. However, researchers are aiming to build a simplified prototype version of the Marsglass and Lunaglass by 2050.

According to the Director of SIC Manned Cosmology Research Center and Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies at Kyoto University, Yosuke Yamashiki, what Japan has in store for Space habitation are crucial for ensuring the realisation of human space colonisation in the future.

Yosuke Yamashiki, the Director of SIC Manned Cosmology Research Center and Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies at Kyoto University, says that

Through discussions over the past few years, these three pillars that we propose this time are core technologies that are not in the development plans of other countries and are indispensable for ensuring the realization of human space colonization in the future, he said.

--- ENDS ---

Read the original post:
Bullet train to the moon and Mars? Here's how Japan's planning interplanetary travel - India Today

What's happening

The monkeypox outbreak is still growing in the US. In response, the government is releasing more doses of the monkeypox vaccine to people at higher risk of getting it.

Controlling monkeypox is important for public health. Some people with monkeypox may have only a small rash or blemishes mistaken for something else.

Anyone can get monkeypox, but gay and bisexual men are being disproportionately affected in the current outbreak. If you have an unexplained rash or skin blemish or think you may have been exposed, seek medical care.

There are at least 1,814 cases of the monkeypox in the US, according to Friday's data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while there's an ongoing vaccine response in the US for people most at-risk of catching monkeypox, there's more demand than there is vaccine supply, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said, as reported by The New York Times.

Some officials think the monkeypox outbreak is becoming harder to control, and the confirmed number cases is understood to be much smaller than the true number of cases, due to inadequate testing resources or confusion on how the disease is presenting.

Monkeypoxis a disease caused by an orthopoxvirus that belongs to the same family as the viruses that cause smallpox and cowpox. Monkeypox is endemic in West and Central Africa. Reports of it in the US have been rare but not unheard of. (There were two reported cases in 2021 and47 cases in 2003during an outbreak linked to pet prairie dogs.)

In a health alert to medical providers in mid-June on the spread of monkeypox in the US, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that some cases of monkeypox might be getting missed in testing, and that the monkeypox rash could be mistaken for (or come in addition to) other common infections, like herpes.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky had previously said that current monkeypox infections were causing people to develop blemishes that more closely resembled a pimple or blister as opposed to a more classic, spreading rash, as reported by NBC. While no deaths from the outbreak have been reported in the US, it's important for individuals and their health care providers to catch symptoms early to contain the outbreak of monkeypox occurring in many countries.

Here's what to know.

Examples of monkeypox "pox" or rashes.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease, which means it's transmitted from animals to humans. It's caused by an orthopoxvirus of the same family as the one that causes smallpox, though smallpox is considered more clinically severe than monkeypox.

There are two clades or types of monkeypox virus, according to the World Health Organization: the West African clade and the Congo Basin clade. The West African strain, which has been identified in the recent cases, according to a May 26 presentation by the WHO, has a fatality rate of less than 1%. The Congo Basin or Central African clade has a higher mortality rate of up to 10%, per the WHO.

Monkeypox has caused 72 deaths this year in countries where it's endemic, according to the WHO, but no deaths have been reported in the current outbreak in countries where it isn't endemic, including the US.

Monkeypox was first discovered in the 1950s in colonies of monkeys that were being researched, according to the CDC, but it's also been found in squirrels, rats and other animals. The first human case was discovered in 1970.

Monkeypox spreads between peopleprimarily through contact with infectious sores, scabs or bodily fluids, according to the CDC, but it can also spread through prolonged face-to-face contact via respiratory droplets or by touching contaminated clothing or bedding. (Think the close contact you'd have with a sexual partner, or the close contact you have with strangers at a busy event or club.) Experts are currently investigating whether monkeypox can be spread through semen or vaginal fluid.

Anyone can be infected with monkeypox, but many of the cases in the US recently have been in men who have sex with men, the CDC says. The close contact you have with a sexual partner may expose you to monkeypox, and the current outbreak is linked to social networks or sexual activity within some communities.

Gay and bisexual communities tend to have particularly "high awareness and rapid health-seeking behavior when it comes to their and their communities' sexual health," Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, the WHO's regional director for Europe, said in a statementat the end of May, noting that those who sought early health care services should be applauded.

The "close" in close contact is a key element in the transmission of monkeypox. That, along with the fact that the virus that causes monkeypox appears to have a slower reproduction rate than the COVID-19 virus, sets it apart from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in June at a media briefing.

While scientists are still learning about monkeypox in the newer outbreaks, and some experts are pushing back on the idea it isn't airborne, "It's not acting like influenza or COVID or chicken pox or measles -- things that spread quickly in an unvaccinated community," Inglesby said. "It's acting much more like a disease that requires close contact."

"It's not a situation where if you're passing someone at a grocery store, they're gonna be at risk for monkeypox," Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director at the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said at a May briefing with the CDC.

Because many of the recent cases of monkeypox in Europe have resulted in lesions in the genital region and resemble symptoms of sexually transmitted infections like herpes, you should ask to be evaluated if you have an unexplained rash in your genital region, Dr. John Brooks, epidemiologist in the division of HIV/AIDS prevention, said at a May CDC media briefing.

Symptoms of monkeypox in humans are similar to (but milder than)smallpox, which WHO declared eliminated in 1980.

A monkeypox infection typically begins with flulike symptoms, including fatigue, intense headache, fever and swollen lymph nodes. Within one to three days of a fever developing, according to the CDC, a rash or sores develop and can be located pretty much anywhere on the body, including the hands, genitals, face, chest and inside of the mouth.

But wherever they develop, the rash or monkeypox lesions can be flat or raised, full of clear or yellowish fluid and will eventually dry up and fall off.

You can spread monkeypox until the sores heal and a new layer of skin forms, according to the CDC. Illness typically lasts for two to four weeks. The incubation period ranges from five to 21 days, according to the CDC.

Notably, some people never experience flulike symptoms, the CDC says, and you may experience all or only few of the typical monkeypox symptoms. For safer sex and social gatheringswhere you may be in close contact with other peoples' bodies, the CDC has a fact sheet for practices to consider.

Monkeypox doesn't have the same ability to infect people like the virus that causes COVID-19, says Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

"Monkeypox is not contagious during the incubation period, so it doesn't have that ability to spread the way certain viruses like flu or SARS-CoV-2 can," he said. Experts are studying whether this will remain true in the current outbreak.

Monkeypox lesions progress through a series of stages before scabbing, according to the CDC.

While traditionally the rash starts on the face before becoming more widespread, monkeypox blemishes can be limited, resemble a pimple or other sore and aren't always necessarily accompanied by flulike symptoms.

Yes. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Jynneos to prevent smallpox andmonkeypox. Because monkeypox is so closely related to smallpox, vaccines for smallpox are also effective against monkeypox. In addition to Jynneos, the US has another smallpox vaccine in its stockpile, called ACAM2000. Because ACAM2000 is an older generation of vaccine with harsher side effects, it's not recommended for everyone, including people who are pregnant or immunocompromised.

Jynneos is what's being shipped out to states, though states can also request ACAM2000 because supply of Jynneos -- a two-dose vaccine with each dose given four weeks apart -- is relatively low. Individual health departments will determine eligibility for the vaccine, but they're meant for close contacts of someone with monkeypox or people who believe they're at high risk for an exposure.

Vaccinating people who have been exposed to monkeypox is what Adalja calls "ring vaccination," where health officials isolate the infected person and vaccinate their close contacts to stop the spread. Because cases may be going undetected, the US and the UK have expanded the eligibility for who can get vaccinated (to include those without a confirmed exposure).

Dr. Daniel Pastula, chief of neuroinfectious diseases and associate professor of neurology, medicine and epidemiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said the vaccine is used in people who've been exposed but aren't yet showing symptoms of monkeypox, because the incubation period for the disease is so long.

"Basically what you're doing is stimulating the immune system with the vaccine, and getting the immune system to recognize the virus before the virus has a chance to ramp up," Pastula said.

Though health care and lab professionals who work directly with monkeypox are recommended to receive smallpox vaccines (and even boosters), the original smallpox vaccines aren't available to the general public and haven't been widely administered in the US since the early 1970s. Because of this, any spillover or "cross-protective" immunity from smallpox vaccines would be limited to older people, theWHO said. According to the WHO, vaccination against smallpox was shown to be about85% effectiveat preventing monkeypox.

Now playing: Watch this: Monkeypox Explained: What You Need to Know

6:44

It's important to be aware of the symptoms of monkeypox, and to know your current individual risk level. Monkeypox spreads through close contact and doesn't require sex.

"This shows the need for public health," Pastula said. "As we saw with COVID, it is so important to have a robust public health system and to support our public health system."

It also calls attention to the wide variety of viruses we live with. All zoonotic diseases (which includeCOVID-19) have the potential to be serious, which is why monitoring them is so important, he said.

"I think this shows that there are lots of potential zoonotic threats -- these are diseases that can hop from animals to humans," Pastula said. This exemplifies the need for public health surveillance, he said, "but it also really shows that we should be careful and deliberate in our interactions with both wild animals and domestic animals."

It's also a developing situation, he said, so recommendations made by public health officials will change as the information does; the same goes for all diseases and new science.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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What to Know About the Monkeypox Outbreak - CNET

Modern technologies prove effective for biodiversity management, but sustainable consumption and production practices have no substitutes

Life forms on Earth have much diversity, ranging from bacteria to plants and animals. No life form can survive on Earth without the direct or indirect support of other organisms. Each of these species and organisms works together in an ecosystem to maintain balance and sustain life. Biodiversity thus includes not only the variety of different species but also the variations within and among them and between ecosystems such as different habitats and ecological processes.

Biodiversity provides humans with a variety of essential resources and ecosystem services, including food production, pollination of plants, air and water purification and climate stabilization. It can also be instrumental in achieving sustainable development goals (zero hunger, improvement of land and soil quality), halting land degradation, building food security, preventing future pandemics and providing jobs in agriculture, fisheries, forestry, etc.

However, the world is currently experiencing an unprecedented biodiversity loss. Over one million species are at a risk of extinction and we are in the midst of a sixth mass die-off ? the largest since the extinction of dinosaurs. The most notable drivers behind this crisis are habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive species, fragmentation, pollution and climate change. Recent climate changes such as rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and more extreme weather events have disrupted species' tolerance limits and nutrient cycling processes.

It is possible that these changes may create opportunities for invasive species which could further add to the stress on species already struggling to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Fragmented ecosystem is often less resilient than a contiguous one, because areas cleared for farms and roads provide pathways for invasion of non-native species, which further contribute to the decline of native species. The genetic loss also threatens species' survival over time, mainly because the number of mates becomes scarce and the chances of inbreeding risk rises. So, the best way to conserve biodiversity is to save habitats and ecosystems, because no organism can exist in isolation. Hence, a diverse pool of data from all possible domains that are directly or indirectly related to biodiversity is required for monitoring and assessing these multiple pressures on species and formulating conservation strategies.

Although, it requires a more coordinated, coherent and strategic approach by all stakeholders such as scientists, biologists, ecologists, government, private sector, forest sector, civil society and individuals. Historically, bio-geographical surveys for conservation usually involved many hours of field work performed by professional researchers, rangers, which certainly could not scale up to meet today's conservation goals.

Surveillance, especially in tropical and inaccessible terrains, is also challenging and complex. It was implausible to predict the global consequences of human activities from these locally collected data. However, recent technological advances have facilitated biodiversity conservation on many fronts, notably for collecting field data and analyzing large datasets, which is expanding human understanding of ecosystems. The increased availability of satellite imagery for instance has revolutionized data collection for ecological survey and monitoring. Similarly, application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also change the dynamics of the field in favour of threatened species. Varieties of algorithms can be developed to harness AI for surveillance, capturing picture, security, animal counting, poaching management, research, etc.

Today, satellites are being used worldwide to collect data of temperature, location, moisture, etc. These environmental information along with geo-location data are essential for understanding the scope of threat to a given species.

Habitat maps or land cover data are usually the most commonly derived product from satellite imagery which can be used to determine species' presence and absence with vegetation types and habitat components.

Even regions that are experiencing rapid change, such as tropical environments, can be closely surveyed through these means. Remote sensing enables faster and more frequent analysis of terrestrial and aquatic landscapes, including chemical and geological parameters and biological processes, which are crucial for taking timely action. It can also help conservation biologists in assessing biodiversity hotspots, maintaining healthy habitats and protecting the life they harbor by detecting failing food webs and excessive human interference.

By conventional means, this kind of surveillance was unfeasible, exhaustive and the territories needed to be monitored by the rangers were humongous when compared with the number of rangers. Fortunately, there are a variety of wildlife tracking systems now that allow us to identify protection priority areas and track animals' movements, assess critically endangered species and protect them from natural calamities and illicit activities. Data gathered from these tracking systems generates massive high-resolution datasets that reflect the ecological context in which animals perceive, interact with and respond to their surroundings.

The AI-enabled robots or drones image datasets are becoming increasingly useful for identifying species, determining animals' social groups, population, location, migration patterns, their daily activities, habitat, repeated behaviors reproduction patterns, foraging routes, hunting habits, etc. Researchers are using floating robots equipped with image classification algorithms to locate and eradicate invasive species of marine algae before they become well-established. Also, drones can also be used to select ideal seeding sites by assessing site conditions like soil types, gradients and competing vegetation.

AI-powered acoustic sensors are helping conservationists in understanding the underwater ecosystem health by observing species behavior and their presence in a specific region or island through their sounds. Acoustic sensors can also be used to detect chainsaws, vehicles and gunshots sounds and alert authorities in real time about illegal poaching, mining or logging. Similarly, camera traps are facilitating conservationists to non-invasively monitor and track both vulnerable species and human presence in largely inaccessible areas and quickly spot anomalies or warning signs. Using environmental DNA, conservationists are quickly and easily collecting traces of animal DNA by scanning water and soil samples which can reveal the presence of unobserved species and make the case for greater protection of an area.

These conservation technologies are rapidly expanding scientific frontiers, improving conservation opportunities and assisting scientists, ecologists, foresters, policymakers and others in better understanding the complex natural environment at national, regional and species level. However, human technology cannot fully replace nature's technology, which has evolved over millions of years to provide essential services to sustain life on Earth. It is challenging to conserve the biosphere with standard economic practices that ignore sustainability issues in relation to resources or excessive stress on the environment. The success of our civilization has been largely dependent on a diverse, productive natural world and a stable climate. Thus, more sustainable production and consumption practices alongwith national and sector policies are required to address climate and biodiversity change together.

The author is former Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Uttar Pradesh

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Saving life on Earth in times of climate change - Daily Pioneer

In Europe, this war climaxed with the enclosures, a process of privatisation that kicked peasants off the land and forced them to take on what work they could find in towns and cities. In Africa, Asia and the Americas, the class war took the form of genocide, enslavement and indentured labour.

Capitalism could have never happened without this theft: it provided the capital needed to drive the industrial revolution. Federicis contribution was to show that the theft of womens bodies and labour was just as indispensable to kick-starting capitalism.

All that genocide and land grabbing had inconvenient side effects. According to Federici, the population of South America dropped by 75 million while in Europe the enclosures helped generate the first modern inflation crisis, by allowing landlords to raise rents and merchants to hoard grain and hike prices. Real wages fell by two-thirds.

The starving poor had little resistance to plague or smallpox and populations began to decline. In Germany one third of the population was lost by the early 1600s.

From a commercial viewpoint, this decimation of the population was bad news. In the 1620s and 30s, markets shrank, trade stopped and unemployment became widespread, in the first international economic crisis, otherwise known as the General Crisis. The fledgling capitalist economy was on the verge of collapse.

What could be more logical, then, for the new ruling alliance than to seize control of womens bodies and their reproductive powers?

Women werent hunted at random. Witches were usually poor and were frequently accused either of crimes against property or of reproductive crimes. They were tried for procuring abortions, murdering children, sucking their blood, and making potions of their flesh.

Many witches were midwives or wise women, traditionally the holders of womens reproductive knowledge. In the Middle Ages, women had some access to contraception in the form of herbs turned into potions and pessaries, but now this was proof of the devils work.

When my friend Tim said that the government should protect unborn babies from the people gestating them, he was probably unaware that its only in the last few hundred years that the uterus has become the business of the state.

Federici described a process whereby male doctors took over birthing chambers. Strict laws were set around reproduction, on punishment of beheading. Womens sexuality ceased to be something for women to enjoy and was put to the service of the economy and of men.

Accompanying this assault on womens bodies was a devaluing of their work, and a redefinition of womanhood itself. The heterosexual, patriarchal family became the engine of the new economy. Strict gender roles were assigned. The womans place was now seen as being in the home, and all the work they did there was designated as non-work.

Non-work included all reproductive labour: both in the sense of literally having babies, and all the care and domestic work needed for humans to sustain and reproduce themselves. Not only were women expected to do all this reproductive work for free, they were supposed to do it with a smile on their faces, born out of that handy thing called maternal instinct.

This is not to say that under feudalism there was no gender inequality. But capitalism didnt exactly spell progress. The devaluing of womens work also affected their earning power when they did try to earn a wage. According to Federici, in 14th-century western Europe, women received half the pay of men for the same task. By the mid-16th century they were getting a third of the male wage.

For Federici, just as capitalism was grounded on genocide, slavery and land theft, it was grounded on womens free and cheap labour, taken from them by fire.

It wasnt by chance that Federici chose to write her history of capitalism during the 1990s and early 2000s. She was witnessing a new phase of capitalism, a new class war and a new war on women.

This was the era of globalisation and structural adjustment. The previous, social democratic phase of capitalism that had been built after the Second World War had ended in a deep stagflation and oil crisis. From the 1980s, neoliberalism was the response of business leaders and governments around the world.

Central banks hiked interest rates, inducing a deep recession. Governments and employers launched an onslaught on trade unions and wages. The IMF and World Bank forced newly independent countries to sell off land and resources to foreign corporations, cut public spending and worsen labour conditions in response to a debt crisis triggered by the interest rate hikes.

Governments and mass media criminalised migrants, cheapening their labour. And police forces and judiciaries incarcerated working class Black and brown people on a mass scale.

At the same time, Federici was seeing a feminisation of poverty (a widening gap between men and women living in poverty) and a surge in violence against women. In South Africa, Brazil and other places, this included actual witch hunting, often targeting those who fought back against corporate land grabs.

Neoliberal politicians like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet, though they had mixed records on abortion, espoused family values: the cis-gendered, heterosexual, patriarchal family model that had been forged centuries previously by Federicis witch hunters.

The parallels with today are too glaring to ignore. What with the climate apocalypse, the 2008 financial crash and its eternal aftermath, the COVID pandemic and now the new stagflation crisis, capitalism has utterly shat the bed. In response, capitalists and states have sought new money-making opportunities, requiring fresh onslaughts in the class war.

Central banks are again hiking interest rates. Corporations are grabbing land in response to the food and climate crises. Governments and firms have launched new attacks on trade unions, new privatisation and austerity drives, and new attacks on migrants. Debt has rocketed and wages are falling at record rates while profits are soaring.

Original post:
Capitalism and the crisis of reproduction - Open Democracy

By DAVID DUPONT

BG Independent News

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Junereproductive freedom advocates were in action spelling out what to do when the anticipate decision was handed down.

Then on June 24, they had to spring into action.

Protests began.

Hannah Servidio, of Pro-Choice Ohio, said Thursday an educational session proceeding a rally on the BGSU campus because Ohio did not have a trigger law that put restrictions into place as soon as the Supreme Court ruled. Those had been proposed, but had yet to pass the legislature and be signed by Gov. Mike DeWine.

It so-called six-week abortion ban was tied up in the courts.

Then Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost successfully petitioned the court to lift the stay, and at 6 p.m. that day the six-week ban was in place.

Abortion clinic personnel started calling patients who were scheduled to have abortions the next day that they may not be able to have the procedure done.

The implementation of that law, however, has been put on hold based on a ruling in Hamilton County. But that stay is temporary, though clinics and the ACLU are trying to make it indefinite.

So abortions continue in Ohios nine clinics for now, Servidio said.

But that future is clouded.

Even beyond the complications posed by the government, those seeking abortions face a host of obstacles finding child care, getting time off work, paying for the procedure, transportation.

On Thursday BGSU Student Democrats and the community group Persist rallied to get supporters of legalized abortion to take another kind of action voting.

The rally began with Servidios refresher on where things stand in Ohio.

She noted to start that everyone in the room likely has had an abortion or loves someone who has had one.

Abortion is a real medical procedure, a real aspect of reproductive care that people seek every day, she said. Banning it would have real consequences for women facing a range of health issues, includingectopic pregnancies.

Rallies like the one at BGSU are necessary, she said.

Its important, she said, to have conversations about abortion, and reproduction health and what its like to live in a state like Ohio underneath the foot of the legislature that we currently have.

BG City Councilman Nick Rubando said that he is trying to ease some of the burdens by amending the citys human rights ordinance to help protect womens reproductive rights. If the resolution, which he plans to introduce in October, passes, for example, a woman would not have to worry about getting fired for taking time off to get an abortion.

After the educational session, about 150 people gathered outside the Bowen Thompson Student Union for a rally and a brief march through campus.

Jan Materni, candidate for State representative in District 3, said that women make up 51 percent of the electorate and now is the time for their voices to be heard.

Emily Gerome, the vice president of the BGSU Democrats, urged students to register to vote in Bowling Green, and encouraged those registered to help get other students sign up to vote.

The 150 participants stepped off heading toward Jerome Library chanting abortion is a right, we wont give up the fight.

Nearby about 15 antiabortion demonstrators stood silently. The two groups did not interact. That was by design.

Servidio cautioned those rallying note to engage with people just trying to bait them, and to disengage if they felt uncomfortable.

Allison Stump, Students for Life coordinator for Catholic Charities, said the counter protestors were there as peaceful, joyful witnesses to what it mean to be pro-life.

They were not there to engage in conversations. They have those in other settings.

When asked about the slogan bans off our bodies, she said, there are two bodies involved, and each body has a unique dignity as human beings.

She claimed: We understand from basic biology that the preborn are humans, and they deserve equal protection under the law.

Servidio warned that the forthcoming lame duck legislative session could be toxic, and vote to grant personhood to a fertilized egg.

View original post here:
Rally at BGSU urges action to preserve reproductive rights BG Independent News - BG Independent News

Mothers who stay at home have questioned why the Government is recognising their work by giving a tax credit to their spouses.

inance Minister Paschal Donohoe announced he was increasing the Home Carer Tax Credit by 100, to support stay-at-home parents.

The tax credit, previously worth 1,600, is available to couples who are married or in a civil partnership, where one of them is a full time carer.

The tax credit is applied to the earnings of the working partner.

So theyre going to recognise my work, by paying it to my spouse? said Ails N Chofaigh, a mother-of-one.

She said it was offensive that the Government was failing to value the work done by stay at home parents the vast majority of whom are women.

Its not income into my bank account, its not pay and its not recognition.

"Its a little bit insulting, to be honest. Is that what my work is valued at? A 100 tax credit, over the course of a year? Are you kidding me?

Ms N Chofaigh, who is based in Limerick and whose son is four-and-a-half, said it was offensive that the Government did not value the work of parents who cared for children at home.

In contrast it did appear to recognise the value of childcare outside of the home through its reduction in crche fees.

Stay-at-home parents work, we work hard. We just arent paid. We arent valued and we arent represented. And theres no way that isnt influenced by the fact that 98pcof stay-at-home parents in Ireland are women, she said.

What activist groups are there for us?

"What feminist groups?

Pauline OReilly, the Green Party senator and founder of Stay at Home Parents Ireland, said that there had been amazing supports for childcare costs announced in the Budget but she believed more needed to be done for stay-at-home parents.

The Governments plan to cut creche fees was hailed as a breakthrough for womens equality by the National Womens Council of Ireland, which said a lack of affordable childcare is the single biggest barrier to womens equality in the workplace.

Meanwhile, One Family, which represents single-parent families, saidthe increase of 12 for core social welfare paymentand a 2 additional payment for children will do nothing to mitigate against poverty in 2023.

A number of measures in Budget 2023 were aimed at easing the rising cost of living for women and families.

For the first time, IVF will be available on the public health service after funding was announced for the fertility treatmentwhich is currently only available through unregulated clinics, at significant expense.

The treatment will be available to couples who are finding it hard to conceive after a landmark assisted human reproduction bill makes its way through the Oireachtas.

The Government said that funding will be made available next year for a dedicated womens health package.

The recently launched free contraception scheme has also been extended from its original age limit of 17-25 to 16-30.

Free contraception for all women was first promised over four years ago. Hormone replacement therapy will now be subject to zero per cent Vat, as will mooncups, menstrual sponges and period pants. Products like tampons and sanitary pads were already subject to zero per cent Vat.

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Budget 2023: Stay-at-home mother blasts 'insulting' home carer credit rise - 'So they're going to recognise my work, by paying it to my spouse?' -...

CBSE NotesCBSE Notes BiologyNCERT Solutions Biology

1. Humans are sexually reproducing and viviparous organisms. There are remarkable differences between the reproductive events and systems in male and female.2. Male reproductive system includes a pair of testes, accessory ducts, glands and the external genitalia.(i) Testes are located outside the abdominal cavity within a pouch called scrotum.Scrotum maintains the low temperature of the testes (2-2.5C lower than the normal body temperature) required for spermatogenesis.(a) Each testis is oval-shape (length 4-5 cm and width 2-3 cm) and covered by a dense covering called tunica albuginea.(b) Internally it is divided into about 250 compartments known as testicular lobules.(c) Each lobule contains 1-3 highly coiled (structural and functional units of testis) called seminiferous tubules in which sperms are produced.(d) Seminiferous tubule is lined on its inside by two types of cells called male germ cells (spermatogonia) and Sertoli cells.(e) Male germ cells undergo meiotic divisions finally leading to sperm formation.(f) Sertoli cells provide nutrition to the germ cells.(g) Interstitial spaces are present in outside regions of seminiferous tubules which contain small blood vessels and interstitial cells or Leydig cells.(h) Leydig cells synthesise and secrete the testicular hormones called androgens.(ii) Male accessory ducts include rete testis, vasa efferentia, epididymis and vas deferens.(a) The intratesticular duct system starts with tubuli recti, which are short, straight end segments of the seminiferous tubules. These tubules connect the seminiferous tubules to the highly anastomosing, cuboidal epithelium-lined channels called rete testis.(b) From rete testis, 10-25 fine tubules arise called vasa efferentia that leave the testis and open into the epididymis.(c) Epididymis leads to vas deferens that ascends to the abdomen and loops over the urinary bladder.Diagrammatic sectional view of male pelvis showing reproductive systemDiagrammatic view of male reproductive system [part of testis is open to show inner details)Urinary bladder receives a duct from the seminal vesicle to form ejaculatory duct that runs through the prostate and opens into urethra.(e) Urethra receives the ducts of prostate gland and the bulbourethral gland (Cowpers glands) a little ahead and runs through the penis to its external opening called urethral meatus.(iii) The accessory glands of male reproductive system include(a) A pair of seminal vesicles, a prostate gland and a pair of bulbourethral glands (Cowpers glands).(b) The secretion of all these glands is called seminal plasma.(c) Seminal plasma contains fructose, calcium and some enzymes. It is to provide nutrition to the spermatozoa, while travelling through female reproductive tract.(d) Seminal plasma along with sperms is called semen.(e) Secretion of bulbourethral glands also helps in the lubrication of the penis.(iv) External genitalia is the penis. It is made up of special erectile tissue that helps in erection of the penis. The enlarged tip of the penis is called glans penis. It is covered by a loose fold of skin called foreskin or prepuce.3. Female reproductive system consists of a pair of ovaries, secondary sex organs, external genitalia and mammary glands.(i) Ovaries are primary female sex organs which produce female gametes called ova and secrete the female sex hormones.(a) These are located one on each side of the lower abdomen.(b) It is almond-shaped, 2-4 cm in length, 1.5 cm in width.(c) It is connected to the pelvic wall and uterus by ligaments.(d) Each ovary is covered by a thin epithelium which encloses the ovarian stroma.(e) Stroma is divided into two regions, i.e. peripheral cortex and inner medulla.(ii) The female accessory ducts constitute oviducts (Fallopian tubes), uterus and vagina.(iii) Each Fallopian tube is about 10-12 cm long and extends from the periphery of each ovary to the uterus.(a) The part of oviduct closer to the ovary is funnel-shaped infundibulum.(b) The edges of infundibulum possess finger-like projections called fimbriae, which help in collection of the ovum after ovulation.(c) Infundibulum leads to a wider part of the oviduct called ampulla.(d) Isthmus is the last part of the oviduct, which has a narrow lumen and it joins the uterus.(iv) Uterus or womb is a pear-shaped muscular organ. It is attached to the pelvic wall and supported by ligaments.(a) Wall of the uterus has three layers of tissue.(b) Perimetrium is the outermost thin membranous layer, myometrium is the middle thick layer of smooth muscles and endometrium is the innermost glandular layer which lines the uterine cavity.(c) Uterus opens into the vagina through a narrow cervix, its cavity is called cervical canal, which along with vagina forms birth canal.(d) Endometrium layer undergoes cyclic changes during menstrual cycle.(e) Smooth muscles in myometrium contract during parturition to deliver the baby.(v) Vagina is a muscular tube-like structure that opens to the outside. It receives spermatozoa during insemination and serve as birth canal.(vi) Female external genitalia include mons pubis, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris and hymen.(a) Mons pubis is a cushion of fatty tissue covered by skin and pubic hair.(b) Labia majora are fleshy folds of tissue which extend down from the mons pubis and surround the vaginal opening.(c) Labia minora are paired folds of tissue under the labia majora.(d) Hymen is a membrane that covers the opening of vagina partially. It gets ruptured during vigorous physical activities or during the first coitus.(e) Clitoris is a tiny finger-like structure, which lies at the upper junction of the two labia minora above the urethral opening.(vii) Mammary glands (breasts) are paired structures that contain glandular tissue and variable amount of fat.(a) Glandular tissue of each mammary gland is divided into 15-20 mammary lobes containing the cluster of cells called alveoli.(b) The cells of alveoli secrete milk, which is stored in the cavities (lumen) of alveoli.(c) Alveoli open into mammary tubules. The tubules of each lobe join to form a mammary duct.(d) Several mammary ducts join to form a wider mammary ampulla, which is connected to lactiferous duct through which milk is sucked out.

NCERT SolutionsMathsPhysicsChemistryBiologyScience

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Human Reproduction CBSE Notes for Class 12 Biology