An Australian study has revealed that there is a definite rise in the number of couples seeking the aid of Artificial Reproductive Technique (ART) to produce children — the real good news is that the number of multiple gestations, resulting from this procedure, has steeply declined.

It is common for twins and triplets to be born as a result of ART, which, needless to say, is an already complicated and sensitive procedure.

The recent decline in multiple fetuses could be assigned to the fact that several ART laboratories have made it mandatory to adopt the ‘single embryo transfer’ policy whereby only a single embryo, with morphologically viable features, is transferred into the uterus. Sometimes Pre implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is used to select the embryo.

In India, however, ART continues to flourish under a shroud of secrecy. There are no regulations in place to govern and monitor the functioning of ART labs and, (honest) record- keeping is still considered unnecessary by many. The shady nexus between ART specialists and their promoters (pharma companies) lays emphasis on success rate ‘at any cost’. One of the measures employed is to transfer multiple embryos (3 to 4) into the uterus which often results in multiple gestations. These are eventually downsized to allow the survival of a single fetus.

Such a move is justified by several specialists; while some enter the denial mode. Whatever the case, this subject deserves a more sensitive approach than what is currently being attributed to it.

After all, every life is precious… including that of the Unborn!
Dr.Reeja Tharu

Related links

1. Artificial Insemination
2. Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) – Animation
3. Genetic Technology and Eugenics
   

Actress Suzanne Somers made a recent statement that chemotherapy killed Patrick Swayze.

It must be remembered that the ‘Ghost’ actor died recently after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

As a cancer survivor herself, Somers  felt entitled to make a statement on a subject that was close to her. “They took a beautiful man and put toxins in his body,” she said. The actress felt that instead of chemotherapy Swayze could have been put on a special diet to fight cancer by boosting his immune system.

Perhaps she was right…perhaps!

Researchers at Johns Hopkins recommend  alternative ways (besides chemotherapy) to counter cancer.

According to them, cancer cells are ubiquitously present in everyone but they are constantly kept in check by an ever – vigilant surveillance  system (read  immune system).A compromise in this surveillance leads to the growth and proliferation of cancer cells.
This compromise could be a result of multiple nutritional deficiencies which can be overcome by resorting to a suitable diet that includes supplements.

It is a well known fact that chemo- and radio therapy snuffs out healthy cells in the various tissues of the body. These treatments also cause a build up of toxins  which impairs the immune system resulting in the person succumbing to infections and several other complications.

Therefore, it appears ( for obvious reasons ) that the best way to contain  cancer cells is  to starve them by abstaining from foods that promote their  growth .

Sugar is a great favorite of cancer cells; most of the sugar substitutes too are harmful as they contain aspartame.

Cancer cells flourish in an acidic environment. Therefore keeping meat- based food to the minimum helps to control the growth of  malignant cells.

Milk is reported to produce mucus especially within the GI tract –cancer cells are reported to thrive on mucus.It would therefore be a good idea to substitute milk products with that of soy products including soy milk.

Vegetable juice is excellent for replenishing the damaged healthy cells. A diet rich in vegetables, fruits, nuts and whole grains  help to maintain an alkaline environment which is necessary to check cancer.

Of course, Patrick Swayze  smoked  3 packs a day. It would help to refrain from abusing the body by smoking or drinking  excessively. Also, never abstain from regular exercising.

No promise is made but, when  all these factors are followed it would be easier to fight the harbingers of cancer, a disease that seems to have  gripped all of mankind by the tail!

Dr.Reeja Tharu

Related links

1. Pancreatic cancer
2. Patrick swayze
3. Super Foods
   

United States now expects to receive the first batch of swine flu vaccine in early October, a few weeks earlier than expected, says Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

“We’re on track to have an ample supply by October,” Sebelius told ABC television “but we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October.”

Pharmaceutical firms have been racing to produce the vaccine in time for the start of the northern hemisphere’s winter flu season, with the US go…

A new study has found that a small molecule composed of one atom of oxygen and one of nitrogen plays an important role in helping pathogens resist antibiotics.

The study, led by Evgeny Nudler, professor of biochemistry at New York University Langone Medical Center, and published in Science magazine, provides evidence that nitric oxide (NO) is able to alleviate stress in bacteria caused by many antibiotics and helps it neutralize many antibacterial compounds.

“Developing n…

When communism crumbled two decades ago, Eastern Europeans were only too delighted to discover the fast-food chains that symbolized the West. But today they increasingly long for organic food.

“The general trend is that more and more organic products are being sold in former Soviet-bloc countries,” said Amarjit Sahota, head of the research department of London-based consulting firm Organic Monitor

The Romanian capital recently saw the opening of organic stores named Biofo…

Scientists in Europe said they could explain why nicotine patches designed to help smokers kick their habit can cause skin irritation.

Nicotine activates a so-called ion channel in skin cells that unleashes an inflammatory response by the immune system, leading to itching, they reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Previously, the irritation had been blamed on stimulation of special nicotine receptors on nerve cells, causing pain signals to be sent to the brain. b…

Smoking during pregancy increases the risk of a baby developing asthma up to sixfold, said a Swedish study published at the European Respiratory Society’s annual congress on Monday.

The study by Professeur Anders Bjerg of the Sunderby central hospital in Norrbotten and his specialists showed that smoking leads to babies being born underweight, a fact that has an impact on the development of asthma.

The Swedish doctors studied asthma in about 3,400 children between 1996 an…

Roger Moore, British actor and former 007 renewed his campaign against foie gras, slamming the process of making the delicacy as ‘vile’ and eating it as ‘ridiculous’.

The ex-British super spy has written to the chairman of London’s upmarket department store Selfridges, offering to buy its entire stock of the product, which is created by force-feeding ducks.

“It’s called foie gras which is fatty liver which is a diseased liver,” the 81-year-old Moore told Channel 4 news. …

People exposed to one of the world’s worst industrial accidents, in which dioxin spewed out over the north Italian town of Seveso, face a higher risk of developing several kinds of cancer, a study said on Monday.

It added, though, that cancers unleashed by the toxic chemical had not surpassed expectations at the 30-year mark and the relatively small number of cases made it hard to pin down the size and pattern of risk.

Researchers led by Angela Pesatori from the Fondazion…

An anti-diabetes drug reduced tumors faster and prolonged remission further than chemotherapy when tested on mice, apparently by targeting cancer stem cells, a new report by Harvard Medical School found.

The report, published Monday in the online journal Cancer Research, argued that the drug metformin may improve breast cancer outcomes in people.

“We have found a compound selective for cancer stem cells,” said senior author Kevin Struhl, a professor of biological chemistr…

US lawmakers opposed to a 1996 law that bars the US government from recognizing same-sex marriages will launch a campaign Tuesday to repeal the ban, leaders of the group said Monday.

Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler and two openly gay members of the House of Representatives — Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis — will unveil legislation to scrap the Defense of Marriage Act, they said.

The bill, details of which were to be unveiled Tuesday, has the support of…

The portly assistant school principal pushes aside his paperwork and from his old leather satchel draws a Chinese pistol, his protection here in the violent Thai south. Such is the state of Thai.

“The children don’t know I carry a gun,” says Prachin Ruengchim, as the laughter of young students carries down from the upstairs classroom. “Almost nobody knows, only close friends. Some other teachers don’t know.”

The 59-year-old reveals that he always carries the firearm aroun…

To Lebanon’s Kamal, it’s a job like any other: ‘I send clients at luxury hotels photo albums of the girls. It’s like selling goods,’ say reports.

Kamal, whose name has been changed at his request, is a 40-year-old pimp based just outside of Beirut, where prostitution thrives, though illegal, in hotels, nightclubs, brothels, private homes, chalets and even on highways.

“I inherited the trade from my father,” he told AFP. “To me, it’s just a regular job.”

“Deman…

It is reported that President Barack Obama had a blunt status update for America’s permanently wired youth: your Facebook postings could come back to haunt you.

Obama’s advice to a group of high school students followed reports that prospective employers may be mining social networking sights for background information on job applicants.

He offered his nugget of advice to a student at an Arlington, Virginia school who asked him in a roundtable how he could get to be presi…

The United States boasts some of the world most advanced medical care but experts say the system that delivers it is choked by waste and costs projected to escalate as the population ages.

Venturing where others have failed, President Barack Obama now finds himself in the thick of the first major fight of his presidency over how to expand health care to the nearly 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.

The cost of reforms is one issue. Obama has proposed spend…

Squeeze lemons on a pair of breasts or chuck the trash into a lifelike life-sized posterior. After contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, whose recreated skulls fetch record prices on the art market, designers increasingly are basing objects for everyday life from all sorts of body parts.

“The human body has become a source of inspiration,” said trendspotter Francois Bernard at the Maison (and) Objet trade fair, one of the world’s top home shows that was taking place in Paris this we…

An Australian teenager’s bid to become the youngest solo round-the-world sailor suffered a setback when she crashed just hours into a preliminary voyage on Wednesday.

Jessica Watson, 16, was on a 10-day test journey when she hit a 63,000-tonne freighter in a busy shipping lane off the coast of Queensland state, snapping her pink yacht’s mast and damaging its rigging and hull.

But Watson vowed the incident would not stop her attempt to become the youngest person to sail no…

Tens of thousands of Chinese were rushing to get married on Wednesday, hoping that the 09/09/09 date would bring longevity to their weddings and lives.

Besides meaning “nine, nine”, “jiu, jiu” in Chinese also means “for a long time,” thus making Wednesday an auspicious day to get married.

The fact that another nine is added for 2009 has only made the day luckier in the world’s most populous nation, state press reported.

“We were going to get married in March, …

The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged Asian countries to prepare for a surge in swine flu cases as the northern hemisphere’s winter approaches.

Much of Asia has so far been hit relatively lightly, but the WHO said hospitals in the region should be prepared for “a surge of severe cases requiring active case management.”

“A winter surge is a real possibility in the Southeast Asia region,” WHO director for Southeast Asia, Samlee Plianbangchang, said in Kathmandu, …

Scientists in the United States, working with mice, have found a new type of stem cell in the prostate gland and shown that mutations in it can cause cancer, a study released Wednesday says.

The discovery boosts evidence that cancers can be caused by modifications in stem cells, the dynamic precursor cells that develop into and replenish the body’s specific tissues, it says.

It also appears to resolve a mystery about the origin of prostate cancer, and could open new pathw…

The Red Cross on Wednesday urged European countries to make life-saving first aid training compulsory, warning that people were too reliant on emergency services.

“The fact is that 56 percent of European countries have decided to make first aid compulsory to get a driving licence is encouraging, but this is not enough, and we clearly see the need for legislation at the European level,” said Dianne Issard, a first aid specialist at the French Red Cross.

The approach varies…

The estimated number of flu cases — including swine flu — in France has reached epidemic proportions, according to preliminary data released Wednesday.

“Last week the number of visits to doctors for flu in mainland France was estimated at 52,300, which is to say 83 cases per 100,000 inhabitants,” said the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

The threshold for declaring an epidemic is 80 cases per 100,000.

“We will have to see the same…

Uruguay lawmakers Wednesday adopted a trailblazing law allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, in an unprecedented move in Latin America.

Senator Margarita Percovich told AFP the contentious bill had passed its final hurdle with 17 out of 23 senators voting in favor of the legislation.

It was approved by lawmakers from the ruling leftwing Frente Amplio and the opposition Colorado Party, while the opposition National Party voted against, she added.

…

Scientists working in seven countries announced they had uncovered variants of three genes which play a role in Alzheimer’s, a discovery that should throw open many new avenues for tackling this tragic, mind-killing disease.

The biggest cause of dementia, Alzheimer’s has a strong heritability — nearly one in four cases are believed to have a genetic cause — but precisely which genes are to blame and how their fiendish mechanism works remain elusive.

So far, three culpri…

President Barack Obama this week will defend his controversial push for a public health care option to be offered alongside existing private insurance plans, the White House said Sunday.

Obama’s plans to remake health care have been squeezed during a summer marked by volatile town hall meetings in which conservatives railed against changing the system.

But the president will try to breath new life into his reform effort with an address Wednesday to a rare joint session of…

A Spanish restaurateur, fearing a drop in business due to swine flu, is seeking to pull in customers by offering a sanitised — and hopefully virus-free — environment.

Miguel Angel de la Cruz, manager of the Mesa y Placer (Table and Pleasure) eatery in Madrid, said he was forced to act ahead of a feared ’second wave’ of swine flu this autumn, which is “more dangerous to business than the economic crisis.”

“We are facing a very difficult autumn. We have therefore had to t…

The swine flu virus has overtaken other viruses to become the most prevalent flu strain says The World Health Organization.

“Evidence from multiple outbreak sites demonstrates that the A(H1N1) pandemic virus has rapidly established itself and is now the dominant influenza strain in most parts of the world,” said the WHO in a statement.

“The pandemic will persist in the coming months as the virus continues to move through susceptible populations,” it added.

Nig…

It may be one of nature’s repulsive little blood-sucking parasites, but the humble tick could yield a future cure for cancers of the skin, liver and pancreas, Brazilian researchers have discovered.

They have identified a protein in the saliva of a common South American tick, Amblyomma cajennense, that apparently reduces and can even eradicate cancerous cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

“This is a radical innovation,” said Ana Marisa Chudzinski-Tavassi, the molecula…

Prostitutes became models for a night in Rio as they paraded the latest collection of their Daspu brand, founded four years ago to fight discrimination against their profession in Brazil.

The voluptuous mannequins cheerfully exhibited the colorful wear during a nighttime catwalk of sorts, showing off the summer 2010 collection, “Farofa (fried manioc flour) caviar!”, inspired by bar and nightclub culture.

They swaggered, hips jutting forward, on a red carpet laid in the mi…

A battered housewife, a Muslim widow and an illiterate mother of four are among a group of Indian women looking to carve out a living by breaking into the male preserve of New Delhi taxi drivers.

Hailing from some of the poorest quarters of the Indian capital, they are part of plans to launch the city’s first radio taxi-service run by women, in time for the October 2010 Commonwealth Games.

The project is the brainchild of Meenu Vadera of the Azad Foundation, a voluntary g…