•  Last night John McCain told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren that he thinks people are being too hard on Sarah Palin, even if he does find it kinda funny. "I'm entertained and sometimes a little angry when I see this constant, vicious attacks by people on the left. I've never seen anything like it," he said. • According to a recent poll, 86% of men in Canada would rather be a driver than a passenger in bad weather. Unfortunately, 50% of men also claimed that they don't slow down in the snow, which makes things a little more dangerous for the rest of you up north. •  Researchers have found that a particular type of fertility treatment, ICSI, may produce more baby girls than boys. Even though few babies are born through this method, the authors conclude: "because our findings suggest that ICSI may reduce the sex ratio, we recommend that ICSI only be done if medically necessary, in an effort to prevent this potential side effect." •  19-year-old pimp DeShawn "Cash Money" Clark has become the first person to be convicted of human trafficking in Washington state. Clark faces up to 18 years in prison for his crimes. •  Years after doctors told her she was infertile, Sarah Wilkinson took an emergency trip to the hospital because she felt some pain in her stomach. Turns out, she was having a baby. She says she feels "fantastic" now, even though the pregnancy was a huge shock. • Did you know that there have been women in the Scotland Yard for 90 years now? Women first started working as officers in 1919, when they were introduced in order to help deal with prostitutes and suicidal women. Plus: here are some of their spiffy outfits. •  Vicki Kennedy told Oprah today that she has absolutely no interest in running for the senate seat left empty by her late husband, Edward Kennedy. She also told Oprah about the last days of her husband's life, including his determination to survive to see Obama elected president. •  Two teenage girls from New Zealand have been convicted of the murder of a retired school teacher. The girls, aged 18 and 15, broke into his house and beat him to death with his own walking stick before trashing the place and leaving with his wallet. •  Three lacrosse players from Sacred Heart University have been accused of conspiring to sexually assault a female student in a dorm room. The victim was engaging in consensual sex with one of the boys when his two friends crept in "as a prank," but their lawyers claim they had no contact with the woman. •  Lobna Abdelrehim used to work at a Wall Street publishing firm, until she got fed up with the rampant racism and sexism. She says she was constantly mocked for her faith and her looks, and has brought a lawsuit against the company. •  Michele Bachmann admitted to the St. Cloud Times that she sometimes says stupid shit: "I wish I could be more artful in the way I say things. But she went on add some qualifying statement about "bias in the mainstream media" and so on. • In other Bachmann news, she's headed to Nashville to join Sarah Palin for a Tea Party. Sadly, not the fun kind. •  A new study from the UK confirms that police often don't believe rape victims due to prejudices about their background, class, and "behavior." Officers were also found to be inadequately trained for dealing with rape, which can result in police that would rather "do nothing at all" than risk doing something wrong. • 

Jason's two daughters, from a previous relationship, currently live with their mother, and not with Jason and Janine, who have been married for three years. Macallister believes that Telford & Wrekin PCT, the fertility clinic denying her treatment, (even though, as The Telegraph points out, "the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence says three full cycles of IVF treatment should be provided for women aged between 23 and 39 who have had fertility problems for at least 3 years,") is unfairly labeling the couple as one person, as opposed to two individuals with separate reproductive rights. "I am the one who has the problem, not my husband and I am the one in need of treatment, not my husband," Macallister says, "I would completely understand you denying us treatment if we already had a child together, which is not the case." A spokeswoman for Telford & Wretkin PCT claims that their "policy regarding fertility treatment is currently under review."

Woman Denied Fertility Treatment Because Husband Has Children [Telegraph]

In a study published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, Chinese researchers performed experiments on mice, showing for the first time that a mammal can produce new eggs as an adult that lead to healthy offspring, reports theWashington Post. Scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University identified female germ line stem cells in ovaries removed from mice. After coaxing the cells to multiply, they were injected into sterile mice. Some of the cells matured into eggs, and another group of mice was able to produce healthy offspring.

While men produce new sperm daily, for at least 50 years scientists have believed that female mammals are born with all the eggs they will ever have and the supply is depleted over time, leaving them infertile after menopause. The new study raises new possibilities for the treatment of infertility, as freezing stem cells may be more efficient than freezing eggs and there may be ways to stimulate the cells to produce eggs in older women. The cells may also have a use in stem cell research by producing embryonic stem cell lines specific to individual patients.

Several recent studies have suggested that women may generate more eggs during adulthood, but this is the first time scientists have obtained the cells that can produce healthy new eggs from a mammal. "If you are looking to disprove that females cannot make new eggs, this paper proves it. It's a really significant paper," said Harvard Medical School professor Jonathan L. Tilly, who published some of the earlier research. "This is the smoking gun."

Other scientists say more research needs to be done on humans, not mice, and question if the mice used in the experiment were really completely sterilized. "The aging process of the human egg differs fundamentally from that of the mouse egg," said David L. Keefe, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of South Florida. "Except at Disney World, humans are not large mice."

Still, doctors hope that the cells could lead to new procedures someday, especially since treating infertility has become a lucrative, multibillion dollar business. The L.A. Times reports that the competition became so intense at the Huntington Reproductive Center in Pasadena, one of the biggest fertility practices on the West coast, that it has spurred a series of lawsuits. After founder Dr. Joel Batzofin's business grew to make a $5 million yearly profit, his five partners took a secret vote and ousted him from the business. The former partners sued each other in a six year legal battle that led to private detectives posing as patients. A female detective submitted to an ultrasound of her uterus and ovaries, and one of the doctors gave his own sperm sample to a rival doctor, pretending to be a patient, all in an effort to show that Batzofin was violating a non-compete agreement at his new practice. "It's a cutthroat business," said Batzofin. "There is a lot of greed."

But according to another new study published this week, even more women may be turning to fertility treatments, as having a high-powered career has supposedly been linked to lowered fertility. The Times of London reports that University of Utah anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan found that women with stressful careers experience a hormonal shift that replaces estrogen with male androgens that are associated with strength, stamina, and competitiveness.

Cashdan analyzed the waist to hip ratio (WHR) of women from 37 different populations and cultures, and found the average WHR to be above 0.8. She says that due to a hormonal shift, the women had a more straight-up-and-down figure that is less conducive to child-bearing. Previous studies have found that women with an hourglass figure, with a WHR of 0.7 are the most fertile.

"Although the hormonal profile associated with a high WHR may favour success in some stressful and difficult circumstances where women must work hard, there are well-known costs," said Cashdan. "Women may suffer lower fertility and possibly lower attractiveness to men who may have an innate preference for curviness."

A Possible Step Toward Setting The Biological Clock [The Washington Post]
Fertility Doctors' Competition Spawns Lawsuits [The L.A. Times]
Is Your Career Making You Infertile? [The Times of London]

While the bill was more or less gutted, it would prohibit cloning (and fertilizing an egg with material from another egg, which is technically possible) and it would only allow it for the treatment of infertility, which is the more problematic part. Saletan explains:

Resolve remains unhappy that the bill doesn't clearly permit IVF for "women who have medical conditions like kidney disease that prevent them from carrying a pregnancy, but who are not usually considered to have 'infertility.'"

But Saletan assumes that's more of an oversight than an agenda. The agenda, he thinks, is to limit or eliminate the creation of embryos for genetic testing.

That use is the screening of embryos for unwanted genes: preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

PGD began with screening for fatal childhood diseases but has gradually expanded to flaws that are less lethal, less harmful, less likely to cause disease, and less likely to strike early in life.

It's used for everything from screening for gender to screening for deformities to (supposedly) screening for physical characteristics like hair and eye color. Saletan considers it all a "slippery slope."

The bill is part of a nationwide project to regulate the emerging industry of embryo production. In one state or another-and then another and another-legislation will be filed to restrict IVF. Based on the Georgia experiment, these bills will probably make exceptions for infertility but not PGD. The battles, then, will be fought over which uses of PGD are acceptable. And these fights will be every bit as ugly as the preceding fights over abortion.

Regulating embryo production, as Saletan terms it, comes from the same religious movement that regards embryos as having souls — they're pushing personhood amendments and anti-abortion laws while seeking to eliminate federal funds for stem cell research and prevent cloning. So, I agree that it is a slippery slope, though for different reasons than Saletan.

This is one of those issues that will be hard for pro-choice advocates to fight. Most people are not keen on parents who abort girl fetuses because they are girls — and the religious people will argue that discarding embryos for the same reasons is equally bad. They'll argue that discarding fetuses because they're got brown-haired genes instead of blonde is as bad as aborting children for the same reason. And, as it is difficult to argue that sex-selective or eye-color-selective abortions are justifiable, the pro-choice movement will have difficulty arguing about the justifiability of PGD for reasons chosen by parents (or mothers) as opposed to governments. And then the government will be back regulating when and for what reason you can choose to make decisions about the contents (or soon-to-be contents) of your uterus. So the real question is whether you think you can trust to government to give you the choices it deems appropriate, or whether it is worth letting a few bad actors poison the choice pool.

Dish Respect [Slate]

Earlier: Nadya Suleman Is The New Poster Girl For Restricting Reproductive Rights

Dr. Michael Kamrava, the doctor who helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with octuplets, transferred at least seven embryos into another patient a few months after treating Suleman, reports The L.A. Times. The 49-year-old woman already has three children and is now five months pregnant with quadruplets. The woman is hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where she was transferred from another hospital because she doesn't have insurance. She spoke to The L.A. Times in a phone interview:

"Please respect my privacy," she said, adding that her circumstances are much different from Suleman's.

The woman has three grown children from a previous marriage but wanted another child with her second husband, who is in his early 30s and doesn't have any children, sources said. She works as an apartment manager; her husband is a contractor.

She started fertility treatments seeking one baby, but after becoming pregnant with quadruplets, declined medical advice to reduce the number of fetuses, the sources said.

The woman's situation is different from Suleman's. For a start, she's employed. But, having multiples is still very risky, and unlike Suleman, this mother's age is a factor.

"I do think it is concerning, and dangerous, especially to the mother. She is close to 50. When women get to be that age, our fear is the cardiovascular complications, such as stroke or heart attack. That's how serious this is," said Dr. John Jain, a fertility specialist with knowledge of the case.

Dr. Jain also appeared on The Today Show this morning, and explained that usually the age of the egg donor determines how many embryos will be implanted. In this case, the donor was 29, so only one or two embryos would usually be implanted. "It's just common sense, this is not what you do," says Jain in the clip below. "This is irresponsible, careless."

Nearly a third of in vitro births involve twins or more, but the government and professional associations want fertility doctors to reduce that number, reports the New York Times.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances. The guidelines allow more for older women, up to a maximum of five.

But unlike some other countries, the United States has no laws to enforce those guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a surveillance system that collects data on fertility clinics, but reporting is voluntary and there are no government sanctions for not reporting.

Part of the problem may be the way that the cost of fertility treatments are covered in the U.S. In Europe, where many countries have banned the transfer of more than one embryo, the countries also cap costs for in vitro fertilization or require health insurance to cover the procedure. One cycle of in vitro costs about $12,000 in the U.S., and since the cost is often not covered by insurance, doctors say they are urged by their patients to implant more embryos. "There was greater pressure for U.S. clinics to deliver, no pun intended, on the first try," Dr. David Hill, who runs a Beverly Hills IVF clinic, told The New York Times, "so they would put back more embryos, and hopefully one of them would take."

A recent Slate article argues that the way to reduce the number of multiple births in this country is actually to increase the number of IVF procedures being performed.

In 2002, Harvard Medical School researchers found, unsurprisingly, that compared with women who pay out of pocket, those whose insurance fully covered IVF were significantly less likely to have multiples since they chose to have fewer implanted embryos. And while international comparisons are fraught with confounders, it's worth noting that Sweden and Australia have almost twice as many IVF births per capita as we do, yet their infant mortality rates remain comfortably lower.

One contributing factor may be that in those countries national health insurances subsidize IVF. Sweden even creates an incentive to reduce multiple births by fully covering repeated IVF attempts if a woman implants one embryo, but limiting coverage if a woman chooses to implant multiple embryos.

The Nadya Suleman case has caused such a furor that she is reportedly receiving death threats, and police are investigating the hundreds of angry emails and phone calls she receives. It's obviously an extreme example and there are other deeply troubling circumstances surrounding her case. But perhaps the Suleman-inspired criticism being leveled against women and doctors who choose to implant multiple embryos isn't entirely justified. Part of the problem is that America has a health care policy that is encouraging multiple births. Slate refers to a study that found making IVF coverage mandatory for health insurance providers would only increase yearly premiums by about 0.1 to 0.3 percent, which amounts to about $20 per year. The extra money may even lead to savings overall, since less taxpayer money would go to medical costs for babies born with health problems due to multiple births.

The idea of limiting the number of embryos a woman can have transferred has come up frequently over the past few weeks. But only limiting the number of embryos transferred may solve the problem by penalizing the vast majority of IVF patients who don't want to have risky multiple births, but can't afford to spend $100,000 on repeated treatments. The United States does need to reexamine its policy on fertility treatments, but the country should adopt a policy that actually fixes the problem without vilifying women who just want to have a child.

Octuplets Doctor Has Another Patient Expecting Quadruplets [L.A. Times]
Birth of Octuplets Puts Focus on Fertility Clinics [The New York Times]
Pregnant Pause [Slate]
LA Police To Investigate Threats To Octuplets Mom [Breitbart]
An Estimate Of The Cost Of In Vitro Fertilization Services In The United States In 1995 [Pub Med]
Is 'Octomom' America's Future? [The Wall Street Journal]

Related: When Eight Children Is Seven Too Many [New Scientist}

And that's not all! Of the 50,000 embryos currently being stored in the United States, "Forty-three percent [of the women] did not want the embryos discarded. About 66 percent said they would be likely to donate the embryos for research, but that option was available at only four of the nine clinics in the survey. Twenty percent said they were likely to keep the embryos frozen forever," the Times says.

The cost of keeping embryos frozen is about $200 a year, which isn't much when compared to the cost of IVF treatments, which usually run to tens of thousands of dollars. Someone like Celine Dion, who has candidly spoken about her frozen eggs, obviously doesn't have to concern herself with costs.

Doctors say the major problem is that patients who have their embryos frozen are not given enough options up front. Dr. Anne Lyerly, an OB/GYN at Duke, tells USA Today that the issue of what to do with extra embryos should "absolutely should be raised at the beginning" of fertility treatments, and adds that the storage bill should mention it. And the Times notes that some parents even want unconventional embryo disposals that include "holding a small ceremony during the thawing and disposal of the embryos, or having them placed in the woman’s body at a time in her cycle when she would probably not become pregnant, so that they would die naturally."

All of this is sticky business when it comes to theories of personhood and the choice ramifications that go along with it. According to EurekAlert, This study "reveals previously unexplored concerns that patients have about their embryos, and it comes at a time when several states and even the federal government are attempting to enact legislation that would either assert an embryo is a person, allow abandoned embryos to be adopted by another couple, or allow unused embryos to become 'wards of the state.'" First world problems, people. First world problems.

Parents Torn Over Fate of Frozen Embryos [NY Times]
Céline Dion Candid About Having More Kids [People]
Fertility Patients Unsure What To Do With Leftover Embryos [USA Today]
Largest Study Of Fertility Patients Shows Concerns About Embryo Disposition [EurekAlert]

Earlier: Writer, Socialite Explains Her "Mad Desire" For A Baby Through Surrogacy