Evidence females make new eggs Findings challenge long-held dogma

[jamesinca]

Evidence females make new eggs
Findings challenge long-held dogma on reproduction

Rick Weiss, Washington Post
Thursday, March 11, 2004



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For more than half a century textbooks have taught that female mammals -- be they mice, cows or women -- are born with all the eggs they will ever have. The result is one of the great sexual disparities: Males, who make fresh sperm daily, can sire children at virtually any age, while females gradually deplete their limited supply of eggs to the ticking of the cursed biological clock.

Now Harvard researchers have come to the radical conclusion that female mice produce a constant stream of new egg cells as adults -- challenging a central dogma of reproductive biology and raising the heretical possibility that women, too, clandestinely produce fresh eggs for at least the first half of life.


<SNIP>

It may even be possible to transplant into older or chemotherapy-damaged ovaries some egg-producing cells that have been frozen since youth, restoring a woman's lost fertility.

Those options could have profound social and cultural impacts by granting women more freedom with regard to the timing of careers and parenthood. Even if women chose not to have children later in life, an extended period of fertility could have significant health implications. It might delay the onset of heart disease, osteoporosis and other ailments that become more prevalent after menopause while perhaps increasing the risk of other diseases, such as breast cancer, that have been linked to years of exposure to the hormones the ovaries churn out.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/11/MNGPV5IGBO1.DTL

[trumad]

1. You just made me hungry damn it...

[jamesinca]

2. While your eating them things, think of the possibilities

reducing osteoporosis, heart disease etc. People that have had the ovaries damaged from chemo therapy may be able to get reproductive power back. I think this will be a long time form now for two reasons: 1) all the text books will have to be rewritten and 2)Bush will never allow anything that has to do with any cell research take place, because he values the sanctity of life as evidenced in his killing of prisoners in TX and 2 wars.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Eggs and sperm...............

or eggs, eggs, sperm and eggs. Eggs, sperm, sperm, sperm and eggs. "But I don't like sperm". I can visualize Monty Python in my mind right now........sperm, sperm, sperm, sperm........wonderfull sperm!
I know I'm sitting her brewing up a whole new batch as we speak. Can't wait to use it!

[BiggJawn]

4. But didn't Hemmingway believe...

...That men have a finite number of sperm, and when you use them up, that's it, you drop dead? I read that was why he killed himself.

Me, I'd love to do some research into that, preferably with a research partner, Brunette or Redhead, glasses, short lab coat, white nylons...:evilgrin:

The nice thing about being a sentient being is that just because I CAN reproduce, doesn't mean I HAVE to....(I'm through with that phase)