Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
When Darine El-Chaar began her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa five years ago, she grew curious about the potential health repercussions of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), the catchall term for procedures used to help couples artificially conceive a child. ART involves surgically removing eggs from …
Zubeda Hamid Chennai It can lead to perineal injuries, haemorrhage, pain and infection WHEN G Maria (name changed) was giving birth, she did not even know the doctor was performing an episiotomy.
In the second week of June 2005, walls all over Italy were plastered with: "Life cannot be put to test. Don't vote'. The exhortations came from the Catholic clergy, which asked Italians to shun a referendum to repeal their country's law 40: a law banning embryonic stem cell research and …
babies born via a caesarean operation are prone to various health problems, says research conducted by B Laubereau and co-workers from the Institute of Epidemiology, Germany. They studied 865 neonates who were breast-fed during their first four months. Data were obtained by follow-up visits when the babies were 1, 4, …
only mother's son: Japanese and Korean scientists have created a mouse without using a sperm. The feat is akin to the birth of Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal. Bees, ants, aphids, some fish and reptiles reproduce without having sex in a process called parthenogenesis. But creating a living mammal …
a banned female sterilisation method is in use in the rural areas of West Bengal, Karnataka, Punjab and Gujarat. So concludes a study conducted by researchers from Canada-based McGill University. Its results, made public during a meet organised in New Delhi on December 4, 2003, are alarming, as the method …
toxicity unleashed: In a controversial move, the EU has legalised the herbicide paraquat even as the bloc's own risk classification and labelling lists the chemical as acutely toxic. The US, too, has taken a similar step, with the federal government announcing that it would not impose new restrictions on atrazine. …
subha (not her real name), 35, had been married for over 10 years, but was still childless. Doctors attributed this condition to her husband's low sperm count. Her craving for motherhood drove her to three infertility clinics in Kolkata, West Bengal, where she underwent several insemination sessions. Sadly what she …
the first direct evidence of a link between exposure to environmental estrogens and low male fertility has been found by researchers from the London-based King's College. Environmental estrogens are chemicals found in the environment that mimic biological estrogen present in female sex hormones. The researchers investigated how three environmental estrogens …
In a landmark development in Sri Lanka's medical history, the country's first test tube baby was born in an entirely indigenous effort. It was a healthy baby girl weighing 3.5 kilogrammes delivered by caesarean surgery. Significantly, for the first time the entire process was handled by local experts. The cost …
The dwindling wild elephant population in Thailand may soon see a turnaround with the world's first elephant sperm bank opening for business in Bangkok. Following a series of trials, Thai veterinarians have solved the problem of keeping pachyderm sperm viable after long periods of freezing. Artificial insemination of elephants with …
imitations can never compete with real ones. This has yet again been proved with two new studies showing that test-tube babies have more chances of having major health problems than normally conceived ones. While more than 90 per cent of babies conceived through assisted reproductive technology (art) are born healthy, …
The Supreme Court of India has criticised the state governments and the union territories for their negligence in effectively implementing the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act to prevent female foeticide through prenatal sex selection. "There has been total slackness on the part of the administration in …
a pill-sized transmitter, quite similar to the one swallowed by us astronaut-turned-senator-turned-astronaut John Glenn to measure his body temperature on his recent space shuttle mission, could soon help surgeons monitor the progress of foetuses following surgery in the womb. The silicon-coated transmitter, which is 35 millimetres (mm) long and 9mm …
SCIENTISTS at the New York University have come up with another possible way of helping women overcome infertility: they took the genes of an infertile woman and injected them into a donor egg from a fertile woman. The technique, which is similar to the one which was used to clone …
THERE's a lot more to good sex. Especially if you're really looking forward to having a baby. A recent study by Jacky Boivin of Cardiff University, USA, says good sex raises the chances of conceiving. Boivin examined the cervical mucus of 71 women, within two to three hours after they …
DEAD men tell no tales, but thanks to science, they can sure make babies, In a first-of-its-kind operation, sperm from a dead man have been used for the first time to establish a pregnancy. This seems sure to intensify calls for reproductive technologies to be more tightly regulated. The man …
It has long been believed that correcting genes in the womb is one of the best ways to treat congenital diseases. Studies on animals have included injection of modified viruses into amniotic fluid, maternal blood or the foetus. However, this has failed to deliver enough genes, sometimes even injuring the …
