Word: fetal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Other contentious issues will arise. Doctors will be able to detect many serious genetic diseases at the fetal stage, which will lead some parents to opt for abortion. But there will also be preventive measures for people who want to avoid passing their defective genes on to their children. When one parent carries the deadly and dominant gene for Huntington's chorea, for example, there is a 50% chance that any offspring will have it too. To reduce those odds to zero, doctors of the future will extract several eggs from the prospective mother and fertilize them in a test...
...future generations in institutions that might resemble the state-sponsored baby hatcheries in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. People of any age or marital status could submit their genetic material, pay a fee, perhaps apply for a permit and then produce offspring. "Embryos could be brought to fetal and infant stage all in the laboratory, outside the womb," says Cornish. "Once ready, the children could be fed by nurses or even automated machinery...
PARENTS USED TO HAVE TO WAIT until babies were born to find out if they had tragic birth defects. Then came two breakthrough fetal tests: amniocentesis, which can identify abnormalities in the 15th week of pregnancy; and chorionic villus sampling, which can be performed as early as the tenth week. Neither procedure is without risk, however, and when either succeeds in pinpointing a genetic defect, it forces would-be parents to make a terrible choice: Do they raise a child who might have a serious congenital affliction? Or do they suffer the torment and pain that accompanies an abortion...
This is more than a philosophical debate. Under pressure from the powerful right-to-life lobby, the U.S. government quietly cut federal support for in vitro research in 1979 and later backed away from several related fields, including fetal-cell research. Although the U.S. is still a world leader in molecular genetics, a report by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment recently concluded that the country is now "less than well prepared" to put its scientific findings into clinical practice. "The U.S. government has withdrawn funding from this field," says Britain's Handyside, who is understandably proud of helping produce...
...complex glues they secrete known as extracellular matrix. Securing cells in their matrix are Velcro-like patches called cellular-adhesion molecules (CAMs), which are present on every cell except red blood cells. These cellular glues not only hold things together but also play a vital role in growth, fetal development, repair of damaged tissue and elimination of noxious invaders...