Word: fetal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...argument, Stenberg maintained that the statute applies only to the D&X procedure. However, Dr. Leroy Carhart argues--and a lower court agreed--that the law as written could be interpreted as including the D&E procedure. And, according to Carhart, even in first-trimester procedures "fetal elements" sometimes enter the vagina before the fetus is dead, meaning that zealous prosecutors could use the law against doctors performing virtually any abortion. In fact, the Nebraska legislature passed up opportunities to more narrowly define the law to include only D&X, which abortion-rights have interpreted as an attempt to target...
...autopsy uncovered a hard mass of tissue pressing on his brain stem, which controls breathing, among other things. Apparently, the surgeons had scooped up a few extra fetal cells that then migrated and became cartilage, skin and hair cells...
Stem cells can also be obtained from aborted fetuses in a process developed two years ago by John Gearhart at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Gearhart harvested cells from the region that gives rise to the testes or ovaries. Such fetal stem cells appear to be as malleable as embryonic ones...
There's much more to learn, of course, and many pitfalls to avoid. Consider the case of a 52-year-old American athlete with Parkinson's disease, who in 1989--before human stem cells had been isolated from the brain--traveled to China for a fetal-cell transplant. The goal was to replace some of the diseased neurons in his brain with newly differentiated fetal nerve tissue. While that approach has been at least partly successful in hundreds of other cases, something went dreadfully wrong this time. About two years later, the man suddenly developed trouble breathing and died...
...immune system may attack the fetus' red blood cells, causing potentially fatal anemia in the unborn baby. Now doctors report a painless way to screen for the problem. A special Doppler ultrasound placed over a mother's belly was shown to be 100% effective in detecting moderate to severe fetal anemia. That sure beats today's invasive screening procedures like cordocentesis, in which a blood sample is taken from the umbilical cord, with an attendant risk of miscarriage...