Word: fetus
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...alternative to a caesarean section, employed in an attempt to reduce the number of these births, is removing the fetus from the mother's body with forceps or by means of a suction cup or vacuum extractor. These procedures, the article reported, can be traumatic for the fetus and cause skull fractures, shoulder injuries, retinal hemorrhages and bleeding in the brain...
...contrary, it often opens a Pandora's box of questions that tear not only into pocketbooks but at our psyches: What if the news from a test is bad? Or ambiguous? Should the fetus be aborted? Or should the child be brought into the world in hopes that a cruel disease can be managed or cured? And will insurance coverage be available if the condition was known at birth...
...pregnant women in the U.S. submit to some prenatal screening. Typically, this involves sampling the mother's blood--so-called serum-alpha-fetoprotein testing to seek out telltale proteins that may indicate spina bifida, neural-tube defects or Down syndrome--or looking directly at the fetus with ultrasound scans. For women over 35, doctors usually recommend more invasive procedures in which actual fetal cells are gathered from the womb's amniotic fluid (amniocentesis) or placenta (chorionic villus sampling...
...fertilized eggs are subjected to intense DNA analysis. Only those that pass the test are implanted. Says Dr. Jeffrey Botkin, a University of Utah pediatrics professor: "Instead of aborting a fetus, you're flushing down a bunch of 16-cell embryos--which, to a lot of folks [who oppose abortion], is a lot less of a problem...
...most serious genetic diseases. Gene therapy in embryos is at least a few years away. And the gene or combination of genes responsible for most of our physical and mental attributes hasn't even been identified yet, making moot the idea of engineering genes in or out of a fetus. Besides, say clinicians, even if the techniques for making designer babies are perfected within the next decade, they should be applied in the service of disease prevention, not improving on nature...