Word: ovum
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Under normal circumstances, pregnancy occurs when an ovum, or egg cell, released by a woman's ovary during ovulation is fertilized as it passes through the fallopian tube, successfully penetrated by just a single sperm that has traveled through the uterus. After the fertilized egg undergoes a number of cell divisions, the tiny clump of cells enters the uterus, where it burrows into the wall and develops for nine months or so until birth...
...highly respected gynecologist, and his colleague, Cambridge University Physiologist Robert Edwards, 52, undertook a remarkable procedure they have been experimenting with for a decade. They removed a ripe egg from Mrs. Brown's ovary, placed it in a laboratory dish and added sperm from her husband. After incubating the ovum as it began to divide, they finally placed the developing embryo in the uterus, where it became implanted and continued to grow into a fetus in what seemed to be an entirely normal...
...courtroom histrionics tended to obscure the real question in the case: Was Vande Wiele's action, which he freely admits, medically and legally justifiable, and did Mrs. Del Zio's emotional and physical problems stem from any trauma she might have suffered from learning of the destruction of her ovum? Should the jury find for Mrs. Del Zio, doctors involved in such experiments will have to weigh carefully their legal liabilities before considering these new procedures...
...pill, reported that he and colleagues had managed to fertilize an egg in vitro. But other scientists believe that the few cell divisions observed by Rock were nothing more than "parthenogenic cleavage" (division of the egg without the involvement of a sperm), probably induced by incidental stimulation of the ovum. Scientists were similarly skeptical of claims by Shettles in the 1950s that he had brought an externally fertilized human egg into the sixth day of cell division, and by an Italian scientist, Daniele Petrucci, who a few years later announced that he had kept alive an embryo in a test...
...midway in the menstrual cycle. The process is intricate and marvelous. Stimulated by hormones, part of the body's chemical signaling system, a ripe egg is expelled from its grapelike encasement, or follicle, in the ovary; in any month, either of the female's two ovaries may contribute an ovum. Then the egg enters the nearby fallopian tube. If coitus has taken place, the egg will shortly run into a swarm of tailed sperm that have managed, like salmon battling upstream, to fight their way into this passageway. In a dramatic headlong plunge, a single sperm will penetrate the waiting...