Word: womb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most misleading of the authors' assertions, however, fall in the chapter titled "Can You Catch AIDS from a Toilet Seat?" They accurately report that the risk of infection from a source other than sex, contaminated needles, blood or the womb is practically nil. But they proceed to describe in vivid detail how it might be "theoretically possible" to contract AIDS from, among other things, contact lenses, a salad in a restaurant or instruments in a doctor's office. The farfetched examples are so memorable that the caveats are quickly forgotten. Worse, the therapists call for mandatory AIDS tests...
...transplanted a heart into Newborn Paul Holc. What made the transplant different was that the donor, a Canadian infant known as Baby Gabriel, was born anencephalic, that is, without most of her brain. Like virtually all anencephalics, she could not have survived more than a few days outside the womb; unlike most, Gabriel died before her healthy organs deteriorated. Then, early in January, surgeons in Mexico City announced that for the first time, they had successfully grafted tissue from a miscarried fetus into the brains of two Parkinson's victims, who have since improved dramatically...
...With her robe she erases steam from the bathroom mirror. Alex is standing behind her, carrying a knife. Softly, she asks Beth, "What are you doing here?" In her frayed mind she may already be Mrs. Dan Gallagher, her hubby in the kitchen, their imminent child asleep in her womb. Who is this presumptuous intruder in Alex's dream cottage? Someone who doesn't deserve to play happy family. Someone who deserves to die. Their struggle for the knife finally alerts Dan, who rushes upstairs, overpowers Alex and forces her into the full tub. She struggles, then ceases, blood rising...
...Supreme Court attempted to address these questions in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. The court's solution rested on the concept of viability, defined as the time the fetus is "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb albeit with artificial aid." Until that point, said the majority, a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy was guaranteed by the privacy rights implicit in the 14th Amendment, which has been interpreted to include personal rights relating to marriage, procreation and contraception. But once viability occurs, the court ruled, a state may limit or proscribe abortion...
...anyway. Benshoof concedes that development of an artificial womb could change the picture. A handful of U.S. medical centers now use a constellation of devices that can assume some heart, lung, kidney and even digestive functions for full-term babies born with certain problems. Because the machines require the use of anticoagulants, they do not work for most preemies, who risk brain hemorrhages if given such drugs. But should technology leap this hurdle, it could reduce the viability standard to an absurdity. Asks David Rothman, professor of social medicine at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons: "Are we then...