Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have made many advancements since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978. Success rates have improved within the past four decades, but currently remain only between 40-60% successful and fertility treatments cost $12,000-$15,000 [1]. To improve pregnancy rates, two to three embryos are often transferred into the uterus of the patient or recipient in hopes o...

The past three decades have witnessed revolution in reproductive medicine. Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 (1), there has been an expansion in the number of vitro fertilization treatment worldwide. In the first European Register publication (2) 203,893 IVF/ICSI were reported by eighteen European countries, and by 2002, this number rose to 324,238 cycles from twenty-five countries, accou...

This paper provides new evidence on the interaction between patient information and physician financial incentives. Using rich microdata on childbirth, we compare the treatment of physicians when they are patients with that of comparable non-physicians. We also determine how the treatment gap varies with providers’ financial incentives by exploiting the presence of HMO-owned hospitals. Consiste...

On February 22, 1997, the media were abuzz with the announcement that Scottish geneticists had—eight months earlier—successfully cloned (copied) a sheep named Dolly. Quite understandably the Scottish achievement of sheep-cloning was treated as a newsworthy milestone in the smoothly speeding advance of modern biotechnology. Not since the advent in the late 1970s of Louise Brown, the celebrated ̃r...

Although this is a factual book it contains personal stories of patients, scientists and clinicians involved in the development of IVF. It features a rather eccentric American Gynaecologist, Landrum Shettles, whose early attempts at IVF were obstructed by a senior colleague. On the receiving end of his work was a patient, Doris Del-Zio, who would have done anything to achieve her dream of a chi...

WITH TOPOGRAPHIC MEASUREMENTS BY MESSENGER. Olivier S. Barnouin-Jha1, Maria T. Zuber2, Jürgen Oberst3, Frank Preusker3, David E. Smith4, Gregory A. Neumann4, Sean C. Solomon5, Steven A. Hauck, II6, Roger J. Phillips7, James W. Head, III8, Louise M. Prockter1 and Mark S. Robinson9, 1JHU/APL, Laurel MD 20723; 2Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139; 3DLR, Ru...

Because many instances have been observed of the effects of light on metabolic processes, and because in the higher animals tbe glands of internal secretion act in part as chemical regulators of metabolism, we are undertaking certain studies on the effects on the endocrine tissues of exposure of the skin to ultra-violet light. In preparation for these studies it seemed desirable to make prelimi...

the alginate was extracted with six different methods from iran south seacoast algae, sargassum sp, and the percentage yield of alginate was determined. we divided our methods to two groups including acidic extraction and non-acidic. in acidic methods, hcl and h 2 so 4 were used as a detergent in extraction process and cacl 2 was exerted in non-acidic treatments. all treatments compared with ea...

The efforts of Drs. Patrick C. Steptoe and Robert G. Edwards in England culminated in the birth of Louise Brown on July 25, 1978, as a result of in vitro fertilization and reimplantation of the human embryo into the mother's womb.' The same investigators later reported the birth of a boy by this technique. 2 Since then, several hundred babies have been born by this methodology. More recently, f...

The development of the technique of in vitro fertilization (IVF) helped to make it possible for a couple to reproduce, to have a child, without normal sexual intercourse. Indeed this is the main point of the procedure: for there are many couples, about one in seven, who encounter difficulties in having children through normal sexual intercourse. For them, IVF provides an alternative way of crea...