For the Week Ending August 23, 2020.
Were you tested for COVID-19 during Pregnancy or at birth?
If yes, complete Pregistry’s survey and help other women who are pregnant or contemplating becoming pregnant.
A collaboration of Pregistry and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Click here to Register.
The fifth annual Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research was just awarded to two neonatologists. Dr. Sallie Permar, at Duke, studies the prevention and treatment of neonatal viral infections by giving vaccines to pregnant women; Dr. Stephen Patrick, at Vanderbilt, studies the impact of the opioid epidemic on pregnant women and infants. Read more here.
This is important for you because funding basic research into neonatology is vital.
It is hard enough to be pregnant during this COVID-19 pandemic, but trying to have a baby with a surrogate–especially one in another country–has its own host of added challenges during this crazy time. Read more here.
This is important for you because a dose of perspective is always helpful in reminding you to count your blessings.
Becoming one with your mate
Anglerfish–like that super scary guy from Finding Nemo— take the idea of sexual union to a whole new level. When they mate, the male and female fuse their digestive and respiratory systems together. They are able to do this because they ditch their adaptive immune systems (that’s the arm of the immune system that remembers pathogens you’ve seen before so you can fight them off next time). Read more here.
This is important for you because imagine sharing a digestive system with your mate!?!
Birth control is an amazing invention that has allowed women to control our lives and destinies to an unprecedented degree. But thankfully, it’s voluntary. In Blue Ticket, a new dystopian novel by Sophie Mackintosh, it is not; girls given blue tickets by the state are forbidden from ever having children. Read more here.
This is important for you because chilling fiction about society controlling women’s reproductive capacity neither started nor ended with Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. Unfortunately, it seems to be a theme that is still timely.
