On the bright side, if the Friday Freakout doesn't come out until Sunday night, maybe it only ruins my weekend. Here are some devastating headlines from the worlds of science, education, safety, and parenting:
- Sleep positioners have been implicated in at least 12 infant deaths over the last 13 years, which prompted the FDA and CPSC to issue a joint warning against their use. [cpsc via scocca]
- Personally, I think it'd be awesome if everyone stopped drinking during pregnancy because they all became Mormon, but whatever. This has been bugging me since I heard some smug Mocha Mom on NPR hem and haw and avoid acknowledging the results of this pair of wideranging, longterm European studies, but neither light nor moderate drinking during pregnancy shows any negative effects on kids. [bbc]
- A healthy kid was born in May from an embryo that had been in deep freeze storage for 19.5 years, then donated. [hamptonroads]
- In related news, if there really are 500,000 embryos in storage in the US right now at, say, an average annual storage fee of $300, that's...holy smokes, $150 million/year. [data via spermbankcalifornia.com]
- Australian researchers can identify the healthiest embryos for IVF by monitoring their glucose uptake. This also helps identify the gender of embryos before implantation--as if anyone would use it for that. [eurekalert]
- Can't improve on this headline: "Prenatal treatment of congenital toxoplasmosis could reduce the risk of brain damage" [eurekalert]
- Call me old-fashioned, but if you're buying $50 Spa Fantasy Aromatherapy Kits for your kid at Sam's Club, exploding lids and projectile bath bombs are the least of her problems. [cpsc]
I guess the answer might be, "why not?" but I wonder why an IVF doctor/patient would select such an "old" embryo.
I haven't looked into the embryo donation situation, but can it be possible that it's not so quick or easy to match receipient parents & embryos? Or maybe the genetic parents had just held onto the embryo for a long time and it only just hit the donor pool?