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ATLANTA - THERE aren't just fewer jobs in the US recession. There are fewer babies, too. US births fell in 2008, the first full year of the recession, marking the first annual decline in births since the start of the decade and ending an American baby boomlet. The downturn in the US economy best explains the drop in maternity, some experts believe. The Great Depression and subsequent recessions all were accompanied by a decline in births, said Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology. And the numbers have never rebounded until the economy pulled...

The quote of the week comes from pregnant Czech supermodel Karolina Kurkova: "You know, it's probably the new thing to be pregnant. It's not to have the Chanel python bag. It's to be pregnant." The 25-year-old joins fellow Victoria Secret models Adriana Lima, Gisele Bundchen and Heidi Klum, who are also expecting. As for baby names, Kurkova won't say. "There are a few names that we like. But I'm keeping them a secret. I don't want Adriana or Heidi or Gisele stealing my baby's name."

A century ago, Christians dominated the intellectual and commercial life of the Levant, comprising more than one-fifth of the 13 million people of Turkey, the region's ruling power, and most of the population of Lebanon. Ancient communities flourished in what is now Iraq and Syria. But starting with the Armenian genocide in 1914 and continuing through the massacre and expulsion of Anatolian Greeks in 1922-1923, the Turks killed three to four million Christians in Turkey and the Ottoman provinces. Thus began a century of Muslim violence that nearly has eradicated Christian communities in the cradle of their religion. It may...

snip Americans are having fewer babies snip “It’s the recession,” said Andrew Hacker, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. “Children are the most expensive item in every family’s budget, especially given all the gear kids expect today. So it’s a good place to cut back when you’re uncertain about the future.” In 2007, the number of births in the United States broke a 50-year-old record high, set during the baby boom. But last year, births began to decline nationwide, by nearly 2 percent, according to provisional figures released last week. Those figures from the...

Thousands of couples in India who agreed to put off having babies for at least two years after their wedding will collect cash payments this month as health officials attempt to curb the country's rapidly growing population. Neighbouring China shows the first signs of relaxing its strict policy of one child per couple in the face of an ageing population, India is searching for a way of restricting the size of families as the battle over scarce resources grows. The country's population stands at 1.2 billion and is expected to reach 1.53 billion by 2050. But increasing pressure on resources...

"Increasing numbers of childless British couples are being forced to have fertility treatment abroad because of patchy NHS provision and plummeting donor rates, campaigners have told Sky News. National guidelines say all primary care trusts (PCTs) should offer three courses of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), but in reality more than two in three do not. And even those who can afford to go private are finding the number of egg and sperm donors increasingly scarce. The decline has been blamed on a change in the law ending donor anonymity and the lack of any payment as an incentive. A recent...

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish woman believed to have become the world's oldest new mother when she gave birth at 66 has died at 69, leaving behind twin toddlers, newspapers reported Wednesday. Maria del Carmen Bousada, who reportedly died Saturday, gave birth in December 2006 as a single mother after getting in vitro fertilization treatment at a clinic in Los Angeles. The births ignited a firestorm of debate over how old is too old for a new mother, and how much responsibility fertility clinics have over who gets treatments. Bousada told an interviewer she lied to the fertility clinic about...

Ultra-fast freezing of ovarian tissue from women who have lost their fertility as a result of cancer treatment can lead to it being used in transplants with the same success rate as fresh tissue, a researcher told the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 29 June. Dr. Sherman Silber, Director of the St. Louis Infertility Centre, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, said that freezing tissue by the vitrification method, which avoids ice formation, meant that oocyte (egg) viability was almost identical with that seen in fresh oocytes. Dr. Silber and colleagues used standard viability testing...

A mother is suing a hotel claiming her teenage daughter fell pregnant simply from using a hotel swimming pool. Magdalena Kwiatkowska says the 13-year-old conceived after coming into contact with 'stray sperm' in the water of an Egyptian resort.

Women wanting to get pregnant should find themselves an ugly man, new research suggests. Scientists have found attractive males produce less sperm during sex. Researchers think good-looking males are biologically geared to hold back their sperm in each encounter to increase their chance of impregnating more females. But unattractive males know they are not going to bed so many females — so when they do get lucky they give it all they've got.

Dead End of Secularism Secularism was to be the wave of the future. Leading secular theorists such as Peter Berger taught that secularism would be the inevitable result of the inexorable march of progress and that its many advantages would simply drive out religion in all of its forms. No serious discussion was possible or necessary. Religion would be deposited unceremoniously on the dustbin of history. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dustbin: secularism has not only failed to triumph over religion, it can’t even reproduce itself. In spite of enormous institutional advantages conferred on it...

"Janine Macallister, 27, from Newport, in Shropshire, should be entitled to IVF treatment under national guidance but has been told by her local health service that she is not eligible. Fertility charities fear that an increasing number of couples are experiencing similar discrimination due to the inconsistent approach of primary care trusts. Rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence says three full cycles of IVF treatment should be provided for women aged between 23 and 39 who have had fertility problems for at least 3 years. Individual PCTs, however, have drawn up their own restrictions, limiting treatment...

The total number of Muslims is huge, a little more than one fifth of the world's populaton. The growth rate of the Muslim population, which averaged 1.9 between 2000 and 2006, is also far higher than the world's population growth rate, which averaged 1.22% in the same period. It is also much faster than any other major religious group. Muslim Population Growth Rate Declining But Muslim population growth is declining faster than the total world population growth. For example, consider the following table of growth rates based on the figures in the World Christian Encyclopedia.

Time flies! From Reuters (02/18/09): The grandmother of California's newborn octuplets faces the threat of foreclosure on the house she has shared with her daughter and six of her grandchildren, property records revealed on Wednesday. According to a mortgage default notice filed last week with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office, Angela Suleman is more than $23,000 behind in payments on her house in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, an agency spokesman said. The default notice was first made public when a copy of the document, giving Suleman three months to settle her debt in order to avoid foreclosure,...

The patient, who is in her late 40s, wanted one baby. Dr. Michael Kamrava transferred at least seven embryos to her. She is now hospitalized without insurance. A few months after Dr. Michael Kamrava helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with octuplets, he transferred at least seven embryos to another patient. She was in her late 40s and wanted just one baby. Now she's five months pregnant with quadruplets and hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, according to several sources familiar with the situation. The new case could add to concerns about Kamrava's practice and about whether the fertility industry...

Starting a family might be a little easier with a trip to Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Myrtle Beach... opens a month long display of its fertility statues....and within months, 13 women became pregnant. around the world... more than 2,000 women have reported becoming pregnant after touching the statues. couples wanting to have a baby can touch the statues for free during business hours.

New research strengthens the link between water pollution and rising male fertility problems. The study, by Brunel University, the Universities of Exeter and Reading and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, shows for the first time how a group of testosterone-blocking chemicals is finding its way into UK rivers, affecting wildlife and potentially humans. The research was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council and is now published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The study identified a new group of chemicals that act as ‘anti-androgens.’ This means that they inhibit the function of the male hormone, testosterone, reducing male...

PARIS (AFP) France cemented its status as Europe's fertility champion on Tuesday when fresh statistics showed women are having on average more than two children each, an increase from last year's birth rate. The second most populous country in the European Union after Germany, France began 2009 with 64.3 million inhabitants, 366,500 more than in 2008, according to the national statistics agency INSEE. While there are fewer women of child-bearing age in France, the birth rate has continued to climb, with 2.02 children on average born to every woman in 2008, up from 1.98 in 2007. Last year, more than...

If a Martian were to look at a map of the Earth’s religions, what he might find most surprising is the fact that such a map can be drawn at all. How strange--he might say to himself--that so many of the world’s Hindus are to be found in one place, namely India. And how odd that Muslims are so very numerous in the Middle East. With the disconcerting curiosity that is so typical of Martians, he might wonder what explains this geographical clustering. Do people move countries in order to be close to others of the same faith? Or do...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

Are males becoming an endangered species? That's the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world. More and more boys are being born with genital defects and are suffering from learning disabilities, autism and Tourette's syndrome, among other disorders. Male infertility rates are on the rise and the quality of an average man's sperm is declining, according to some studies. But perhaps the most disconcerting of all trends is the growing gender imbalance in many parts of heavily industrialized nations, where the births of baby...

A study recently published in Human Reproduction demonstrated that intake of soy foods significantly reduces sperm counts in men. The study is especially significant because it is the largest study in humans to examine the relationship between semen quality and phytoestrogens (plant compounds that can mimic the physiological effects of the endogenous hormone, estrogen). Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues found that men who ate the most soy food had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume soy products. The normal sperm concentrations for men ranges between 80...

A RACE of half-man, half-beast “humanzees” could be created under new fertility laws, MPs were warned last night. Loopholes would let scientists fertilise animals with human sperm, the Commons was told during a debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Tory MP Nadine Dorries claimed it would revive memories of Soviet tyrant Stalin’s attempt to create the “ultimate soldier” in the 1920s by cross-breeding humans and apes. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson conjured up the spectre of a monster from Greek legend, saying: “The image that people find most abhorrent is of scientists producing GM babies or cloned adults...

  Infertility fear: Emma Smith, 37, with her son Oliver   Baby boy for woman in double transplantSophie Goodchild and Anna Davis 10.10.08 A woman who had a double organ transplant has defied the odds to become a mother, the Standard can reveal today.Emma Smith, 37, feared she may be infertile because of the side-effects of her anti-rejection drugs.But last week, the former secretary from Hitchin in Hertfordshire gave birth without complications to her first child 6lb baby Oliver.She is the first woman in Britain to deliver a child by Caesarean section after receiving donor kidneys and a pancreas.Her...

And here’s the fundamental reason underlying all the rage on one side and amusement on the other over Sarah Palin: it’s all about … female fertility. Human beings have extremely strong emotions on the topic of fertility. It’s an obsession — look at the celebrity gossip columns these days. ... Now, the Breeding Wars have moved into the political arena. Barack Obama launched his Presidential run at the 2004 Democratic convention by devoting the first 380 words of his speech to describing in great detail the two stocks from which he was crossbred. His message is that by uniting in...

Mad Cow Rules Hit Sperm Banks' Patrons By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 13, 2008; Page A01 When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby on her own two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor to match her own Scandinavian heritage. But when she went back to the sperm bank to use the same donor to have another child, she was stunned to discover that the federal government had made it impossible. "I just cried," said Peterson, 43, who lives in North Carolina. "I was in complete shock. I...

Too many fatty foods are dangerous not only to men's waistlines, but to their sperm production. In research presented Wednesday at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, scientists found that obese men have worse sperm than normal-weight men. "There is a very long list of health hazards from being overweight," said Ghiyath Shayeb, the study's lead researcher at the University of Aberdeen. "Now we can add poor semen quality to the list." But experts aren't sure if that necessarily means obese men face major difficulties having children. "If you have a man who isn't fantastically...

Children of older fathers have greater risk of early death Men, listen up. No longer can you comfort yourselves with the notion that you can father a child at any time...Children of older fathers more 'likely to die early': LONDON: When it comes to fertility and the prospect of having babies, it has always been assumed that men have no biological clock — unlike women, they can father a child late in their life. But a study has dispelled this myth. Researchers in Europe have found that children are almost twice as likely to die before adulthood if they have...

"TOKYO (AFP) -- The number of children in Japan has fallen for the 27th straight year to hit a new low, the government said Monday in a sign of the country's rapidly ageing population. Children aged 14 or younger numbered 17,250,000 as of April 1, down by 130,000 from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry said in an annual survey released to coincide with the May 5 Children's Day national holiday. The figure is the lowest since 1950 when comparable data started. The ratio of children to the total population sank for 34 years in a row to 13.5...

What is the relationship between fertility and real estate? ... Is real estate destiny? “It’s something a bunch of us have been thinking about,” said Morris A. Davis, an assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics []. “If you reduce down-payment constraints, more people can buy homes, or buy bigger homes. Does that encourage them to have more kids? I would say nobody knows.” Social scientists have long traced a connection between housing and fertility. When homes are scarce or beyond the means of young couples, as in the 1930s, couples delay marriage or have fewer children. This...

For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation's unique status among industrialized countries. The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself. "It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J....

AP Medical Writer Don't count on freezing eggs to offset a ticking biological clock just yet. So say new guidelines for fertility specialists that conclude the procedure remains highly experimental even though it is increasingly offered. The recommendations are a dash of cold water for a field that proponents believe is slowly coming of age. But with perhaps 500 births from frozen-and-thawed eggs worldwide, compared with more than 200,000 from frozen embryos, it is a nascent technology. Now scientists are tweaking techniques to try to improve the odds that a woman who has her eggs removed and frozen will bear...

Regular sex boosts a man's fertility, say doctors. In a contradiction of conventional wisdom on the subject, research has shown those who do not have sex often produce sperm of lower quality than those who do so daily. This is thought to be because sperms' DNA becomes more damaged the longer it remains in the body, cutting the chances of fertilisation and raising the risk of a miscarriage in the first weeks of pregnancy. The findings, presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's annual conference, will be of particular significance to couples undergoing fertility treatment. Men are currently advised...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- Members of the British parliament wants to add an amendment to an abortion bill the legislative body will debate next month as the nation marks 40 years of legalized abortion. Labour Party MPs Claire Curtis-Thomas and Geraldine Smith say they want the abortion bill amended to tell women of the abortion-breast cancer link. Their bill follows on the heels of new research showing the number of breast cancer cases in England will skyrocket because of the high number of abortions in the European nation. The bill would focus on more research into the link between abortion...

WASHINGTON, DC, October 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons published a study yesterday entitled, "The Breast Cancer Epidemic." It showed that, among seven risk factors, abortion is the "best predictor of breast cancer," and fertility is also a useful predictor.  The study by Patrick Carroll of PAPRI in London showed that countries with higher abortion rates, such as England & Wales, could expect a substantial increase in breast cancer incidence. Where abortion rates are low (i.e., Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic) a smaller increase is expected. Where a decline in abortion has taken place,...

Men with younger women have more children 13:50 29 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A woman should get together with a man several years older than herself if she wants a lot of children – at least in Sweden. The analysis of Swedish birth records reveals that men who partner with women six years younger than themselves produce the most offspring. Across many cultures men and women prefer younger and older mates respectively, says Martin Fieder, an anthropologist at the University of Vienna in Austria. In theory these age preferences make evolutionary sense, he says. However, there has...

Environemental Organizations Generate Green Guilt to Push More Population Control Want everyone to become "eunuchs for the green kingdom" by Colin Mason Front Royal, Virginia, August 27, 2007 (pop.org) - If asked what function the San Francisco-based Sierra Club performs, most of its 1.3 million members would probably reply "protecting the environment," or "raising awareness of endangered species," or words to that effect. Yet, in their 2007 legislative report for Minnesota, the Sierra Club spent nearly 3 pages describing legislative initiatives that have virtually nothing to do with the environment. Rather, this section deals almost exclusively with population issues or,...

LONDON: Craving for something sweet and sour at the same time? Don't think twice. Just have a bowl of spicy and creamy tomato soup to satisfy your desire. Yes, a bowl of hot tomato soup every day can boost fertility among men, according to scientists. Researchers at the UK-based University of Portsmouth have discovered that lycopene, which gives tomatoes their bright red colouring, can turn sperm into super-sperm, sources reported. The conclusion came after the researchers studied the effect of lycopene in the diet on a group of six healthy men, all in their early forties. They were asked to...

Laws on fertility treatment should be standardised across the European Union to deter 'fertility tourism', a leading expert has said.

Two weeks ago, Brianna Morrison gave birth to six babies in Minneapolis. Less than a day later, Jenny Masche delivered six babies in a Phoenix hospital. Both of the women had been treated for infertility and had used fertility-enhancing drugs. The two families expressed joy, but many fertility doctors were dismayed. For years, doctors have been pushing to lower the rate of multiple births due to fertility treatment. Not only had two headline-grabbing births occurred in the same week, but several recent scientific papers also revealed mixed results in the eight-year effort to reduce the U.S. multiple-birth rate.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, June 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A study conducted in Denmark found that the sperm count of men who are conceived by fertility treatments is up to 50 percent lower than normal.Published in March 1 by the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE), the study was entitled, "The Fertility Treatment and Reproductive Health of Male Offspring: A Study of 1,925 Young Men from the General Population." The AJE explains that all 1,925 Danish participants were undergoing compulsory medical testing at the time for army fitness requirements. The volunteers were required to give both a semen sample and a blood sample...

Two Sets in the U.S. Are Born on the Same Day - It is a rare event in the United States, indeed in the world -- the birth of sextuplets. Out of more than 4 million births in the U.S. in 2005, just 85 deliveries involved five or more babies. Making the occasion rarer recently was the birth of two sets of sextuplets just 10 hours apart.On June 12, Ryan and Brianna Morrison of Minnesota became parents of four boys and two girls, born after just 22 weeks in their mother's womb. And in Phoenix that same day, after just...

Rising immigration fuels 26-year fertility high By Emma Henry and agencies Last Updated: 3:41pm BST 07/06/2007 Rising immigration and older mothers have fuelled a 26-year high in the number of children women are having in England and Wales. More older women are having babies Figures released by the Office of National Statistics show the average number of children has risen for a fifth straight year to 1.87, the highest rate since 1980. The last decade has seen a 77 per cent increase in births by mothers born outside of the UK, with the figure climbing to almost 150,000, or over...

Contradictory messages about women's fertility are breeding like rabbits this week. In largely-Catholic Brazil, the government is subsidizing birth control pills so poor women can afford the contraceptive, despite a recent visit by Pope Benedict XVI, who mainly used his time to condemn abortion, contraception and sex outside marriage. In China, officials are rounding up rural, pregnant women and conducting forced abortions to enforce the mandatory one child policy. In Canada, on the other hand, I'm the problem. Thirty-something. Childless. And a threat to Canada's future economic well being. The nation's fertility rate has plummeted to 1.53 children per woman,...

Eating beef could threaten sons' fertility By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:37am BST 28/03/2007 The sons of women who regularly ate beef during pregnancy are more likely to have low sperm counts, a report claims today. The American researchers suggest the growth promoters used in cattle may be responsible. It has been known for more than 10 years that sperm counts had been falling in the western world, with scientists at Copenhagen University pointing to exposure to pesticides and industrial chemicals. The principle suspects included "gender-bender" chemicals that act like human sex hormones. The latest study - of...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Mar 14 - A study of young men undergoing compulsory physical examination for military service shows that men whose mothers underwent fertility treatments to conceive appear to have impaired reproductive health, Danish researchers report in the March issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. Dr. Tina Kold Jensen and colleagues at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, studied 1925 young Danish men who underwent a physical examination and volunteered to provide a semen sample, a blood sample and to complete a questionnaire. When the mothers were asked if they had received fertility treatments to conceive their son, 47 women confirmed...

Obese couples have a more difficult time conceiving a baby than couples of normal weight, according to a study published on Tuesday identifying another consequence of putting on too much weight. Researchers tracked nearly 48,000 Danish couples between 1996 and 2002, including about 7,600 couples with both the man and woman either overweight or obese according to standards set by the World Health Organization. They measured how long it took couples to conceive a baby once they began unprotected sex in a bid to have a child. If both the man and woman were obese, their chances of having to...

Fats hidden in thousands of foods can harm a woman’s chance of having a baby, scientists said yesterday. They can increase the risk of fertility problems by 70 per cent or more. Eating as little as one doughnut or a portion of chips a day can have a damaging effect. The scientists behind the study advised women who want to have a baby to avoid the fats, known as trans fats. They are used in thousands of processed foods, from chocolate to pies, as well as take-away meals. They have no nutritional value but are included simply to extend the...

Robot mother helps South Koreans prepare for birth Thu Jan 4, 2007 12:21 PM ET SEOUL, Jan 4 (Reuters Life!) - With South Korea's birth rate at its lowest ever, medical students are resorting to robots to practice bringing babies into the world. Kyunghee University Medical Center in Seoul is the first institution in South Korea to use Noelle, a life-sized robot, and her "newborn" to give obstetric students experience. "With this simulator training tool, we can conduct not only normal deliveries, but also complicated deliveries such as breech births, Caesarean deliveries," Professor Jung Eui told Reuters Television. "Students can...

In Maclean’s magazine last month, Mark Steyn wrote a plaintive piece about how his new book, America Alone, was unavailable in Canadian bookstores — an apparent victim of a fear of militant Muslim reprisals. The Chapters-Indigo chain subsequently insisted it wasn’t giving Steyn’s book the Mein Kampf treatment (banned from being sold in the chain by the boss, Heather Reisman), but that they hadn’t anticipated the popularity of America Alone (a best-seller) and hadn’t ordered enough copies. Last I heard, the book was in its fourth printing and, happy to say, a phone check with Chapters indicates they’ve now got...