Embryo Project Encyclopedia

Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, is a viral pathogen that most commonly spreads through sexual contact. HPV strains 6 and 11 normally cause genital warts, while HPV strains 16 and 18 commonly cause cervical cancer, which causes cancerous cells to spread in the cervix. Physicians can detect those HPV strains, using a Pap smear, which is a diagnostic test that collects cells from the female cervix.

During the mid-twentieth century, Virginia Apgar worked as an obstetrical anesthesiologist and gave drugs to women that reduced their pain during childbirth in the US. In 1953, Apgar created a scoring system, called the Apgar score, that uses five measurements, including heart rate and breathing rate. The Apgar score evaluates newborn infants and determines who needs immediate medical attention. Apgar's work helped decrease infant mortality rates. As of 2020, hospitals around the world use the Apgar score.

NovaSure is a device for endometrial ablation, which is a procedure that removes the endometrium, that the US Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, approved for use on 28 September 2001. Endometrium is the tissue that lines the uterus. NovaSure destroys the endometrium by sending electric beams at the endometrium. Hologic, a medical technology company concerned with women’s health, developed NovaSure to treat menorrhagia, or heavy bleeding during menstruation. Menorrhagia is a common symptom of endometriosis. Endometriosis is the growth of the endometrium outside of the uterus. While NovaSure is not a treatment that doctors use to directly treat endometriosis, the procedure may help alleviate heavy bleeding during menstruation, which may improve a patient’s quality of life as heavy menstrual bleeding is often associated with high levels of anxiety and low levels of confidence.

Stephen Jay Gould studied snail fossils and worked at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the latter half of the twentieth century. He contributed to philosophical, historical, and scientific ideas in paleontology, evolutionary theory, and developmental biology. Gould, with Niles Eldredge, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a view of evolution by which species undergo long periods of stasis followed by rapid changes over relatively short periods instead of continually accumulating slow changes over millions of years. In his 1977 book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Gould reconstructed a history of developmental biology and stressed the importance of development to evolutionary biology. In a 1979 paper coauthored with Richard Lewontin, Gould and Lewonitn criticized many evolutionary bioligists for relying solely on adaptive evolution as an explanation for morphological change, and for failing to consider other explanations, such as developmental constraints.

“Consensus on the Current Management of Endometriosis”, henceforth “Consensus”, was written by the World Endometriosis Society, or WES, president Neil P. Johnson and chief executive Lone Hummelshoj and published in 2013 in Human Reproduction. “Consensus” makes recommendations about managing endometriosis for women and healthcare professionals. Endometriosis is a condition where endometrium, the tissue that usually lines the uterus, grows outside of the uterus and is characterized by painful periods, heavy menstrual bleeding, and infertility. At a consortium held at the WES Montpellier on 8 September 2011 in Montpellier, France, participants from medical organizations and endometriosis support groups formed a consensus regarding the management of endometriosis. The “Consensus” serves as a set of evidence-based recommendations for healthcare professionals and women with endometriosis to guide treatment.

Walter Schiller studied the causes of diseases in the US and Austria in the early twentieth century and in 1928, invented the Schiller test, or a way to diagnose early cervical cancer in women. Cervical cancer is the uncontrollable division of cells in the cervix, or lower part of the uterus. While living in Austria until his emigration to escape the Nazis in 1937, Schiller concluded that there was a form of cervical cancer, later named carcinoma in situ, that physicians could detect earlier than when tumors start to appear. To determine whether women exhibited that early form of cancer, Schiller stained women’s cervixes with a type of iodine that would stain healthy cervical tissue and not cancerous cervical tissue. Cervical cancer is more deadly to women when it is caught later in its progression, and was difficult to detect in Schiller's time. Schiller’s research enabled physicians to diagnose cervical cancer early, helping women receive treatment quicker and ultimately helping to popularize annual diagnostic exams in the US.

In 1913, journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams published “What Can We Do About Cancer? The Most Vital and Insistent Question in the Medical World,” hereafter “What Can We Do About Cancer,” in Ladies’ Home Journal. Cancer is a disease that is the result of abnormal cell division in different parts of the body, such as the breasts or the cervix. During that time, many women did not discuss or disclose early symptoms of reproductive cancers, such as breast lumps and abnormal vaginal discharge, out of shame or disgust. Thus, people often considered cancer to be a taboo topic. “What Can We Do About Cancer?” provides a representation of what people in the early 1900s thought to be the early warning signs of cancer in women. Although, as of 2021, researchers have made advancements that have increased the scientific understanding of cancer and how it develops, Adams’ article provided women in the US during the 1900s with recommendations on early methods of cancer detection.

Aristotle studied developing organisms, among other things, in ancient Greece, and his writings shaped Western philosophy and natural science for greater than two thousand years. He spent much of his life in Greece and studied with Plato at Plato's Academy in Athens, where he later established his own school called the Lyceum. Aristotle wrote greater than 150 treatises on subjects ranging from aesthetics, politics, ethics, and natural philosophy, which include physics and biology. Less than fifty of Aristotle's treatises persisted into the twenty-first century. In natural philosophy, later called natural science, Aristotle established methods for investigation and reasoning and provided a theory on how embryos generate and develop. He originated the theory that an organism develops gradually from undifferentiated material, later called epigenesis.

Amenorrhea is considered a type of abnormal menstrual bleeding characterized by the unexpected absence of menstrual bleeding, lasting three months or longer. Menstrual bleeding typically happens approximately once a month when blood and endometrial tissue, or tissue lining the inside of the uterus, sheds from the uterus through the vagina. Menstruation is expected to stop with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menopause, or the natural cessation of the menstrual cycle at an older age. However, women may also experience amenorrhea because of an underlying health condition, including low body weight or polycystic ovarian syndrome, that may complicate fertility and contribute to decreased quality of life. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, one in twenty-five women experience amenorrhea as a menstrual disorder within their lives at times.

David Starr Jordan studied fish and promoted eugenics in the US during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his work, he embraced Charles Darwin s theory of evolution and described the importance of embryology in tracing phylogenic relationships. In 1891, he became the president of Stanford University in Stanford, California. Jordan condemned war and promoted conservationist causes for the California wilderness, and he advocated for the eugenic sterilization of thousands of Americans. Like many American eugenicists of the early twentieth century, Jordan combined ideas of Mendelian genetics and of Darwinian natural selection to form a basis for limiting or encouraging reproduction in certain individuals and groups based on their perceived hereditary fitness. Like other eugenicists, Jordan s attempt to control the reproductive fate of entire populations marked an episode in the history of reproduction and biology in which its concepts increasingly influenced the social and cultural contexts.