Embryo Project Encyclopedia Articles

In 1997, physicians and researchers Ambre Olsen, Virginia Smith, John Bergstrom, Joyce Colling, and Amanda Clark published, “Epidemiology of Surgically Managed Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Urinary Incontinence,” in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. In their article, the authors retrospectively analyzed data from patients who underwent surgery for pelvic organ prolapse or urinary incontinence two years prior in 1995. Often due to a weakening of or damage to their pelvic muscles, women with pelvic organ prolapse can experience a descent of pelvic organs into the lower pelvis and vagina. People with urinary incontinence can experience bladder control issues and urinary leaks. According to the authors, an estimated fifty percent of women who have previously given birth have had a prolapse. In their article, Olsen and colleagues analyze factors such as race, age, and weight in women who had surgery to treat pelvic organ prolapse and ultimately advocate for a standard assessment for the severity of those conditions.

In 1996, a team of researchers associated with the International Continence Society published “The Standardization of Terminology of Female Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction” in American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Pelvic organ prolapse is characterized by the descent of the pelvic organs into the lower portion of the pelvis and is often caused by a weakening of the muscles and ligaments that normally hold the organs in place. The authors concluded that physicians and researchers needed to develop a system of standardized terms to use to describe the anatomical position of pelvic organ prolapse in women. They propose using terms that emphasize the location of the prolapse rather than just the involved organ. They also suggest that the system utilizes a series of examinations and imaging to uniformly describe and quantify pelvic organ prolapse. The article by Bump and colleagues was one of the first to call for a standardized system using specific terms to communicate findings about pelvic organ prolapse systematically across clinical and academic research settings.

The copper intrauterine device, or IUD, is a long-term, reversible contraceptive first introduced by Howard Tatum and Jamie Zipper in 1967. Health care providers place an IUD inside a woman’s uterus to prevent pregnancy. Copper IUDs are typically made of T-shaped plastic with some portion covered with exposed copper. Prior to the invention of the first IUDs, women had few long-term options for safe and reliable birth control. Those options mostly consisted of barrier methods and the oral birth control pill, which were only effective if used correctly and consistently. For women seeking to control their fertility, a copper IUD was one of the first forms of long-term birth control that was highly effective and did not require consistent and regular action on the woman’s part to remain effective.

Hans Peter Dietz and Judy Simpson published, “Levator Trauma is Associated with Pelvic Organ Prolapse,” in the journal BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2008. In their article, Dietz and Simpson estimated the risk of pelvic organ prolapse in women who attained injuries to the pelvic levator muscles. The levator muscles, also known as the levator ani, are a major muscle group that comprise the pelvic floor. Along with other muscles, the pelvic floor supports organs in a woman’s pelvis, such as the bladder, uterus, and rectum. Vaginal childbirth can cause a weakening of the pelvic muscles. That can lead to pelvic organ prolapse, which results in the descent of the pelvic organs towards a woman’s vaginal opening. In, “Levator Trauma is Associated with Pelvic Organ Prolapse,” Dietz and Simpson found that women were more likely to have pelvic organ prolapse if they had levator trauma, and called for further research to understand the relationship between levator ani trauma and pelvic organ prolapse.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow co-developed the radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method used to measure minute biological compounds that cause immune systems to produce antibodies. Yalow and research partner Solomon A. Berson developed the RIA in the early 1950s at the Bronx Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital, in New York City, New York. Yalow and Berson's methods expanded scientific research, particularly in the medical field, and contributed to medical diagnostics. For this achievement, Yalow received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977. The RIA technique is used to measure more than one hundred biochemical substances, including infectious agents, narcotics, and hormones, such as those used to diagnose infertility and hypothyroidism.

The US President's Council on Bioethics was an organization headquartered in Washington D.C. that was chartered to advise then US President George W. Bush on ethical issues related to biomedical science and technology. In November 2001, US President George W. Bush created the President's Council on Bioethics (PCB). Convened during a nationwide cloning and embryonic stem cell research debate, the Council stated that it worked to address arguments about ethics from many different perspectives. The organization enacted a model for analyzing bioethical issues through deliberation instead of through the consensus approach. US President Barack Obama replaced the PCB in 2009 with his Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

Rachel L. Carson studied biology at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and graduated in 1933 with an MA upon the completion of her thesis, The Development of the Pronephros during the Embryonic and Early Larval Life of the Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). The research that Carson conducted for this thesis project grounded many of the claims and observations she presented in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. This book focused on the environmental dangers of using pesticides against insects and plants deemed invasive, and it received attention from the US government, to such an extent that Carson testified before US congress in Washington D.C., and US President John F. Kennedy appointed a commission to validate her claims.

By 2011, researchers in the US had established that non-invasive blood tests can accurately determine the gender of a human fetus as early as seven weeks after fertilization. Experts predicted that this ability may encourage the use of prenatal sex screening tests by women interested to know the gender of their fetuses. As more people begin to use non-invasive blood tests that accurately determine the sex of the fetus at 7 weeks, many ethical questions pertaining to regulation, the consequences of gender-imbalanced societies, and altered meanings of the parent-child relationship.

Established in tandem with Singapore's national Biomedical Sciences Initiatives, the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) was established by the Singapore Cabinet in December 2000 to examine the potential ethical, legal, and social issues arising from Singapore's biomedical research sector, and to recommend policy to Singapore's government. BAC's deliberations on embryonic stem cell research helped shape the government policies that helped Singapore pursue its goal of becoming one of the biggest investors of embryonic stem cell research in the early twenty-first century.

Lynn Petra Alexander Sagan Margulis was an American biologist, whose work in the mid-twentieth century focused on cells living together in a mutually advantageous relationship, studied cells and mitochondria in the US during the second half of the twentieth century. She developed a theory for the origin of eukaryotic cells, that proposed two kinds of structures found in eukaryotic cells mitochondria in animals, and plastids in plantsÑwere once free-living bacteria that lived harmoniously and in close proximity to larger cells, a scenario called symbiosis. Margulis proposed that the larger cells eventually engulfed the free-living bacteria, resulting in cells living inside other cells, a situation called endosymbiosis. Margulis'theory became called the serial endosymbiosis theory (SET). Her work contributed to explanations of the evolution and development of life, as eukaryotic cells comprise most multicellular organisms, including their embryos.