Intending mothers fight for maternity leave following surrogacy

Following new UK government guidelines on surrogacy published last month aimed at improving the rights of surrogacy patients, Ministers are now facing a new legal challenge calling for further changes in the law.

Specialist fertility law firm, Gamble and Ghevaert, have written to Ministers demanding that the current rules, which prevent women who use surrogates from receiving maternity benefits, be changed. At present, only women who themselves go through a successful pregnancy are entitled to paid maternity leave and employment protection - even in cases where they are not the genetic parent. Thus, surrogate mothers are entitled to all maternity benefits. However, no such rights are available for parents who use a surrogate or adopt, leading campaigners to describe the current position as discriminatory.

Natalie Gamble, partner at Gamble and Ghevaert, explained the situation thus: 'The lack of right to maternity leave is tied up with the fact the surrogate mother is regarded as the mother…In any other circumstances you would get maternity leave. Women aren't going to need a whole year. What would make sense is a system where you have some sort of sharing arrangement [for maternity leave]'. She continued, 'We also need to take account of our modern human rights and anti-discrimination laws which do not allow unfair treatment of minority groups, however small they are'. At present, approximately 40 babies are born through surrogacy in Britain each year, mainly due to medical reasons which prevent some women from giving birth themselves.

Surrogacy in Britain is laden with problems. Surrogates in Britain may not receive payment for the service they render, apart from expenses. Furthermore, surrogacy agreements are not legally binding, meaning the surrogate mother has the right to keep the baby she gives birth to, even if the child is not genetically related to her, and she has been paid all expenses. These restrictions have led to couples going overseas to carry through a surrogacy arrangement. However this can also present difficulties; the worst case scenario is that a much-wanted baby is recognised in neither Britain, nor the country of it's birth.

Sharmy Beaumont, aged 33, is one of the few UK women who has become a parent with the help of a surrogate. Beaumont was born with a rare condition which meant her womb could not cope with carrying a child. After learning of this in her twenties, Beaumont contacted Surrogacy UK and was put in touch with her surrogate, Liz Stringer. After a successful surrogate pregnancy and the birth of her baby daughter, Isabelle, Beaumont was forced to take unpaid leave in order to care for her.

She says, 'My work have been understanding and have allowed me some leave to look after Isabelle…However, the fact that parents through surrogacy are not entitled to any maternity benefits to spend time with their babies is unfair and the Government has not recognised this'.

'I love being a mum,' Beaumont concludes, 'but the system is unfair'.

IVF Witness uses RFID to identify the sperm and eggs, and reduces the risk of lab errors in infertility treatment

A new software technology is helping to reduce the risk of laboratory errors in infertility treatment, by electronically identifying the sperm, eggs, resulting embryos and other materials used in in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment cycles. Using non-invasive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), IVF Witness(TM) can track a patient's sperm, eggs and embryos during the course of treatment. If the wrong material is introduced in the lab environment, IVF Witness alerts the staff, via visual and audible signals, to help prevent mislabeling of any materials.

While laboratory errors are rare, by creating an automated system to minimize the chance for mix up, IVF Witness safeguards the infertility treatment process and gives patients peace of mind.

The IVF Witness is being used in infertility clinics worldwide, including leading clinics in the UK and United States. Since launching this new technology last year, over 20,000 infertility treatment cycles have employed IVF Witness to ensure the safety and security of patients' genetic material.

IVF Witness uses RFID tags, each containing a microchip that acts as a unique digital fingerprint, safely identifying samples at the outset and tracking them through the fertilization process. Each patient is given an RFID identity card, with a unique identification, that are used with all sample materials for that patient, including Petri dishes and test tubes used in a patient's treatment cycle. The entire system is electronically managed.

"Our aim was to develop a system that automatically tracks a patient's eggs, sperm and resulting embryos during an infertility treatment cycle, to reduce the risk of mislabeling or error," said Bill Brown, President of Research Instruments. "Infertility treatment is a very precise and personal process and IVF Witness helps to maintain the integrity and security of this process for both healthcare providers and patients."

"IVF is difficult enough for patients without the added worry of possible mix ups," said Kevin M. Johnson, MD, Medical Director, Overlake Reproductive Health in Seattle, WA. "We want to offer our patients complete peace of mind and that is why we have invested in the IVF Witness system for both of our laboratories."

International Organizations Call for More Safeguards

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) recently pledged to work with patient groups, policy makers and other stakeholders to develop systems to reduce the risk of errors. In the United Kingdom, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK's regulatory body, is supporting the use of electronic witnessing in all IVF clinics. Currently, HFEA requires all IVF clinics to at least 'double witness' the IVF process, with two staff members manually double-checking the labeling and handling of all samples.

According to John Robinson, MD, Scientific Director of Hull IVF Unit in the UK, "IVF Witness, unlike the double witness process, does not require two members of staff to operate. It allows embryologists to work safely and effectively, without frequent interruptions to witness with other colleagues. In effect, it is providing a continual and very robust safety check, independent and additional to the many checks embryologists have to carry out."

"Several infertility practices in the US, and most major IVF clinics in the UK have already installed the IVF Witness, and are pleased with the additional reassurance it brings," added Brown. "Interest has also been considerable in countries such as China, Japan and the Middle East, where IVF Witness has recently been launched."

Fruity Bats of Lavasa

Why don't bats live alone?

They prefer to hang out with their friends!

A bat that was clinging to space shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank during the countdown to launch the STS-119 mission remained with the spacecraft as it cleared the tower, analysts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center concluded.Based on images and video, a wildlife expert who provides support to the center said the small creature was a free tail bat that likely had a broken left wing and some problem with its right shoulder or wrist. The animal likely perished quickly during Discovery’s climb into orbit. Because the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge coexists inside Kennedy Space Center, the launch pads have a number of measures available, including warning sirens, to deter birds and other creatures from getting too close. The launch team also uses radar to watch for birds before a shuttle liftoff.Nevertheless, the bat stayed in place and it was seen changing positions from time to time. Launch controllers spotted the bat after it had clawed onto the foam of the external tank as Discovery stood at Launch Pad 39A. The temperature never dropped below 60 degrees at that part of the tank, and infrared cameras showed that the bat was 70 degrees through launch.The final inspection team that surveys the outside of the shuttle and tank for signs of ice buildup observed the small bat, hoping it would wake up and fly away before the shuttle engines ignited. It was not the first bat to land on a shuttle during a countdown. Previously, one of the winged creatures landed on the tank during the countdown to launch shuttle Columbia on its STS-90 mission in 1998.Bats sure are intriguing creatures.

There has never been a TV series where the animal hero was a bat. Why not? Because people generally hate bats.For many Westerners, bats conjure up eerie visions of vampires and witches. The Chinese see these flying rodents as symbols of good luck. Fortunately, there are people working on behalf of bats - people who study bats; who respect bats; who love bats; who have, on occasion, TASTED bats.No, seriously, although bats look like evil creepy demonettes from hell that want to swoop down and bite us and give us rabies, the truth is that they are generally harmless flying mammals just like us who form colonies, care for their young, go to the mall, etc. Statistically, the average bat is far less likely to be rabid than Abu Azmi. Besides catching insects, bats play a critical role in pollinating certain plants, such as the agave, without which there would be NO TEQUILA.Even vampire bats have their human side. Researcher Ted Fleming told me that sometimes a female vampire bat will return from a successful bloodsucking trip and share her good fortune by "regurgitating to her roost mates."

Many bat species are endangered because of humans, some of whom view bats as actual food. A researcher once told me that in parts of Southeast Asia, bat soup and fried bat are considered tasty treats. In Guam, people have eaten pretty much all the bats. There's a bat shortage! You could become a bat rancher and get rich! Although you would need skilled bat wranglers. He also told me that the Gubu people of Papua, New Guinea (I am not making the Gubu people up), have a big feast wherein they boil up a mess of bats, cook them over coals and then eat them whole, after which they pick little bat teeth out of their mouths. He said that, as a researcher, he actually took a tiny bite of this dish.Incredibly, he did not say that it tasted like chicken!

So we see that bats have really received a "raw deal" from us humans. I think that from now on, we should all remember that bats are our friends, and we should make every effort to be nice to them while remaining at a safe distance! Also, if we go to a restaurant in Southeast Asia, we should make darned sure we know what we are ordering.

The Bats we see around Lavasa are the Megabats.They are also referred to as fruit bats, old world fruit bats, or flying foxes. The megabat, contrary to its name, is not always large: the smallest species is 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) long and thus smaller than some microbats. The largest reach 40 cm (16 inches) in length and attain a wingspan of 150 cm (5 feet), weighing in at nearly 1 kg (2.2 pounds). Most fruit bats have large eyes, allowing them to orient visually in the twilight of dusk and inside caves and forests.Fruit bats are frugivorous or nectarivorous, i.e., they eat fruits or lick nectar from flowers. Often the fruits are crushed and only the juices consumed. The teeth are adapted to bite through hard fruit skins. Large fruit bats must land in order to eat fruit, while the smaller species are able to hover with flapping wings in front of a flower or fruit.Frugivorous bats aid the distribution of plants (and therefore, forests) by carrying the fruits with them and spitting the seeds or eliminating them elsewhere. Nectarivores actually pollinate visited plants. They bear long tongues that are inserted deep into the flower; pollen thereby passed to the bat is then transported to the next blossom visited, pollinating it.Because of their large size and somewhat "spectral" appearance, fruit bats are sometimes used in horror movies to represent vampires or to otherwise lend an aura of spookiness. In reality, as noted above, the bats of this group are purely herbivorous. Some works of fiction are more in line with this fact, portraying fruit bats as sympathetic or even featuring them as characters. For example, in the book series Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel, a fruit bat named Java is one of the main characters in the final book of the series. In Stellaluna, a popular children's book by Janell Cannon, the story revolves around the plight of a young fruit bat who is separated from her mother. In The Winjin Pom, a 1991 puppetry-based tv-series by Richard Carpenter and Steve Bendelack, Frazer is an anthropomorphic fruit bat with a laid-back attitude and a taste for fresh fruits.

Female short-nosed fruit bats have been observed performing fellatio on their partners during copulation. Mating pairs spent more time copulating if the female did so.The video seen here is sexually explicit and was edited and soundtracked by the researchers.
Coming back to Lake Dasve, you see a lot of fruit-bats suspended from the trees at the Western end of the lake (see photos!). The best sightings of these fruitbats are towards sunset when they are in their element. They are handsome creatures with a very stylish flight path. If you take the Pontoon boat ride at closing time (5pm), you can have a personalized sighting of our very own Lavasa Fruity Bats! I have spent hours on hours photographing these fascinating mammals. In fact, legend has it that they have a photographic memory! A Weizmann Institute researcher from Israel however, is using bats to help reveal the secrets of human memory.

The Rehovot institute's Interface magazine wrote recently about bat researcher Dr. Nachum Ulanovsky, a neurobiologist who studies the most common Israeli bat species - the fruit bat. He says they are an excellent animal model for human memory not only because of their impressive spatial memory but also due to their highly developed senses and unique behaviors. Bats are being outfitted with sophisticated telemetry equipment transmitting data about the activity of single neurons or networks. These are used as the bats crawl or fly around in Ulanovsky's lab. A US company working with the Rehovot researcher developed the world's first global positioning and telemetry system that weighs only nine grams; as the average fruit bat can carry nine grams of equipment and still fly with ease, it is the perfect bat species for his experiments. To avoid disrupting the bats' natural behavior, Ulanovsky has arranged for the building of a large cave-like room with rough-hewn rocks in the ceiling.

His work, which is partially conducted in collaboration with the Hebrew University, promises to reveal new information not only on human memory but also on hippocampal diseases such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's.

We are opening an outlet at New Years which will serve only desserts - and guess what it is christened - Fruity Bat!

Older IVF Mums can bank on a Girl

A study of 13,000 Australian and New Zealand IVF mums found age had a profound effect on a baby's gender.

More than 10,000 babies are born through fertility treatment in Australia each year.

Most IVF mums are over 30, but researchers stopped short of saying the gender imbalance was causing a man shortage.

University of the NSW expert Prof Michael Chapman said in the normal population, 51 per cent of births were boys and 49 per cent girls.

The study of IVF mums showed women over 30 were 5 per cent more likely to have girls, while those under 30 were 5 per cent more likely to have boys.

And the probability of having a girl increased further with age. Women over 40 were up to 10 per cent more likely to have daughters than those under 30.

"So it's a substantial change ... and it will be having an impact on the gender ratio in Australia," Prof Chapman told a Fertility Society of Australia meeting in Perth yesterday.

He said it was the largest study of its kind, and provided clear evidence of an increased ratio of girls from older women after assisted conception.

Prof Chapman said the gender shift was not dramatic enough to create a serious shortage of men in the community, but it indicated IVF could change genetics.

"IVF certainly has some impact on the expression of the Y chromosome, and more importantly whether it has an impact in other ways on the genetics of a child," he said.

The reason for the link between maternal age and the sex ratio of babies was not yet clear, he said.

Royal blood disorder identified

Scientists have discovered that the so-called 'Royal disease' that afflicted Queen Victoria's descendants was a very rare form of haemophilia. By analysing the degraded DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) taken from the bones of what are believed to be the last children of Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, scientists at the University of Massachusetts, US, discovered a mutation occurring in F9 on the X chromosome responsible for the production of Factor IX, a clotting agent. A malfunction in this production is the cause of haemophilia B.

Termed 'Christmas disease,' after Stephen Christmas who suffered from the disease in the 50s, haemophilia B affects one in 20,000-34,000 males, according to The Times newspaper. The disorder is passed through the maternal line but it only manifests itself in males, as they only have one X chromosome. It would be very rare for a female to be more than a carrier of the mutation as both X chromosomes would need to be affected.

Dr Evgeny Rogaev, who led the study published in the journal Science, commented, 'We have resolved a medical mystery from the past.' Although it was known that Queen Victoria's descendants suffered from a blood-clotting disorder, it was not known exactly what the condition was. In the publication the authors explain that: 'We identified the likely disease-causing mutation by applying genomic methodologies (multiplex target amplification and massively parallel sequencing) to historical specimens from the Romanov branch of the royal family.' The 'Royal disease' is now extinct, say the authors, but it was passed across the Royal families throughout Europe including Spain and Russia. It is believed the disorder originated spontaneously from Queen Victoria, whose son, Leopold, died after bleeding from a fall. The Times explained that whereas nowadays patients with haemophilia B are given synthetic clotting agents, back in 1905 Tsarina Alexandra turned to the infamous 'psychic' Rasputin.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered during the Russian Revolution in 1918. It was since believed that two of his children may have escaped, Alexei and Anastasia, but their bones were discovered in the Ural mountains in 2007. Subsequent testing confirmed the identity of the remains and that they too had been murdered.

Fatal heart condition passed on by sperm donor

The American Medical Association has returned the issue of sperm donor screening to the public eye after publishing an article detailing the transmission of a rare and deadly heart defect to nine offspring of a registered sperm donor. The Los Angeles man (42), who is the genetic father of twenty-four children, was given a full medical check, along with tests for infectious diseases and provided a full medical history when he originally donated in the early 1990s but his genetic condition was not diagnosed until one of the children, aged 2, died suddenly from a previous undiagnosed heart problem.

The condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, leads to a thickening of the tissues in the heart, reducing the ability to pump blood. The problem affects around one in 500 people but, according to Dr Heidi Reim of Harvard Medical School and co-author of the article, many more are likely to carry the genetic defect without apparent symptoms.

The San Francisco sperm bank that passed the sperm on has now begun testing all donors with an electrocardiogram to ensure that transmission does not occur again. The article suggested that all clinics should consider implementing such a test as part of the battery of tests each donor engages in. While testing of donors is covered only by voluntary guidelines intended to rule out transmission of infectious and heritable diseases the degree to which genetic conditions are tested for varies widely and is often for rarer, higher profile conditions than hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

If diagnosed, the condition is treatable through medication, surgery and the implantation of a defibrillator to restart the heart if it stops. Such surgery has now been performed on one of the afflicted children who was already symptomatic and the others are in receipt of regular observation to monitor their condition's development.

Best yet - The Golden Years???