Articles
Virginia Apgar (1909-1974)
By Carolina J. Abboud
Virginia Apgar worked as an obstetrical anesthesiologist, administering drugs that reduce women’s pain during childbirth, in the US in the mid-twentieth century. In 1953, Apgar created a scoring system using five easily assessable measurements, including heart rate and breathing rate, to evaluate whether or not infants would benefit from medical attention immediately after birth. Apgar’s system showed that infants who were previously set aside as too sick to survive, despite low Apgar scores, could recover with immediate medical attention.
Created 2017-02-16
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: Articles“Elective Induction of Labor” (1955), by Edward Bishop
By Carolina J. Abboud
In 1955, obstetrician Edward Bishop, a physician specializing in childbirth, published the article “Elective Induction of Labor,” in which he proposed the best conditions for pregnant women to elect to induce, or begin, labor. Elective induction of labor requires an obstetrician to administer a drug to help a pregnant woman to start her contractions, and to rupture the fluid-filled sac surrounding the fetus called the amniotic sac.
Created 2017-02-16
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Apgar Score (1953-1958)
By Carolina J. Abboud
In 1952 Virginia Apgar, a physician at the Sloane Women’s Hospital in New York City, New York, created the Apgar score as a method of evaluating newborn infants’ health to determine if they required medical intervention. The score included five separate categories, including heart rate, breathing rate, reaction to stimuli, muscle activity, and color. An infant received a score from zero to two in each category, and those scores added up to the infant’s total score out of ten. An infant with a score of ten was healthy, and those with low scores required medical attention at birth.
Created 2017-02-16
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: Articles"The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains" (1964), by Leonard Hayflick
By Zane Bartlett
Leonard Hayflick in the US during the early 1960s showed that normal populations of embryonic cells divide a finite number of times. He published his results as 'The Limited In Vitro Lifetime of Human Diploid Cell Strains' in 1964. Hayflick performed the experiment with WI-38 fetal lung cells, named after the Wistar Institute, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Hayflick worked. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, later called the limit in capacity for cellular division the Hayflick Limit in 1974.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesAcid Dissolution of Fossil Dinosaur Eggs
By Paige Madison
Acid dissolution is a technique of removing a fossil from the surrounding rock matrix in which it is encased by dissolving that matrix with acid. Fossilized bone, though strong enough to be preserved for thousands or millions of years, is often more delicate than rock. Once a fossil is discovered, scientists must remove the fossil from its surroundings without damaging the fossil itself.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Infant Incubator in Europe (1860-1890)
By Kelsey Rebovich
In the nineteenth century, obstetricians in Europe began to construct devices to incubate infants in increasingly controlled environments. The infant incubator is a medical device that maintains stable conditions and a germ free environment for premature infants born before the thirty-seventh week of pregnancy. Records show that physicians had used infant incubators since 1835. However, Jean-Louis-Paul Denuce, a physician who worked in Bordeaux, France, first published about incubator technology in 1857.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesMargaret Ann Bulkley (James Barry) (1789−1865)
By Sarah Foster
Margaret Ann Bulkley, under the male pseudonym James Barry, was one of the first female obstetricians in early nineteenth century British Empire. She was the first person to perform a cesarean section in South Africa. Cesarean section is a procedure in which a doctor cuts into the uterus of a pregnant woman to retrieve the fetus during complicated births. Bulkley hid her gender and lived life as the male Barry to practice medicine, an opportunity not allowed to women at the time.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesTruman William Brophy (1848–1928)
By Jillian Renee Kersten
Truman William Brophy developed a cleft palate surgical repair, later called the Brophy Operation, in the late nineteenth century US. The procedure improved facial aesthetics and speech in cleft palate patients. A cleft palate occurs during development when the palatal bones in the roof of the mouth don't completely fuse, leaving an opening, or cleft, in the upper lip and mouth. Brophy's cleft repair used compression inside and outside of the mouth to push the palatal bones into normal alignment shortly after birth.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesWilliam Thornton Mustard (1914-1987)
By Daniella Caudle
William Thornton Mustard was a surgeon in Canada during the twentieth century who developed surgical techniques to treat children who had congenital heart defects. Mustard has two surgeries named after him, both of which he helped to develop. The first of these surgeries replaces damaged or paralyzed muscles in individuals who have polio, a virus that can cause paralysis. The other technique corrects a condition called the transposition of the great arteries (TGA) that is noticed at birth.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesIsidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805-1861)
By Jesse Potestas
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire studied anatomy and congenital abnormalities in humans and other animals in nineteenth century France. Under the tutelage of his father, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isidore compiled and built on his father's studies of individuals with developmental malformations, then called monstrosities.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesJohn Chassar Moir (1900–1977)
By Dorothy Haskett, Patsy Ciardullo
John Chassar Moir lived in Scotland during the twentieth century and helped develop techniques to improve the health of pregnant women. Moir helped to discover compounds that doctors could administer to women after childbirth to prevent life-threatening blood loss. Those compounds included the ergot alkaloid called ergometrine, also called ergonovine, and d-lysergic acid beta-propanolamide. Moir tested ergometrine in postpartum patients and documented that it helped prevent or manage postpartum hemorrhage in women.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesEclipse of Reason (1987)
By Sepehr Abdi-Moradi
Eclipse of Reason is a 1987 anti-abortion documentary film directed, filmed, and narrated by Bernard Nathanson, an obstetrician in the US. American Portrait Films released the film in 1987 featuring Nathanson’s commentary and footage of an abortion of a four-month-old fetus. The film also featured the testimony of women who had suffered following similar procedures. In Eclipse of Reason, Nathanson equates the fetus to a person, likening abortion procedures to murder and arguing for the illegalization of abortion.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPierre Budin (1846-1907)
By Kelsey Rebovich
Pierre Constant Budin worked in France to improve the lives of newborns and their mothers during the late nineteenth century. Budin stressed the importance of proper nutrition in infants and educated new mothers on breastfeeding and infant care. Budin established infant care facilities and created a nutritional check-up system for infants. Budin helped design early artificial nipples, breast pumps, and incubators for premature newborns. He also began the practice of consulting with new mothers after they gave birth, redefining the roles of obstetricians.
Created 2017-02-11
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesBarbara McClintock's Transposon Experiments in Maize (1931–1951)
By Federica Turriziani Colonna
Barbara McClintock conducted experiments on corn (Zea mays) in the United States in the mid-twentieth century to study the structure and function of the chromosomes in the cells. McClintock researched how genes combined in corn and proposed mechanisms for how those interactions are regulated. McClintock received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, the first woman to win the prize without sharing it. McClintock won the award for her introduction of the concept of transposons, also called jumping genes.
Created 2017-02-09
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesDe ovi mammalium et hominis genesi (1827), by Karl Ernst von Baer
By Federica Turriziani Colonna
De ovi mammalium et hominis genesi (On the Genesis of the Ovum of Mammals and of Men) is an 1827 pamphlet by Karl Ernst von Baer about the anatomical observation and description of the egg (ovum) of mammals, like dogs and humans. The pamphlet detailed evidence for the existence of the ovum at the beginning of the developmental process in mammals.
Created 2017-02-09
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesGattaca (1997)
By Grace Kim
Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction film produced in the US that depicts a future society that uses reproductive technology and genetic engineering in order to produce genetically enhanced human beings. By selectively choosing certain genes, scientists and physicians ensure that individuals born using reproductive technologies have desirable physical and psychological traits and prevent undesirable traits.
Created 2017-02-09
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPaternal Sperm Telomere Elongation and Its Impact on Offspring Fitness
By Zane Bartlett, Joanna Yang
Telomeres are structures at the ends of DNA strands that get longer in the DNA of sperm cells as males age. That phenomenon is different for most other types of cells, for which telomeres get shorter as organisms age. In 1992, scientists showed that telomere length (TL) in sperm increases with age in contrast to most cell of most other types. Telomeres are the protective caps at the end of DNA strands that preserve chromosomal integrity and contribute to DNA length and stability.
Created 2017-02-07
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesUS Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program
By Alexis Abboud
In 1996, the US Congress mandated that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) create and regulate the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. The program tests industrial and agricultural chemicals for hormonal impacts in humans and in wildlife that may disrupt organisms' endocrine systems. The endocrine system regulates the release of small amounts of chemical substances called hormones to keep the body functioning normally.
Created 2017-02-02
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesIsaacson v. Horne (2013)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
In the 2013 case Isaacson v. Horne, the US Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit ruled that Arizona House Bill (HB) 2036, which prohibited abortions after twenty weeks of gestation, was unconstitutional. The Arizona State Legislature passed the law in 2012, which was then challenged by three physicians who filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the law violated women's constitutionally protected rights to abortions, rights that may only be infringed once fetuses are viable outside of the womb.
Created 2016-11-16
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesTucson Woman's Clinic v. Eden (2004)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
The case Tucson Woman's Clinic v. Eden (2004) established that some of Arizona's abortion clinic laws violated physicians' and patients' rights to privacy, and it required those laws to be rewritten. The laws required most abortion providers to be licensed with the Arizona Department of Health Services and to submit to all the regulations the Department established for abortion clinics. The regulations allowed the state to search abortion clinics without warrants and to access patient records and ultrasound prints, among other provisions.
Created 2016-11-14
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesNelson v. Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson (1973)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
The 1973 case Nelson v. Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson established the legality of abortion in Arizona. The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that the Arizona Revised Statutes 13-211, 13-212, and 13-213, collectively called the Arizona abortion statutes, were unconstitutional. The statutes had made illegal receiving, providing, or advertising abortions. After the Arizona Appeals Court heard the case, it decided that the Arizona abortion statutes were constitutional. However, two weeks later the US Supreme Court decided in Roe v.
Created 2016-11-13
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPlanned Parenthood Center of Tucson, Inc., v. Marks (1972)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
In the 1972 case Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson, Inc., v. Marks, the Arizona Court of Appeals required the Arizona Superior Court to rehear the case Planned Parenthood Association v. Nelson (1971) and issue a decision on the constitutionality of Arizona's abortion laws. In 1971, the Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson filed the case Planned Parenthood Association v. Nelson asking for the US District Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Arizona Revised Statutes 13-211, 13-212, and 13-213, which made it illegal for anyone to advertise, provide, or receive an abortion.
Created 2016-11-13
Last modified 2 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesSimat Corp v. Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (2002)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
In the 2002 case Simat Corp v. Arizona Health Care Containment System, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the Arizona Health Care Containment System must pay for abortions when they are necessary to preserve the health of pregnant women in the system. In the case, the Court ruled that the Arizona Revised Statutes 35-196.02 and the Arizona Health Care Containment System (AHCCCS) policies, which banned public funds from being used for abortions, were unconstitutional. AHCCCS is Arizona's Medicaid insurance system, which enables low-income residents to receive medical care.
Created 2016-11-13
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesForbes v. Napolitano (2000)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
Forbes v. Napolitano (2000) was a US court case that established that Arizona researchers could use fetal tissues from induced abortions for basic scientific research, for instance, as a source of stem cells. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) 36-2303 in the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals, a law that banned researchers from using fetal tissues from abortions for any type of medical experimentation or investigation. The Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals decision in Forbes v.
Created 2016-11-13
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPeople's Padre: An Autobiography (1954), by Emmett McLoughlin
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
Emmett McLoughlin wrote People's Padre: An Autobiography, based on his experiences as a Roman Catholic priest advocating for the health of people in Arizona. The Beacon Press in Boston, Massachusetts, published the autobiography in 1954. McLoughlin was a Franciscan Order Roman Catholic priest who advocated for public housing and healthcare for the poor and for minority groups in Phoenix, Arizona, during the mid twentieth century. The autobiography recounts McLoughlin's efforts in founding several community initiatives throughout Phoenix, including the St.
Created 2016-11-08
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPlanned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix (1942-1978)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
The Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix was established in 1942 to expand Arizona women's access to family planning resources. The Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix was formed through the merging of The Mother's Health Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, with the national Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The clinic was primarily based within the Phoenix Memorial Hospital campus but expanded to other locations in the late 1960s.
Created 2016-11-08
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesBarry Morris Goldwater (1909–1998)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
Barry Morris Goldwater was a Republican Arizona Senator and US presidential candidate in the twentieth-century whose policies supported the women's reproductive rights movement. Goldwater, a businessman and Air Force reservist, transitioned into politics in the 1950s. He helped align popular support for a conservative Republican Party in the 1960s. Throughout his life, he worked to maintain personal liberty and to limit governmental intrusion into citizens' private lives. Goldwater, influenced by his wife Margaret (Peggy) Goldwater, supported women's rights to abortions.
Created 2016-10-28
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesJeter v. Mayo (2005)
By Jennifer E. Chapman
In Jeter v. Mayo, the Court of Appeals of Arizona in 2005 held that a cryopreserved, three-day-old pre-embryo is not a person for purposes of Arizona's wrongful death statutes, and that the Arizona Legislature was best suited to decide whether to expand the law to include cryopreserved pre-embryos. The Court of Appeals affirmed a decision by the Maricopa County Superior Court to dismiss a couple's wrongful death claim after the Mayo Clinic (Mayo) allegedly lost or destroyed several of their cryopreserved pre-embryos.
Created 2016-10-22
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesPlanned Parenthood Center of Tucson (1950-1977)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
Established in 1950, the Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson provided Arizona women with family planning resources until 1977, when it expanded to locations outside of Tucson and became Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona. The Planned Parenthood Center of Tucson was formed after the Clinica Para Madres, the first birth control clinic in Arizona, merged with the national organization Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Created 2016-10-22
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesTitle X Family Planning Program (1970–1977)
By Patsy Ciardullo, Nevada Wagoner
The Family Planning Services and Public Research Act of 1970, often called Title X Family Planning Program, is a US federal law that provides federal funding for family planning services to low income or uninsured families. The US federal government passed the law, Public Law 91-572, in 1970 as an amendment to the Public Health Services Act of 1944. The Act created the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) under the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (here called the Secretary).
Created 2016-10-21
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesMargaret Higgins Sanger (1879-1966)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy, Lakshmeeramya Malladi
Margaret Higgins Sanger advocated for birth control in the United States and Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although people used contraceptives prior to the twentieth century, in the US the 1873 Comstock Act made the distribution of information relating to the use of contraceptives illegal, and similar state-level Comstock laws also classified discussion and dissemination of contraceptives as illegal.
Created 2016-10-13
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesMargaret (Peggy) Goldwater (1909–1985)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
Margaret Goldwater advocated for birth control and reproductive rights in the United States during the twentieth century. Goldwater was a socialite and philanthropist and was married to Barry Goldwater, US Senator from Arizona. She spent much of her life working to further the women's reproductive rights movement, which sought to expand women's legal, social, and physical access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortions.
Created 2016-10-13
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesClinica Para Madres (1934-1950)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
The Clinica Para Madres (Mother’s Clinic) opened in Tucson, Arizona, in December of 1934 as the first birth control clinic in Arizona. After moving to Tucson, birth control activist Margaret Sanger, along with a group of local philanthropic women, founded the clinic to provide Arizona women with contraception. During the early 1900s in the US, contraception was illegal under the federal Comstock Act. Additionally, many viewed contraception and sex as obscene and not to be discussed in public or outside of marriage.
Created 2016-10-12
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Mother's Health Clinic of Phoenix (1937-1942)
By Claudia Nunez-Eddy
The Mother's Health Clinic opened in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1937 and provided women in central Arizona with contraception and family planning resources. A group of wealthy philanthropic Phoenix women founded the clinic under the guidance of birth control activist Margaret Sanger. The clinic was the second birth control clinic to open in Arizona and the first to serve the central and northern Arizona residents.
Created 2016-10-12
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesSkinner v. Oklahoma (1942)
By Rachel Gur-Arie
In 1942, the United States Supreme Court Case of Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled that states could not legally sterilize those inmates of prisons deemed habitual criminals. Skinner v. Oklahoma was about the case of Jack Skinner, an inmate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, who was subject to sterilization under the Oklahoma Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935. The case, decided on 1 June 1942, determined that state laws were unconstitutional if those laws enabled states to forcibly sterilize inmates deemed to be habitual criminals.
Created 2016-08-27
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesHans Asperger (1906-1980)
By Alexandra Bohnenberger
Hans Asperger studied mental abnormalities in children in
Vienna, Austria, in the early twentieth century. Asperger was one of
the early researchers who studied the syndrome that was later named
after him, Asperger's Syndrome. Asperger described the syndrome in
his 1944 publication Die Autistischen Psychopathen im
Kindesalter (Autistic Psychopathy in Childhood). At that time,
the syndrome was called autistic psychopathy, and Asperger noted
that characteristics of the syndrome included lack of sympathy,
Created 2016-08-27
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesAristotle (384-322 BCE)
By Dorothy Regan Haskett, Valerie Racine, Joanna Yang
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.
Created 2016-07-07
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesJulia Barlow Platt (1857-1935)
By Karina Ramirez
Julia Barlow Platt studied neural crests in animal embryos and became involved in politics in the US during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She researched how body and head segments formed in chicks (Gallus gallus) and spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias). Platt observed that in the mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus), the coordinated migration of neural crest cells in the embryo produced parts of the nervous system, bones, and connective tissues in the head.
Created 2016-06-27
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Hedgehog Signaling Pathway in Vertebrates
By Dorothy Regan Haskett
The hedgehog signaling pathway is a mechanism that regulates cell growth and differentiation during embryonic development, called embryogenesis, in animals. The hedgehog signaling pathway works both between cells and within individual cells.
Created 2016-06-27
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesMary Coffin Ware Dennett (1872-1947)
By Lakshmeeramya Malladi
Mary Coffin Ware Dennett advocated for social reform in the United States in the early twentieth century, particularly regarding sex education and women's rights to access contraception. Dennett authored several publications on sex education and birth control laws. She also worked to repeal the Comstock Act, a federal law that made it illegal to distribute obscene materials through the US Postal Services.
Created 2016-06-22
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesEstrogen and the Menstrual Cycle in Humans
By Brendan Van Iten
Estrogen is the primary sex hormone in women and it functions during the reproductive menstrual cycle. Women have three major types of estrogen: estrone, estradiol, and estriol, which bind to and activate receptors within the body. Researchers discovered the three types of estrogen over a period of seven years, contributing to more detailed descriptions of the menstrual cycle. Each type of estrogen molecule contains a slightly different arrangement or number of atoms that in turn causes some of the estrogens to be more active than others.
Created 2016-06-22
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesABO Blood Type Identification and Forensic Science (1900-1960)
By Corey Harbison
The use of blood in forensic analysis is a method for identifying individuals suspected of committing some kinds of crimes. Paul Uhlenhuth and Karl Landsteiner, two scientists working separately in Germany in the early twentieth century, showed that there are differences in blood between individuals. Uhlenhuth developed a technique to identify the existence of antibodies, and Landsteiner and his students showed that humans had distinctly different blood types called A, B, AB, and O.
Created 2016-06-02
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesKurt Benirschke (1924-)
By Karen Love
Kurt Benirschke studied cells, placentas, and endangered species in Germany and the US during the twentieth century. Benirschke was professor at the University of California in San Diego, California, and a director of the research department at the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California. He also helped form the research department of the San Diego Zoo and its sister organization, the Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species.
Created 2016-04-26
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesMethylmercury and Human Embryonic Development
By Mandana Minai
Methylmercury (MeHg) is an organic form of mercury that can damage the developing brains of human fetuses. Women who consume methylmercury during pregnancy can bear children who have neurological issues because methylmercury has toxic effects on the nervous system during embryonic development. During the third week of gestation, the human nervous system begins to form in the embryo. During this gestational period, the embryo's nervous system is particularly susceptible to the influence of neurotoxins like methylmercury that can result in abnormalities.
Created 2016-04-18
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesEugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin
By Rachel Gur-Arie
Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is a 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century in the US focused on altering the genetic makeup of the US population by regulating immigration and sterilization, and by discouraging interracial procreation, then called miscegenation.
Created 2015-08-12
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesGeorge McDonald Church (1954- )
By Christopher Rojas
George McDonald Church studied DNA from living and from extinct species in the US during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Church helped to develop and refine techniques with which to describe the complete sequence of all the DNA nucleotides in an organism's genome, techniques such as multiplex sequencing, polony sequencing, and nanopore sequencing. Church also contributed to the Human Genome Project, and in 2005 he helped start a company, the Personal Genome Project. Church proposed to use DNA from extinct species to clone and breed new organisms from those species.
Created 2015-08-12
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesHedgehog Signaling Pathway
By Dorothy R. Haskett
The hedgehog signaling pathway is a mechanism that directs the development of embryonic cells in animals, from invertebrates to vertebrates. The hedgehog signaling pathway is a system of genes and gene products, mostly proteins, that convert one kind of signal into another, called transduction. In 1980, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric F. Wieschaus, at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, identified several fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) genes.
Created 2015-07-30
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesAssisted Human Reproduction Act (2004)
By Kathleen Hammond
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHR Act) is a piece of federal legislation passed by the Parliament of Canada. The Act came into force on 29 March 2004. Many sections of the Act were struck down following a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on its constitutionality. The AHR Act sets a legislative and regulatory framework for the use of reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and related services including surrogacy and gamete donation. The Act also regulates research in Canada involving in vitro embryos.
Created 2015-07-30
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesFriedrich Tiedemann (1781-1861)
By Jonathon LaTourelle
Friedrich Tiedemann studied the anatomy of humans and animals in the nineteenth century in Germany. He published on zoological subjects, on the heart of fish, the anatomy of amphibians and echinoderms, and the lymphatic and respiratory system in birds. In addition to his zoological anatomy, Tiedemann, working with the chemist Leopold Gmelin, published about how the digestive system functioned.
Created 2015-07-07
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Cell in Development and Inheritance (1900), by Edmund Beecher Wilson
By Abhinav Mishra, Jane Maienschein
The Cell in Development and Inheritance, by Edmund Beecher Wilson, provided a textbook introduction to cell biology for generations of biologists in the twentieth century. In his book, Wilson integrated information about development, inheritance, chromosomes, organelles, and the structure and functions of cells. First published in 1896, the book started with 371 pages, grew to 483 pages in the second edition that appeared in 1900, and expanded to 1,231 pages by the third and final edition in 1925.
Created 2015-06-18
Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago
Format: Articles