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Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004)

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.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction, Ethics

Austin Bradford Hill (1897-1991)

During the twentieth century, Austin Bradford Hill researched diseases and their causes in England and developed the Bradford Hill criteria, which comprise the minimal requirements that must be met for a causal relationship to be established between a factor and a disease. Hill also suggested that researchers should randomize clinical trials to evaluate the effects of a drug or treatment by monitoring large groups of people.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Olmstead v. L.C. (1999)

In the 1999 case Olmstead v. L.C., hereafter Olmstead, the United States Supreme Court held in a six to three decision that the forced segregation of people based on disability violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Two women with mental and intellectual disabilities, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, referred to as L.C. and E.W. in case documents, sued the state of Georgia and Tommy Olmstead, the Commissioner of Georgia who headed the Department of Human Resources, for alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Disorders

Treatment of Anemia during Pregnancy (1931), by Lucy Wills

In 1931, physician Lucy Wills conducted a study of nutritional deficiencies that caused anemia in pregnant women in Bombay, India, later renamed Mumbai. Anemia is a lack of healthy red blood cells in the blood. Wills published the results of her study in the medical article 'Treatment of ‘Pernicious Anaemia of Pregnancy' and 'Tropical Anaemia'' in the British Medical Journal in 1931. Wills's research contributed to knowledge of anemia and the possible causes associated with the disease, such as the symptoms of fatigue and irritability.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

Bernadine Healy (1944–2011)

During the twentieth century in the United States, Bernadine Patricia Healy was a cardiologist who served as the first female director of the National Institutes of Health or NIH and the president of both the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross. Healy conducted research on the different manifestations of heart attacks in women compared to men. At the time, many physicians underdiagnosed and mistreated coronary heart disease in women. Healy's research illustrated how coronary heart disease affected women.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

David Wildt's Evolving Ethics Concerning the Roles of Wildlife Reproductive Sciences in Species Conservation

David Wildt is an animal reproductive biologist who directs the Conservation Biology Institute in Fort Royal, Virginia. In 1986, Wildt argued that artificial reproductive technologies should only be used for species conservation efforts if standard techniques to aid natural reproduction are not effective. Between 1986 and 2001, Wildt revised his views and values primarily in relation to two things: which methods captive breeding programs ought to use, and how reproductive scientists ought to contribute to the larger work of conservation.

Format: Articles

Subject: Ethics

William Withey Gull (1816-1890)

William Withey Gull studied paraplegia, anorexia, and hormones as a physician in England during the nineteenth century. In addition to caring for patients, he described the role of the posterior column of the spinal cord in paraplegia, and he was among the first to describe the conditions of anorexia and of hypochondria. He also researched the effects of thyroid hormone deficiencies in women who had malfunctioning thyroid glands.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

“A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation” (1993), by Dean H. Hamer and Charles A. Thomas.

In 1993, Dean H. Hamer and colleagues in the US published results from their research that indicated that men with speicifc genes were more likely to be homosexual than were men without those genes. The study hypothesized that some X chromosomes contain a gene, Xq28, that increases the likelihood of an individual to be homosexual. Prior to those results, researchers had argued that the cause of homosexuality was environmental and that homosexuality could be altered or reversed. Hamer’s research suggested a possible genetic cause of homosexuality.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

Recombinant Gonadotropins Used in Fertility Treatments

First manufactured in 1988 by Serono laboratories, recombinant gonadotropins are synthetic hormones that can stimulate egg production in women for use in fertility treatments. Recombinant gonadotropins are artificially created using recombinant DNA technology, a technology that joins together DNA from different organisms. In vertebrates, naturally-occurring gonadotropins regulate the growth and function of the gonads, known as testes in males and ovaries in females.

Format: Articles

Subject: Technologies, Reproduction

Studies in Spermatogenesis (1905), by Nettie Maria Stevens

Studies in Spermatogenesis is a two volume book written by Nettie Maria Stevens, and published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1905 and 1906. In the books Stevens explains the research she conducted on chromosomal sex determination in the sperm and egg cells of insect species while at Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Studies in Spermatogenesis described early examples of chromosomal XY sex-determination.

Format: Articles

Subject: Publications

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Experiments by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 and 2007

In 2006, Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka reprogrammed mice fibroblast cells, which can produce only other fibroblast cells, to become pluripotent stem cells, which have the capacity to produce many different types of cells. Takahashi and Yamanaka also experimented with human cell cultures in 2007. Each worked at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. They called the pluripotent stem cells that they produced induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) because they had induced the adult cells, called differentiated cells, to become pluripotent stem cells through genetic manipulation.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

"Presence of Fetal DNA in Maternal Plasma and Serum" (1997), by Dennis Lo, et al.

In the late 1990s researchers Yuk Ming Dennis Lo and his colleagues isolated fetal DNA extracted from pregnant woman’s blood. The technique enabled for more efficient and less invasive diagnoses of genetic abnormalities in fetuses, such as having too many copies of chromosomes.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

Calvin Blackman Bridges (1889-1938)

Calvin Blackman Bridges studied chromosomes and heredity in the US throughout the early twentieth century. Bridges performed research with Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University in New York City, New York, and at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Bridges and Morgan studied heredity in Drosophila, the common fruit fly. Throughout the early twentieth century, researchers were gathering evidence that genes, or what Gregor Mendel had called the factors that control heredity, are located on chromosomes.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Henrietta Lacks (1920–1951)

Henrietta Lacks, born Loretta Pleasant, had terminal cervical cancer in 1951, and was diagnosed at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where researchers collected and stored her cancer cells. Those cells went on to become the first immortal human cell line, which the researchers named HeLa. An immortal cell line is an atypical cluster of cells that continuously multiply on their own outside of the organism from which they came, often due to a mutation.

Format: Articles

Subject: People, Ethics

Cornelia Isabella Bargmann (1961- )

Cornelia Isabella Bargmann studied the relationship between genes, neural circuits, and behavior in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the US. Bargmann’s research focused on how the sense of smell (olfaction) in the nematode word Caenorhabditis elegans. She provided a model to study how neural circuits develop and function in the human brain, as the genetic regulatory pathways are similar.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Percivall Pott (1714-1788)

Percivall Pott was a physician in England during the eighteenth century who identified soot as the cause of chimney sweeps' scrotal cancer, later called testicular cancer. In the 1770s, Pott observed that scrotal cancer commonly afflicted chimney sweeps, the young boys sent up into chimneys to clean away the soot left over from fires, and he hypothesized that the soot inside chimneys might cause that type of cancer. Pott was one of the first doctors to identify some environmental factor as causing cancer.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel’s Research on Optical Development in Kittens

During 1964, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel studied the short and long term effects of depriving kittens of vision in one eye. In their experiments, Wiesel and Hubel used kittens as models for human children. Hubel and Wiesel researched whether the impairment of vision in one eye could be repaired or not and whether such impairments would impact vision later on in life. The researchers sewed one eye of a kitten shut for varying periods of time.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments

“Mesenchymal and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells: General Insights and Clinical Perspectives” (2015), by Helena D. Zomer, Antanásio S. Vidane, Natalia G. Gonçalves, and Carlos E. Ambrósio

In 2015, biologist Helena D. Zomer and colleagues published the review article “Mesenchymal and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells: General Insights and Clinical Perspectives” or “Mesenchymal and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” in Stem Cells and Cloning: Advances and Applications. The authors reviewed the biology of three types of pluripotent stem cells, embryonic stem cells, or ESCs, mesenchymal stem cells, or MSCs, and induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Pluripotent stem cells are a special cell type that can give rise to other types of cells and are essential for development.

Format: Articles

Subject: Publications

The Apgar Score (1953-1958)

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.

Format: Articles

Subject: Technologies, Processes

“Kangaroo Care Is Effective in Diminishing Pain Response in Preterm Neonates” (2003), by Celeste Johnston, Bonnie Stevens, Janet Pinelli, Sharyn Gibbins, Francoise Filion, Anne Jack, Susan Steele, Kristina Boyer, and Annie Veilleux

In the 2003 article “Kangaroo Care Is Effective in Diminishing Pain Response in Preterm Neonates”, Celeste Johnston, Bonnie Stevens, Janet Pinelli, and their colleagues evaluate the effectiveness of the Kangaroo Mother Care position in decreasing the pain response of preterm infants who undergo a heel lance procedure for blood collection. Kangaroo Mother Care is a method of treatment for premature and low birth weight infants that involves exclusive breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her infant in what is called the kangaroo position.

Format: Articles

Subject: Publications

Buck v. Bell (1927)

In 1927, the US Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell set the legal precedent that states may sterilize inmates of public institutions because the court argued that imbecility, epilepsy, and feeblemindedness are hereditary, and that the inmates should be prevented from passing these defects to the next generation. On 2 May 1927, in an eight to one decision, the US Supreme Court ordered that Carrie Buck, feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded mother and herself the mother of a feebleminded child, be sterilized under the 1924 Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act. Buck v.

Format: Articles

Subject: Legal, Reproduction

People's Padre: An Autobiography (1954), by Emmett McLoughlin

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.

Format: Articles

Subject: Outreach, People, Publications, Religion

Solomon A. Berson (1918-1972)

Solomon A. Berson helped develop the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique in the US during the twentieth century. Berson made many scientific contributions while working with research partner Rosalyn Yalow at the Bronx Veterans Administration (VA) hospital, in New York City, New York. In the more than twenty years that Berson and Yalow collaborated, they refined the procedures for tracing diagnostic biological compounds using isotope labels.

Format: Articles

Subject: People

Beadle and Ephrussi's Transplantation Technique for Drosophila

Boris Ephrussi and George Wells Beadle developed a transplantation technique on flies, Drosophila melanogaster, which they described in their 1936 article A Technique of Transplantation for Drosophila. The technique of injecting a tissue from one fly larva into another fly larva, using a micropipette, to grow that tissue in the second larvae, was a means for investigating development of Drosophila. Through this technique, Beadle and Ephrussi studied the role of genes in embryological processes.

Format: Articles

Subject: Technologies

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier’s Experiment About the CRISPR/cas 9 System’s Role in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity (2012)

In 2012, Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier from the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, and Umeå University in Umeå, Sweden, along with their colleagues discovered how bacteria use the CRISPR/cas 9 system to protect themselves from viruses. The researchers also proposed the idea of using the CRISPR/cas 9 system as a genome editing tool.

Format: Articles

Subject: Experiments