mothers

Science is Now Focusing more on Researching the Placenta

With the threat of the Zika virus passing on life-altering birth defects to children of infected mothers, scientists have taken to studying the human placenta with the National Institutes of Health’s $50 million Human Placenta Project. What is often simply dismissed as “afterbirth” is actually quite helpful in discovering the causes of diseases and other genetic risk factors that can potentially hurt the fetus. [1]

A Strange Birth Defect is on the Rise in the United States, Says the CDC

A strange birth defect is on the rise in the United States, and scientists are at a loss to explain it.
Gastroschisis is a birth defect that causes a baby’s intestines to protrude outside of his/her body, through a hole in the abdominal wall beside the belly button. Sometimes this hole is very small, but it can also be quite large, and other organs such as the stomach and liver can extend from the baby’s body.

GE Soybeans Give Altered Milk and Stunted Offspring, Researchers Find

By Jonathan Latham, PhD Pregnant goats fed with genetically engineered (GE) soybeans have offspring who grow more slowly and are shorter, according to a new Italian study (Tudisco et al., 2015). Publishing in the journal of Small Ruminant Research, the researchers were testing the results of supplementing the feed of ...