Search results for ""Author Dani Singer""

Uncertainty and negative expectations are common responses to the menopause. When it happens too early (sometimes as young as 16) it can be particularly distressing with concerns about physical health, as well as possible social and emotional consequences. Young women are faced with a condition, the causes of which are not well understood, and about which very little is written in medical or lay literature. In medical texts premature menopause is typically mentioned only in passing, and from the woman's perspective it remains a hidden secret. This can only compound the difficulty for women for whom the life process has suddenly swept into fast forward. Premature menopause can have profound implications both for the woman herself and her partner and family. She is faced with physical and emotional concerns that are usually not considered until much later in life, such as: will she age prematurely? will she need to take long-term medication? will she come to terms with loss of fertility? are there alternative treatments? are there consequences for her future health?

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With contributions from: Eric Blyth, Ken Daniels, Julia Feast, Robert Lee, Nina Martin, Alexina McWhinnie, Derek Morgan, Clare Murray, Sharon Pettle, Claire Potter, Jim Richards and Francoise Shenfield The separation of procreation from conception has broadened notions of parenthood and created novel dilemmas. A woman may carry a foetus derived from gametes neither or only one of which came from her or her partner; or she may carry a foetus created using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) with the purpose of handing it to two other parents one, neither or both of whom may be genetically related to the prospective child. Parents may consist of single-sex couples, only one of them genetically related to the child; the prospective mother may be past her menopause; and genetic parenthood after death is now achievable. In a world increasingly reliant on medical science, how can the argument that equates traditional with natural and novel with unnatural/unethical be justified? Should there be legislation, which is notoriously slow to change, in a field driven by dazzling new possibilities at ever faster rate; particularly when restrictions differ from country to country, so that those who can afford it travel elsewhere for their treatment of choice? Whose rights are paramount - the adults hoping to build a family or the prospective child(ren)s future well being? On what basis can apparently competing rights be regulated or adjudicated and how and to what extent can these be enforced in practice?

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