Ageing and Fertility: Biology Comes Second
        
            By Kirsty Oswald, 
                BioNews
             | 08. 10. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            The association between a woman's age and her fertility never seems     far from the news but recently there has been a veritable bombardment   of   opinion over what age a woman should have a child.
 
  We are repeatedly reminded that a woman's fertility drops off a   cliff   after age 40. Or was it 35? Or 38? I don't remember. And it   depends   which week you ask.
 
  How does this keep making headlines time and time again, when each     finding seems so unauthoritative and inconsistent it might as well   have   been picked from a hat?
 
  It would appear we cannot resist a biologically authorised     opportunity to tell a woman what to do with her body. But all this talk     of the age a woman's fertility 'drops off a cliff' is just a   distractor   from the truth – this phenomenon of women finding   themselves 'up   against' the biological clock is a cultural one, not a   biological one.
  Read more... 
 
  Image via Wikimedia Commons.
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Megan Molteni and Anil Oza,  STAT | 10.07.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            For two years, a panel of scientific experts, clinicians, and patient advocates had been hammering out ways to increase community engagement in National Institutes of Health-funded science. When they presented their road map to the NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya last...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Shoumita Dasgupta,  STAT | 10.03.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            
President Trump and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have characterized the rise in autism diagnoses in recent years as an epidemic requiring emergency intervention.
This approach is factually wrong: The broadening definition of autism and the improvement in diagnosis...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Abby McCloskey,  The Dallas Morning News | 10.10.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            We Texans like to do things our way — leave some hide on the fence rather than stay corralled, as goes a line in Wallace O. Chariton’s Texas dictionary This Dog’ll Hunt. Lately, I’ve been wondering what this ethos...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Émile P. Torres,  Truthdig | 10.17.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            The Internet philosopher Eliezer Yudkowsky has been predicting the end of the world for decades. In 1996, he confidently declared that the singularity — the moment at which computers become more “intelligent” than humanity — would happen in 2021, though...