The darker side of infertility
By Pat Duggins,
Alabama Public Radio
| 06. 27. 2025
PAT DUGGINS-- If I were to say, ‘man, have you seen the price of eggs these days?’ You're probably thinking, Oh, he's talking about inflation and the price of groceries and how it became an issue in the presidential race and how nothing has changed, and so on and so on. That's not what I mean. I'm not talking about the kinds of eggs that build omelets. I mean the kinds of eggs that build families. The Alabama Supreme Court created a political shock wave last year when it declared that frozen human embryos were children. The legal case involved people looking to start families through in vitro fertilization. These couples allege that their eggs were destroyed. Some moms and dads to be like these, use their own fertilized eggs. Others have reproductive issues that require donated eggs, and there's a whole industry in the US to supply them. It's a story of money, racism and a process that can reportedly harm both female egg donors and the children that result. Diane Tober is in the middle of this issue...
Related Articles
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 10.20.2026
For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient.
Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly...
By Noah Fromson, HealthLab | 10.19.2026
Gene therapy is no longer the future of medicine — it’s reality. Treatments that replace, silence or edit genes are already changing clinical care.
There are more than 6,000 rare genetic disorders but only a fraction currently have treatable targets...
By Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic | 10.16.2026
In recent months, news came out about several distressing cases that have underscored the risks of gene therapy, which delivers DNA to a patient’s cells to treat disease. All of these cases have one thing in common that’s not apparent...
By Rebecca Roberts, The Scientist | 10.11.2026
Heritable genome editing in human embryos is once again under intense scrutiny after the publication of an opinion piece in Trends in Genetics at the end of last month.1 In the paper, Cathy Tie, the founder and chief...