History
Sperm washing was first used in Milan, Italy. The oldest child conceived using this method is now about 11 and is HIV negative. The first known US-American baby conceived this way, Baby Ryan, was born in 1999 through the Special Program of Assisted Reproduction started by Dr. Ann Kiessling
Starting in the mid-1990s it was adopted to help HIV discordant couples conceive without passing the virus from the father to the mother or child. The idea is that when the male is HIV positive the technique will reduce the risk of transmission to the female. For years there were lingering doubts about the safety of the procedure, and many couples had to travel to locales that would do the procedure, such as Italy. Today, hundreds of babies have been born through this process.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)