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.
Read more about this topic: Sperm Washing
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“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
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