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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
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“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
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