‘Tainted Gene Pools For Kids’: More Parents Discover Sperm Donor Wasn’t The One They Carefully Selected
While no one is keeping an exact count on how often the mix up takes place, more people are reporting their donor had a medical history they never would have chosen. Health officials question if better regulation of an industry that supports thousands of artificial inseminations a year is necessary. Public health news focuses on sleep's healing powers, parents' social media photos, online monitoring, antibiotic prescriptions, new NAS code of conduct, mothers' health, animal studies and nurses' PTSD.
The New York Times:
Their Children Were Conceived With Donated Sperm. It Was The Wrong Sperm.
Seventeen years ago, when she was in her thirties, Cindy and her female partner decided they wanted to have children. The couple spent hours pouring over sperm donor profiles, finally settling on an anonymous man with a clean medical record and few health issues in his family. He was an anonymous donor, and they knew him only by his identifying number. Cindy gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Eventually the couple used the same donor to conceive again — and soon enough they were raising two boys. (Mroz, 6/3)
The New York Times:
Protecting Sleep In The Hospital, For Both Patients And Doctors
It was 11 p.m. and my 5-year-old patient was sleeping peacefully in her hospital bed, snuggled up with her mother and several stuffed animals. Her breathing was quiet and soft. Her bedside heart rate monitor, which glowed a faint yellow in the dark hospital room, was turned to “silent.” “Sorry, I have to take a listen to her heart,” I whispered to her mother, tapping her shoulder lightly. Her mother and I had a good relationship: I had served as an advocate for her daughter several times during her seven-week stay in the ward. She had a rare disease that had been a medical mystery for many months, but she would be transferred to a more specialized center soon. (Kalaichandran, 6/4)
The Washington Post:
Gen Z Kids Are The Stars Of Their Parents’ Social Media — And They Have Opinions About That
Alison Santighian flicks her finger over her smartphone screen, and her Facebook profile scrolls past in a blur. She is looking for a particular photo from a few days ago, a picture her 9-year-old son, Arsen, didn’t want her to take. “Found it!” she says. Arsen, sitting beside her on the family’s patio at their Bethesda, Md., home, peers over her shoulder. “He looked very handsome that day,” Alison explains, and Arsen rolls his eyes. He was dressed in a dapper white suit for a piano performance, and when Alison asked him to pose for a picture that she could share with her Facebook followers, Arsen said he’d rather not. (Gibson, 6/3)
The Wall Street Journal:
Safe Space Or Police State: How Far Should You Go In Monitoring Your Kids Online?
School is almost out and parents know what that means: no homework, later bedtimes and kids who want to bend the rules on screen time. During those long summer days, parents worry about how to make sure kids aren’t getting into trouble online. There are tools available that can monitor every picture, email and text message a kid sends or receives—even every Google doc a child creates—and alert parents at any sign of mischief. But at what point do you cross the line from parental duty to police state? (Jargon, 6/4)
The Oregonian:
Dentists Overprescribe Antibiotics Before Surgery 80 Percent Of Time, OSU Study Says
Dentists could be overprescribing antibiotics more than 80 percent of the time, according to an Oregon State University study. Dentists often write prescriptions ahead of procedures so that patients will have them on hand in case the antibiotics are needed. The study, published last week in an open access publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association, says that only 21 percent of the 170,000 prescriptions reviewed between 2011 and 2015 were called for under widely accepted medical guidelines. (Harbarger, 6/3)
Stat:
National Academy Of Sciences Approves New Way To Expel Harassers
The National Academy of Sciences has voted to allow members to be expelled for breaches of conduct — including sexual harassment. Under the new amendment announced Monday, NAS will allow people to present evidence that a member of the prestigious scientific organization has violated its code of conduct, which prohibits discrimination, harassment, and scientific misconduct. The 17-person governing council will then vote on whether to expel that member. Up until now, there hasn’t been a way to revoke lifetime membership. (Thielking, 6/3)
The New York Times:
Sweden Finds A Simple Way To Improve New Mothers’ Health. It Involves Fathers.
The weeks after a mother gives birth are a universally vulnerable period. She is recovering physically and mentally, while dealing with sleep deprivation, round-the-clock caregiving and possibly breast-feeding. Yet after a few days in the hospital, she often doesn’t see a doctor for six weeks. A new study suggests a way to make a significant difference in mothers’ postpartum health: Give the other parent paid leave, and the flexibility to use it on days the mother needs extra support, even if it just means a couple of days at home. (Miller, 6/4)
NPR:
Octopuses' Big Brains And Unique Behavior Spur Basic Research
At the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., there's a room filled with burbling aquariums. A lot of them have lids weighed down with big rocks. "Octopuses are notorious for being able to, kind of, escape out of their enclosures," says Bret Grasse, whose official title at MBL is "manager of cephalopod operations" — cephalopods being squid, cuttlefish and octopuses. He's part of a team that's trying to figure out the best ways to raise these sea creatures in captivity, so that scientists can investigate their genes and learn the secrets of their strange, almost alien ways. (Greenfieldboyce, 6/3)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
PTSD In Nurses Is Common, How Nurses Can Overcome PTSD
In 2014, the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, the American Nurses Foundation and Little Bird Games created a post-traumatic stress disorder toolkit for nurses working with patients experiencing the mental health condition. But nurses, too, are at risk. In fact, according to a recent article in the New York Times, as many as one in four nurses experience PTSD at some point in their careers. (Pirani, 6/3)