reproduction

She's brave and honest, and she doesn't hide her full objectives. I am a Protestant who opposes contraception, not only because some of its forms may cause abortions, but also—moreso—because the thinking behind contraception makes it the forerunner to abortion. That's a simple, clear, and believable statement. I'm sure she does believe that, as do many others, but it's to her credit that she is not ashamed of her beliefs and states them forthrightly. Bravo, Ms Stanek! I think she's wrong, of course, but the openness is commendable. I'll be similarly honest. I'm an atheist who thinks…

Four of my favorite things are development, evolution, and breasts, and now I have an article that ties them all together in one pretty package. It's a speculative story at this point, but the weight of the evidence marshaled in support of the premise is impressive: the mammalian breast first evolved as an immunoprotective gland that produced bacteriocidal secretions to protect the skin and secondarily eggs and infants, and that lactation is a highly derived kind of inflammation response. That mammary glands may have had their origin as inflamed glands suppurating mucus may not be the most…

Oh, no: it's a whole illustrated series of complicated moral dilemmas. Can you figure out what to do? All right, I lied. They aren't complicated at all…unless you're insane. (via Ezra)

The idiots at ABC News have an article in which they describe the efforts of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to get good information out there about emergency contraception, and they get it all wrong: Plan B, the brand name for emergency contraception, can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus after a woman has unprotected sex or experiences contraceptive failure (like a condom breaking). It has to be taken within 72 hours of having sex and is made of the same hormones used in birth control pills. Look, it prevents ovulation, OK? Not implantation.…

Then don't read about hyena births. Puppies ripping their way through clitorises does not make a pretty picture.

I ♥ Bluey, the Body Rights Thingamabob.

Sciencebase has a short article on a potential new aphrodisiac. It's called PT-141, or bremelanotide, or Ac-Nle-cyclo[Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys]-OH ("PT-141" is the useful search term if you want to hit up PubMed), and it's a melanocortin agonist that works directly on the brain. It can be delivered as a nasal spray. It works on men, promoting erections, and it also seems to be effective on women, increasing sexual appetite. "A dose of PT-141 results, in most cases, in a stirring in the loins in as little as 15 minutes," reports Julian Dibbell, "Women, according to one set of results, feel…

In the discussion about the Minnesota GOP platform, this comment from Molly made me think about what it would be like if Republicans were consistent in their attitudes towards sex and guns. If Republicans taught gun safety like they do sex education, they would: allow everyone to own a gun (even more, they'd require it: gunlessness is an abomination), but they'd insist that kids could never, ever take them out of their holster, sheath or gun rack it would be illegal to expose your weapon or even talk about it exposing a gun on TV would outrage viewers, who would deluge the network with…

I can't do it anymore. I can't possibly keep up with the competition, who are willing to sink to sick, perverse depths to which the real porn kings and queens willingly immerse themselves. And they're so close to me—just a few miles to the west, across that state line. I'm talking about South Dakota. They're sick puppies over there. I'm feeling a little tense sitting this close to them; maybe we should put up a razorwire fence or something. Never in my rather exotic (I thought) imagination would I dream up a scenario like the Purity Ball, where daughters gaze deeply into their father's eyes…

Once again, I bravely plunge into the fascinating world of kinky sex research in humans. This time, we learn something incredibly useful. Gentleman, would you like to know how to improve the potency of your semen? Do you need a good excuse to give your significant other when she catches you browsing porn sites? Do you want another excuse to sneer at those pompous business types who flaunt their fancy cell phones? Here's the study for you. There's a vested interest in bettering male sperm quality at fertility clinics, obviously. There are multiple ways to measure the potency of a semen sample…

Forgive me, for I am guilty of the sin of false pride. I'm wont to judge Christians by the worst of them, and in contrast, to regard atheism as the refuge of the more worthy. I am chastised by the existence of The Raving Atheist, however, who shows me that godlessness is not necessarily correlated with rationality. He's a useful reminder that a reasonable philosophy is not a guarantor that one is on the path to a truth. If you haven't been following along, The Raving Atheist is definitely an atheist, but he's also an odd duck who has gone a bit unhinged on a few subjects. He's strongly anti-…

Science asks awkward questions, doesn't it? I got a link to a recent paper in the BMJ (thanks, SEF!) that asks one of those questions—can fetuses feel pain?—and then takes it apart clinically, coming up with an answer that will make some adults feel pain: that answer is no. The first step is to work out when the machinery of the nervous system is first present, and when it is simply possible for the fetus to detect unpleasant stimuli. The nervous system has its beginnings early in development, with neurulation at around 3 weeks after fertilization, but it is initially little more than a…

This morning I got a question in e-mail, asking if I'd heard of a particular paper. Of course I had, it's a very fun bit of research...and then I realized I'd never mentioned it on the weblog before. I guess it's because it's focused entirely on the phylum Chordata, specifically one rather peculiar species—Homo sapiens. I probably just assumed nobody would be interested, because there aren't any arthropods or molluscs in it. The paper is all about visualizing the arrangement of organs during coitus. People have tried to figure out how the pieces all fit together internally using cadavers…

After I summarized how Plan B contraception works, I'm still getting letters confusing it with RU486. RU486 induces abortions. Plan B does not. RU486 is the opposite of Plan B. Remember that what Plan B is is an artificially high dose of progesterone (it actually uses a progesterone analog, but it's effectively the same.) Progesterone is a hormone that maintains the uterine lining in a nice, rich, spongy, receptive state, and it also suppresses another hormone, LH, that is what triggers ovulation. Plan B keeps the uterus primed for implantation, but tells the ovary to hold its fire and not…

There has been an oddly evasive struggle going on in Washington DC for the last several years. We have a safe, easy method of emergency contraception that has been turned into a political football, with Republicans playing their usual role of criminally stupid thugs, trying to crush a simple idea: Plan B contraception. It illustrates exactly how the Religious Right is trying to intrude on your private life, and in particular, how they want to control women. I'll explain how Plan B works, but to do so I'm going to have to explain some basics of the hormonal control of the menstrual cycle. This…

I mentioned that I was getting a curious number of hits for the term "anencephaly" the other day, and was wondering what was prompting it. Readers have been sending me strange and obscure bits of news that might be relevant, such as this account of an unusual birth in Nepal. The neck-less baby with its head almost totally sunk into the upper part of the body and with extraordinarily large eyeballs literally popping out of the eye-sockets, was born to Nir Bahadur Karki and Suntali Karki at the Gaurishnkar Hospital in Charikot. The article has pictures (if the description above makes you…

I'm getting a flood of google searches from Korea, from people looking for images of anencephaly. Anybody know what's prompting this? I know there was some news on the practice of infanticide in North Korea last week…otherwise, it's a mystery.

From the comments, here's something bizarre: creationists (at least the ones at Answers in Genesis) have defined life…and it excludes squid! I have yet another reason to reject the Bible, in this case for disrespecting perfectly wonderful invertebrates. Many scientists make the distinction that vertebrates have hemoglobin, hence red blood, and invertebrates contain other oxygen transporting proteins, like hemocyanins, and do not have red blood. As far as we've researched at this time, all vertebrates have hemoglobin and invertebrates do not, though there may be exceptions we are not aware of…

I fear I'm too late with this announcement—for some reason, I've been particularly heavily inundated with email lately, and I'm just now getting around to digging through the pile—but those pimpin' frinksters are recruiting for nerve.com. Anyone know any sex-crazed science types?

Both Twisty and Amanda seem a bit weirded out by this news that the fetus can be viewed as a kind of parasite. This story has been around long enough that a lot of us just take it for granted—I wrote about the example of preeclampsia a while back. There are worse feminist-troubling theories out there, though. In particular, there is the idea of intersexual evolutionary conflict and male-induced harm. In species where there is some level of promiscuity, it can be to the male's evolutionary advantage to compel his mate to a) invest more effort in his immediate progeny, b) increase her short-…