Since history often repeats itself, it’s important to study
about what happened in the past. For that reason, I read History Channel’s
“This Day in History” just about every day.
The other day, an article popped up that was definitely below
everybody’s radar.
On June 15, 2006,
on the remote island of Spitsbergen halfway between mainland Norway and the
North Pole, the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland
lay the ceremonial first stone of the Global Seed Vault. The vault, which now
has the capacity to hold 2.25 billion seeds, is intended to “provide insurance
against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity.”
Managed jointly by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (the Crop Trust), the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen), and the Norwegian government, the Seed Vault grew out of several different efforts to preserve specimens of the world’s plants. Its location, deep within a high mountain on an island covered by permafrost, is ideal for cold storage and will protect the seeds even in the event of a major rise in sea levels. The enormous vault, where seeds can be stored in such a way that they remain viable for decades or even centuries, opened in 2008.
According to the
Crop Trust, the seed vault is meant to preserve crop diversity and contribute
to the global struggle to end hunger. As rising temperatures and other aspects
of climate change threaten the Earth’s plants, there is risk of not only losing
species but also becoming overly reliant on those that remain, making humanity
more vulnerable and increasing food insecurity. Scientists also strive to create newer, more resilient
varieties of crops that already exist, and the seed bank functions as a reserve
from which they can draw for experimental purposes.
If keeping seeds in a very cold environment seems like a good
idea (it is), a few people feel that it would be a good idea for humans also,
which led to cyrogenic freezing, which was first proposed in 1962. As the slide
show at the link below shows, though, there are LOTS of issues attached to the
practice.
Cryogenic freezing is a type of freezing which requires extremely
low temperatures, generally below -238 Fahrenheit (-150 Celsius). This process
is part of a branch of the sciences known as cryogenics, which focuses on the
production of very cold temperatures and the study of what happens to objects
subjected to these temperatures. Research in this field ranges from basic
studies on severe cold to applied research in which cryogenics is applied to
various issues confronted by humans.
Cryogenic freezing is utilized to temper high-end
metal products and certain other industrial products. The use of cryogenics
appears to improve the strength and performance of such products, and it can be
used for tasks which vary from creating extra-strong knives to making baseball
bats. Cryogenics is also utilized in the lab environment to create cold
temperature for various experiments, and cryogenic freezing is one method for
producing specialized fuels like rocket fuel.
The food
industry utilizes this method to flash freeze fresh foods so that
their nutrients and texture will be largely preserved. Flash
freezing can be seen in use everyone from fishing boats to plants
which prepare TV dinners. In the medical profession, cryogenic freezing is used
to preserve vaccines so that they will remain stable and viable for
administration. Once frozen at such low temperatures, objects can remain frozen
with the use of special refrigeration units, including mobile units with
liquefied gases which permit cryogenically frozen objects to be shipped.
People
sometimes confuse cryogenic freezing with cryonics, the field of preserving human bodies in
freezing conditions with the goal of reviving them at some point in the future.
Cryonics relies on the idea that advances in the sciences are constantly
occurring, and that while it may not be currently possible to bring someone
back from the dead, this could happen in the future, so people who want another
chance at life may opt for cryonic preservation so that their bodies will be
available for reanimation.
In a country scandalized and outraged so easily,
the sperm bank has been naturalized. To say one works at a sperm bank would
cause no more of a commotion than to say one works at an investment bank,
surely.
But it was not always so.
There had to be a first sperm bank, and those early bankers felt the excitement and fear of the new. The year was 1952. They were two doctors in Iowa. They had figured out how to freeze sperm, thaw it back to active life, and use it to help families to conceive.
If at first Iowa seems like a surprising place for the technique
to get its start, consider this: humans are animals, too, and Iowa was a hotbed
of animal research, particularly in the realm of dairy cows, which farmers had
been artificially inseminating since the 1930s.
The bull-semen market was already large—and by the early '50s, up
to three-quarters of breeders were using sperm from champion bulls. There was a
big incentive for researchers to experiment with ways of spreading champion
sperm around as widely and for as long as possible. Plus, with bulls, the
stakes were lower.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/how-the-first-sperm-bank-began/361288/
Virtually every state in the union has at least on sperm bank,
and some states have more than one, all of which can be found at the link
below:
https://www.ivfauthority.com/sperm-banks/usa/arizona/
Just as there is controversy about cryogenics, there is also
at least some controversy regarding sperm banks.
A
landmark case that considers the civil liability of commercial sperm banks for
fraud and negligence has reached the Georgia Supreme Court. GSU law professors
Yaniv Heled and Timothy Lytton, and Emory Law professor Liza Vertinsky
mobilized 38 leading tort law, family law, and health law scholars from around
the country to co-sign an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs’ claims. The
case, Norman v. Xytex, concerns whether a commercial sperm bank is
subject to any form of liability for marketing and selling sperm with readily
knowable undisclosed genetic abnormalities which cause genetic abnormalities in
a fetus.
In
the Norman case, the sperm bank, Xytex
is accused of misrepresenting the qualities of sperm from a donor whose
identity was not disclosed to recipients. Xytex claimed its donor had a clean
medical history and multiple academic degrees. Use of the donor’s sperm
resulted in 36 live births over a period of 15 years. During this time, Xytex
allegedly knew or should have known that the donor did not have an academic
degree, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and narcissistic personality
disorder, was hospitalized multiple times for psychotic episodes, and had a
felony conviction for burglary.
Although multiple lawsuits have been brought against Xytex, so
far, the Georgia courts have dismissed all forms of potential liability,
insisting that any claim against a sperm bank for injury to the parents of a
child amounts to wrongful birth, a theory of
recovery rejected by the Georgia Supreme Court in their 1990 decision in Atlanta Obstetrics & Gynecology Group v.
Abelson.
All this discussion of science tends to get a little boring at times – which is why people watch sports
The NCAA championship was held in March, and was won by Baylor, who was the number one SEED in the tournament.
Have a good day.
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