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【bio-news】专家关于何时阻断生物钟的辩论
Experts debate when to stop biological clock
By Bob Pool and Maria L. La Ganga
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES -- The walls of his fertility clinic are lined with happy snapshots of moms and dads proudly showing off their little bundles of joy.
But there was little jubilation this past week for Dr. Vicken Sahakian as he acknowledged that one of his patients has become the world's oldest new mother.
"Congratulations? It was unintentionally successful," Sahakian said. "She lied to me. She falsified records, knowing my cutoff for single women is 55. . . . I don't think the last chapter has been closed, either. She could die 10 years from now. What will happen to the children?"
Carmela Bousada, a 67-year-old retired Spanish department store clerk, gave birth to twin boys Dec. 29 in Barcelona. The single mother has admitted to European reporters that she had deceived Sahakian in order to become pregnant.
The premature births of 3-pound, 7-ounce Pau and 3-pound, 5-ounce Christian have roiled the world of fertility medicine and raised a basic question: How old is too old?
Dr. Richard J. Paulson, director of the Fertility Clinic at the University of Southern California, said the easier determination is the physiological one. Women over 50 face an increased risk of pregnancy complications, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
"That reaches an almost prohibitive level at 55," Paulson said. "Most clinics won't treat women over 55. We're one of the few mainstream clinics that treat over 50. . . . Most mainstream clinics stop at 50."
Paulson's clinic has required a picture identification before treating any patients since he unwittingly helped a woman in her 60s become pregnant. When she started infertility treatment, she said she was 53, two years younger than USC's cut-off. She underwent a barrage of screening tests and produced medical records attesting to her age.
But when she became pregnant, she fessed up. Her healthy baby daughter was born in 1996, when the woman was 63, making hers the oldest successful pregnancy on record at that time.
Paulson believes that a cutoff of 55 is appropriate but resists the call for greater government regulation that might create a legal age limit.
"As soon as you get into an area of zero tolerance, it's easy to find a case when regulation becomes wrong or harmful," Paulson said. "To go and try to interfere with someone's reproductive rights is a very touchy area."
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan, author of "Smart Mice, Not So Smart People," believes that technology has zoomed past society's ability to deal with its ramifications and that legislators have ducked their responsibility to regulate its use. The more pressing issue, he said, is not necessarily the parents' age but that "Someone has to look out for the best interests of children."
Although there is some discussion linking a rise in autism with aging sperm, old fathers generally raise fewer eyebrows than old mothers. Think Strom Thurmond, Tony Randall, Larry King and Clint Eastwood, says Caplan, noting that "even when they have those kids and die, they've always had to have partners young enough to bear children. There's always been a parent there."
One major question raised by critics is whether aging parents will be able to cope with toddlers at retirement age.
But to Jan Andersen, who runs www.mothersover40 .com, that should be the least of society's worries.
"That's like taking a 25-year-old parent with seven kids living on welfare, who smokes and abuses her children and saying that she's a good parent just because she's young," she wrote.
That is a sentiment shared by Bousada, who in an interview with London's News of the World newspaper said age should not be a barrier to becoming a new mother.
"Everyone has to have children at the right time for them. This was the right time for me," she told the newspaper. "It was something I've always dreamed of."
Sahakian said Bousada claimed to be 55 and had Spanish medical lab paperwork sent to his office that indicated that was her age. She received eggs from an 18-year-old brunette and sperm from a blond, blue-eyed Italian American.
"I feel duped and taken advantage of," he said. "It could have had a bad ending. She could have died, the babies could have died."
Bousada, meanwhile, said she is looking for a younger man to marry.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070201/LOCAL17/702010471/1012 本人已认领该文编译，48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领。 本人已认领该文编译，48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领。 February 1, 2007
2007年2月1号
Experts debate when to stop biological clock
专家关于何时停止生育的争论
By Bob Pool and Maria L. La Ganga
作者： Bob Pool和Maria L. La Ganga
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-04 17:14
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