Category Archives: Human Reproduction

With the intensified direct-to-consumer marketing of male sexual medicine treatments, the recent legislative changes in reproductive rights and their unknown long-term effect on assisted reproduction availability for infertile men, and the explosion of telehealth, the practice of male sexual medicine is evolving at a breakneck pace. Specialists in male sexual and reproductive medicine have been tasked with digesting the evolving literature and forming evidence-based treatment guidelines for men with erectile dysfunction, Peyronie disease, infertility, and a host of other conditions. Compared with other areas of urology and medicine in general, male sexual and reproductive medicine has a disappointingly small number of well-designed prospective studies, along with a significant gap in funding for male reproductive health compared with female reproductive health. Several manuscripts published in 2022 started to narrow this gap and provide valuable level 1 evidence supporting (or discounting) key areas within sexual medicine and infertility.

For men with severe male factor infertility and nonobstructive azoospermia, surgical intervention is often indicated to retrieve sperm. Testicular sperm aspiration (TESA) and microdissection testicular sperm extraction (mTESE) are 2 commonly used approaches. A recent study by Jensen et al compared the efficacy of these 2 approaches in one of the few prospective randomized-controlled trials in male infertility.1 In the study, 49 patients were randomly assigned to mTESE with a sperm retrieval rate of 43%, and 51 patients were randomly assigned to TESA with a sperm retrieval rate of 22%. Men with failed TESA then went on to salvage mTESE with a combined sperm retrieval rate of 29%. Participants in the mTESE arm, however, had decreased postoperative testosterone levels, and 24% of participants experienced de novo hypogonadism at 6 months. Prior literature has suggested the testosterone drop is transient and that it will likely recover by 12 months. In summary, the study results showed that mTESE remains the gold standard for treatment of nonobstructive azoospermia, but patients should be counseled on the risk of de novo hypogonadism.

Despite this, mTESE success rates remain modest and are subject to the expertise and skill level of the laboratory and andrologist processing the tissue. Multiple hours can be spent trying to find the few viable sperm hidden among a sea of distractors. A recent study by Lee et al examined the power of artificial intelligence to detect human sperm in semen and mTESE samples using bright-field microscopy for nonobstructive azoospermic (NOA) patients.2 They first trained the program to identify sperm from semen samples of fertile patients. After validating the effectiveness of their algorithm, they retrained it to identify sperm in tissue from NOA patients that had been spiked with large amounts of sperm. When testing it on samples containing 3000 to 6000 sperm among other cell types, they achieved 84.0% positive predictive value and 72.7% sensitivity. Finally, without retraining their algorithm, they tested it on samples containing 10 to 200 sperm, replicating the rare sperm phenomenon seen in patients with NOA. Their model was able to detect 2969 sperm cells out of a total 3517 with an 84.4% PPV and 86.1% sensitivity. The clinical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in medicine continue to expand and have made their way to male infertility. Although this is not ready for immediate clinical use, it does highlight the need for further work to harness the power of technology to improve workflow of andrologists and in turn increase the success of infertility care for patients.

There has been a rapid rise in the need for male sexual health and reproductive specialists as the population ages and the number of comorbidities rise, although certain disease processes that fall within this specialty may be able to be addressed by a general urologist. In an analysis of the current educational landscape, Asanad et al call attention to the need for a structured educational curriculum in residency for male infertility.3 In a survey of urology residents, 54 of 72 respondents (75%) reported that male infertility comprises less than 10% of their training. Compared with residents who did not learn from infertility-trained faculty, residents who were exposed to infertility-trained faculty were 14.4 times more likely to feel confident performing infertility procedures (P < .001) and were more likely to feel confident performing fertility procedures after residency (P = .001).3 For trainees, their career depends on what they are exposed to. Smaller subdisciplines within urology may be more difficult to teach uniformly, and perhaps there are ways to improve the exposure to these areas for motivated residents (eg, visiting other programs).

Within male sexual health, one disease process that all urologists should be able to diagnose and initially manage is erectile dysfunction (ED). With studies citing the prevalence of ED as high as 52%, the demand for providers to manage ED remains sky high. Current treatment options include phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5is), intracavernosal injections, vacuum erection devices, and penile prosthesis. A newcomer to the field is shock wave therapy, which uses controlled energy to induce angiogenesis.

The short-term effectiveness of focused shock wave therapy for patients with moderate ED was investigated in a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled trial.4 In this study of 70 patients with moderate ED, 35 were randomly assigned to low-intensity shock wave therapy (LiST) and the other 35 were randomly assigned to sham therapy. After a 4 week washout from PDE5i, patients underwent LiST or sham twice weekly for 6 weeks. One month after treatment completion, 59% patients in the LiST group experienced an International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) score improvement of at least 5 points, compared with 1 patient (2.9%) in the sham group (P < .001). This effect remained present at 3 months post treatment. Thus, the short-term data for LiST are compelling and suggest this may be a viable option in the management of vasculogenic ED for men with mild/moderate ED. Further studies are desperately needed to validate these findings, and urologists have an obligation to provide patients with an honest assessment of the data and only recommend treatments where the risks (including the financial burden) are outweighed by the benefits.

In stark contrast to focused therapy, radial shock wave therapy uses low-pressure radial shock waves to treat ED. In order to characterize its effectiveness, a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial enrolled 80 men with mild to moderate ED.5 Patients were treated weekly with either radial wave therapy or sham therapy for 6 weeks, and the primary outcome measured was change in the IIEF score between baseline and after treatment. Study results showed that there was no significant difference in IIEF scores between groups at 6 weeks or 10 weeks after randomization. Study results displayed the lack of evidence to support the use of radial wave therapy.

Despite the evidence of their ineffectiveness in managing ED, shock wave therapy and particularly radial wave therapy have been heavily marketed directly to consumers in the US. A recent article using a secret-shopper method found troubling marketing and practice trends in the US. The authors noted that patients often are not adequately educated on the different types of treatments and may not know if the administrator is a licensed medical professional.6 With the average cost of treatment ranging from $2600 to $3900 per cycle, clinics offering radial wave therapy have an obvious financial incentive to continue marketing despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness.

Recent advancements in the field of male sexual health and reproduction present a bright future for the field with new diagnostic and therapeutic options on the horizon. However, it is apparent that demand still outpaces supply for mens health specialty care. Urologists must work diligently to fill this void to not only increase access for patients to receive evidence-based care, but also to prevent men from falling to prey to practices looking to take advantage of this unmet demand and a vulnerable patient population.

References

1. Jensen CFS, Ohl DA, Fode M, et al. Microdissection testicular sperm extraction versus multiple needle-pass percutaneous testicular sperm aspiration in men with nonobstructive azoospermia: a randomized clinical trial. Eur Urol. Published online May 19, 2022. doi:10.1016/j.eururo.2022.04.030

2. Lee R, Witherspoon L, Robinson M, et al. Automated rare sperm identification from low-magnification microscopy images of dissociated microsurgical testicular sperm extraction samples using deep learning. Fertil Steril. 2022;118(1):90-99. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2022.03.011

3. Asanad K, Nusbaum D, Fuchs G, Rodman JCS, Samplaski MK. The impact of male infertility faculty on urology residency training. Andrologia. 2022;54(8):e14457. doi:10.1111/and.14457

4. Kalyvianakis D, Mykoniatis I, Pyrgidis N, et al. The effect of low-intensity shock wave therapy on moderate erectile dysfunction: a double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial. J Urol. 2022;208(2):388-395. doi:10.1097/JU.0000000000002684

5. Sandoval-Salinas C, Saffon JP, Martnez JM, Corredor HA, Gallego A. Are radial pressure waves effective for the treatment of moderate or mild to moderate erectile dysfunction? A randomized sham therapy controlled clinical trial. J Sex Med. 2022;19(5):738-744. doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2022.02.010

6. Weinberger JM, Shahinyan GK, Yang SC, et al. Shock wave therapy for erectile dysfunction: marketing and practice trends in major metropolitan areas in the United States. Urol Pract. 2022;9(3):212-219. doi:10.1097/UPJ.0000000000000299

Continued here:
Male sexual health and reproductive medicine: All that glitters is not gold - Urology Times

Palm Beach, Florida (Newsworthy.ai) Friday Sep 23, 2022 @ 7:00 AM Eastern

Dr. Naomi Wolf, Best-Selling Author, Journalist, and the CEO of Daily Clout released new information on her Substack. Her post, Destroying Women, Poisoning Breast Milk, Murdering Babies, and Hiding the Truth was posted this week. The following excerpts are from Dr. Naomi Wolfs latest Substack Outspoken with Dr. Naomi Wolf.

Conflicted wire services, a press release distributor and Spotify censored us and the BBC attacked us to cover up our Pfizer Reports that show the destruction of pregnant women, fetuses, and babies.

The War Room/DailyClouts Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers a group of experts who have selflessly stepped up to analyze the tens of thousands of formerly internal Pfizer documents released under court order subsequent to a lawsuit by Aaron Siris firm, Siri & Glimstad, and a FOIA by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency have now fully demonstrated that Pfizers mRNA vaccines target human reproduction in comprehensive, likely irreversible ways

Dr. Wolf released the following statement to accompany this Substack post.

Soon humanity will realize that the miscarriages and the drops in birth rate worldwide documented by Igor Chudov; the drop in life expectancy; the neonatal deaths; the ruination of eggs and ovaries; were done to them with knowledge aforethought, and that, in many cases relating to fertility, the means for healing the bodies of women is not clear.

Every day my inbox seethes with women asking questions like

But mainstream news outlets, let alone our government agencies, are not helping women with this crisis. Rather, they are seeking to gaslight us about it, and to kill off reputationally or to censor those of us bringing the evidence to the light of day.

It is not just babies in utero or babies in the next generation, who are being harmed by the mRNA injections.

Babies alive now are being harmed in the very act of nursing the most sacred and primal way a newborn human experiences support, sustenance, and love. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is entering breast milk, and NIH studies confirm this. What does it do to feed mRNA in breast milk to newborns? We do not know. It is certainly making babies unwell and inconsolable: An online survey of 4455 nursing mothers who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine found that 7.1% of mothers reported an adverse effect in their breastfed infant. The most frequent symptoms were increased sleepiness and increased fussiness, both at about 3% of infants, with the frequency greater after the second dose. Less frequently reported side effects included fever, rash, diarrhea, vomiting, changes in feeding frequency, and other miscellaneous symptoms. All were numerically, but not statistically more frequent after the second dose. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK565969/

Are these mRNA injections ruining women and murdering babies?

Yes, AP and Reuters the Guardian and the BBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post indeed, all the Gates money, and Cares Act money, should all be asking those questions.

Not Just a Womens Issue

Male reproductivity is also under attack. War Room/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers Project Director and DailyClout COO Amy Kelly found that the Pfizer vaccine ingredients permeate the testes and affect the epididymis, the Sertoli cells the nurse cells of the testicles the Leydig cells, which are the primary sources of testosterone in males, and the germ cells. In other words, beyond just suppressing sperm count and sperm motility, the injections damage baby boys and small boys, and teenage boys ability to grow up normally in terms of the development of masculinity itself.

Daily we shoulder the burden of telling this dark but vital story. Because the ones who call themselves journalists, the ones who call themselves wire services, who call themselves press release services are, sadly, so corrupt as to be unavailable.

As the abyss of human survival itself yawns open, these traitors to humanity are too preoccupied to document it; because hey, they are busy.

They are busy, cashing the checks.

Dr. Naomi Wolf

About Dr. Naomi Wolf

Dr. Naomi Wolf is a bestselling author, columnist, and professor; she is a graduate of Yale University and received a doctorate from Oxford. She is co-founder and CEO of DailyClout.io, a successful civic tech company. Since the publication of her landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, which The New York Times called one of the most important books of the 19th century, Dr. Wolfs other seven bestsellers have been translated worldwide. The End of America and Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, predicted the current crisis in authoritarianism and presented effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement. She was a Rhodes scholar herself and was an advisor to the Clinton re-election campaign and to Vice President Al Gore.

About DailyClout.io

DailyClout is a company that builds digital tools and produces media to help anyone, from any walk of life, use and affect democracy more powerfully. Our mission is to empower all people with information, facts, and opinion from all viewpoints, that when combined with DailyClouts proprietary platform, enables them to be well informed and to exercise their rights to directly weigh in on issues and legislation so that their voices are heard at the local, state or federal level.

Read the original here:
The Worst Thing That Can Happen to the Human Species, is Happening Dr. Naomi Wolf is Available for Interview - Digital Journal

I usually start these blog entries with an idea and then see where the research takes me. Certainly I go down many rat holes. Thanks to the recent reversal of reproductive rights by the SCOTUS, with perhaps more to come, I wondered what SCAM alternatives were available when/if reality-based reproductive interventions were no longer an option. I wonder no longer.

There are four aspects of reproduction I will consider, along with some rat holes: contraception, infertility, erectile dysfunction, and pregnancy termination.

As I start this, my assumption was there would be few SCAM approaches to pregnancy prevention, as SCAMs have no efficacy when there is a hard end point to the intervention. There are no SCAM therapies for the infections I see most days as many have almost 100% mortality rates. No one, I would hope, would use a SCAM for the sole treatment of endocarditis or meningitis although there is the occasional person who will rely solely on SCAMs for cancer treatment. It does not end well.

I have told this story before, but I first learned about SCAMs early in my practice when I was called to see a case of wet gangrene of the leg. A young female had a sarcoma of her leg that would have likely been cured with amputation. She chose naturopathy instead and the cancer advanced until most of her leg was cancer, much of it dead and putrefying. That is why they called me, not there was anything I could do. She refused any care (she was admitted because she had passed out) and that night the cancer eroded into an artery and she bled out. That is where I first encountered naturopathy and the first of many cases where cancer denial was an important aspect of the patients care.

Like SCAM cancer therapies, it is obvious when contraception fails. I would think pregnancy would be harder to deny than cancer, but I will not be surprised if the comments have stories that demonstrate otherwise. The if only they had used our SCAM sooner gambit is unlikely to be a convincing argument as to why birth control failed.

Before I wander the SCAMs, though, I wondered how people avoided pregnancy in the era before oral contraceptives. Sure, there are barrier methods, abstinence (like that ever works), and the rhythm method. And you know what we call people who use the rhythm method for contraception? Parents.

If you visit the old towns of the West, it appears that most of the hotels and restaurants were once bordellos. I wonder where they found all the workers for these bordellos. It would seem that most of the female population of the Old West would have to be employed in these houses of ill repute.

But how did the prostitutes, and others, avoid pregnancy? Were there, for lack of a better term, natural forms of birth control? Or were the bordellos filled with their offspring? Besides a variety of barrier methods (half a lemon used as a cervical cap!), the techniques used were not that different than modern SCAM ideas:

Roman women put a leather pouch filled with cats liver on their left foot during sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Some women believed that spitting three times into a frogs mouth was a good method of birth control. European women thought that they could prevent pregnancy by turning backwards a wheel of a mill at midnight. And, in many cultures women constantly wore various necklaces and amulets, which were supposed to have the power of controlling the act of conception. Women were advised to hold their breath and draw their bodies back during sex in order to stop the sperm from entering her body. It was also suggested a woman to jump backwards seven times after sexual intercourse or take something to cause sneezing.

As one website noted:

Until modern contraceptives were invented, women relied on all kinds of ancient birth control methods that had inconsistent results. Some were even dangerous, including the use of heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic, which did prevent conception but also led to organ failure and brain damage.

I was also amazed to learn that the relationship between ovulation and menses was not discovered until the 1930s, so that method of contraception was unknown for most of human history.

Also used were:

syringes to inject mercury, arsenic, and vinegar into the body to induce abortions or treat diseases.

Much to my amusement, one Boston brothel had:

a homeopathic doctor considered to be crackpotty at the time, according to Beaudry. He prescribed unusual remedies for the women, most likely for treating sexually transmitted diseases and inducing abortions.

He would likely be considered crackpotty today.

One would think, wouldnt one, that if acupuncture is efficacious in aiding in pregnancy and given its numerous alleged salubrious effects on female and male reproductive physiology, acupuncture and traditional Chinese pseudo-medicine could also be used for contraception. I can think of one application where acupuncture might be efficacious, but there are no acupuncture points on the genitals.

While I was not surprised to find zero papers on the Pubmeds on using acupuncture for birth control, I could also not find any with a general Google search.

There are no SCAMs that are touted for contraception. Not acupuncture, not homeopathy, not chiropractic, not naturopathy. No surprise. There would be no way to rationalize away pregnancy.

One site mentioned in passing, stone seed root, thistle, wild carrot seed, and ginger root as potential contraceptives. I would suggest not.

Since, as noted above, the goal is to adjust and harmonize the state of the female body from a holistic approach and there is no useful form of SCAM contraception, the harmonized state appears to be barefoot and pregnant.

Infertility has a complex differential diagnosis with a variety of anatomical and hormonal abnormalities leading to an inability to conceive. It also makes for a huge literature, although like most of the SCAM literature, high-quality studies are few and far between. I am going to discuss a few I find instructive and or amusing.

SCAM providers are fond of claiming that their raison detre is to help return the body to its optimal state of homeostasis or as one review noted, to adjust and harmonize the state of the female body from a holistic approach.

There are a vast number of SCAMs that are used as an adjunctive therapy for infertility. In China, not unsurprisingly, Traditional Chinese Pseudo Medicine, especially acupuncture and moxibustion, are used as primary treatment for infertility. And, as is always the case in studies out of China, the studies are uniformly positive.

It is a massive literature of Tooth Fairy science and I will note here an infertility study that was randomized and double-blind comparing real acupuncture with placebo acupuncture (same thing) in patients undergoing IVF treatment. The results? No difference, really; p=0.038. But what was amusing was that the pregnancy was increased in the placebo group:

The overall pregnancy rate was significantly higher in the placebo acupuncture group than that in the real acupuncture group (55.1 versus 43.8%, respectively).

But there is no real acupuncture, as I have argued before. And their conclusion? Not that doing two interventions with no reality-based reason for efficacy is going to lead to random noise that looks significant. Nope:

Placebo acupuncture was associated with a significantly higher overall pregnancy rate when compared with real acupuncture. Placebo acupuncture may not be inert.

LOL. What is inert is the critical thinking functions of the researchers.

Reading even the meta-analysis is the usual mess, because acupuncture, as always, is a heterogeneous intervention, with traditional, electro, cat gut, and warm being some of the variations used and compared. It is quite the mess for drawing any conclusions about whether a specific intervention is effective. But as I have mentioned before, it is not the specific intervention that is allegedly useful, it is the concept of acupuncture that is allegedly effective.

But if limited to quality studies, the efficacy of acupuncture is not impressive:

There was no statistically significant difference between the acupuncture group and no acupuncture (intervention) controls around the time of embryo transfer (ET; risk ratio, RR, 1.24, 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.02-1.50) or in unblinded trials, trials blinded to physicians and double-blind trials (95% CI 1.26-1.88, 0.82-1.33 and 0.89-1.25, respectively). This was also the case when comparing acupuncture with sham acupuncture controls around the time of ET (RR, 1.03, 95% CI 0.87-1.22) or when restricting to unblinded trials, trials blinded to physicians and double-blind trials (95% CI 0.80-2.02, 0.82-1.18 and 0.77-1.17, respectively).

Much of the primary literature is in China and, for example, I could not find the Chinese Journal of Family Planning and similar journals to see the details about the effects of TCM retention enema on tubal obstructive infertility. Yes. Really.

A warm enema containing Chinese medicine is administered before going to bed to treat fallopian tube adhesion. The drug can be absorbed directly by rectal mucosa, which is beneficial to improve the congestion, edema, adhesion, and hyperplasia of local tissues, and thus restoring the function of the fallopian tube.

What continues to amaze me is how health care professionals, well versed in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, etc., apply the techniques of reality on fiction. It only happens in medicine. You do not see engineers trying to apply the physics of Warner Brothers cartoons to the building of bridges and tunnels. There is no alternative engineering or aviation but doctors continue to act like acupuncture and other SCAMs are not ludicrous.

Huge numbers of herbal preparations have been tried for male and female infertility, more than I have time to review except to note the efficacy is often secondary endpoints like cervical mucus consistency or sperm motility and concentration, not conception rates.

Chiropractic has been used for infertility but:

There are very few original data articles documenting responses of infertile females treated with spinal manipulation.

And:

In the absence of a robust body of primary data literature, the use of spinal manipulation the management of female infertility should be approached with caution.

The Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research (not on Pubmed as Pubmed does not list science fiction) has papers purporting to show benefit of chiropractic in infertile patients. And, to no ones surprise, chiropractors tout the benefits of their interventions on the web.

I can find next to nothing on Pubmed using homeopathy or naturopathy for infertility. Well, for homeopathy preparations it would be exactly nothing.

The acupoints for erectile dysfunction are distant from the problematic organ, in one study being, slightly below the navel, slightly above the hairline at the back of the head, between the inside ankle bone and the achilles tendon, in the inside wrist. And the results?

No definite conclusions can be drawn.

A conclusion supported in the most recent meta-analysis where:

Low quality evidence shows beneficial effect of acupuncture as adjunctive treatment for people mainly with psychogenic ED.

And the best results were:

Acupuncture combined with tadalafil appeared to have better effect on increasing cure rate.

Lol. It takes a Western medicine to get the best results.

There is the also creepy Clinical Holistic Medicine: Holistic Sexology and Acupressure Through the Vagina (Hippocratic Pelvic Massage).

Noted in one clinical study:

The most difficult problem of this procedure seems to be that it makes it very difficult to be sure that the procedure and all the involved steps are always necessary and rational.

Eye roll and head shake.

There is nothing on the PubMeds for using chiropractic, homeopathy or naturopathy for ED, but no shortage of websites promoting their use.

I wondered about homeopathy, so I picked a website at random. The first suggestion is Agnus castus:

This remedy may be helpful if problems with impotence develop after a man has led a life of intense and frequent sexual activity for many years. A cold sensation felt in the genitals is a strong indication for Agnus castus. People who need this remedy are often very anxious about their health and loss of abilities and may have problems with memory and concentration. This remedy is one of the best homeopathic medicine for ED.

Agnus castus is the chaste berry, which one site says:

The fruit has been historically used for reducing sexual desire.

As one site notes:

The leaves of this plant were used to adorn the beds of Greek women during the absence of their husbands so as to prevent any impure thoughts from entering their minds and also by medieval monks to repress sexual desire. In the actual provings the remedy has shown that it does repress sexual instinct and desire.

And:

Agnus castus is indicated for promiscuous young people who have abused their sexual energies through either homosexual or heterosexual multiple contacts and who have contracted repeated venereal infections, especially gonorrhea.

Huh? Homeopathic teaching is that a product that causes the symptoms undergoes serial dilution and succussion to make a more potent medication. Somehow a medication that reduces sexual desire increases libido when homeopathized? Writing these entries leads to some of the weirdest stuff.

While no trials can be identified in the Pubmeds, acupuncture was used for abortions in China although it was unreliable. Cue Louie. Acupuncture does have forbidden points. Specifically if you stimulate:

San Yin Chiao (SP6) in conjunction with He Gu (LI4). The abortion is generally realized within 24 hours.

But thats in humans, in Wistar rats stimulating the forbidden points does nothing:

We found no evidence that acupuncture in LI4-SP6 and sacral points could be harmful to the pregnancy outcome in Wistar rats.

But then, why would it? Was trying to confirm or deny a fiction worth abusing and killing rats? I doubt it.

I have often wondered how they map human acupoints and meridians onto animals; evidently so do acupuncturists in search of One Acupuncture. One Acupuncture to rule them all, One Acupuncture to find them, One Acupuncture to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, I suppose.

Moving toward a neuroanatomically accurate veterinary acupuncture system requires rethinking current atlases and embarking upon a systematic analysis of the human points in terms of where, if at all, corresponding sites exist in the nonhuman.

Good luck with that. Because you might run into issues such as those with Boa constrictors, although why one would want to torture a snake with acupuncture is uncertain.

Thus, the objective of this study was to map and describe the main points of acupuncture in the species Boa constrictor, and their indications to promote the balance of this species. The unprecedented result of the mapping was the discovery of specific acupoints with individual location indications without distribution in specific meridians and dispersedly distributed in the body.

Careful, clever, scientists, they measured the heart rate:

HR was obtained by counting heart rate.

And if you wondered how they found acupuncture points?

Use of the electrostimulator and location of EL points 30 10/100 Hz NKLpoints of Brazilian origin. The EL30 is an electronic device that is intended exclusively for non-invasive applications in the technique called electro-acupuncture. It was conceived as a point detection instrument, where an electrostimulation therapy, used in different media with a purpose of detection and determination of qualities as stimulus conditions for different species and for different points. It was traversed with an exploratory tip of the animals body points to an occurrence of an audible signal indicating the localized point and an impedance. The sensitivity controller has been adjusted to find a better setting.

More animal abuse for no good reason. But I digress. Again.

Consistency not being a strong point in acupuncture, when acupuncture was used as an adjunct to medical abortion they used Hegu (LI 4), Sanyinjiao (SP 6), Neiguan (PC 6) and Kunlun (BL 60). I suspect the increased efficacy was due to BL 60.

Acupuncturists can get quite wiggens over the forbidden points, going as far as to suggest the auricular acupuncture should be avoided in pregnancy. I would add it should be avoided when not pregnant as well. Several reviews suggest acupuncture is safe in pregnancy when correctly applied, whatever correctly applied might be.

While I can find papers where acupuncture is purported to prevent spontaneous abortion, and I can find nothing to confirm the abortifacient effects of acupuncture.

I can find nothing on using homeopathy, chiropractic or naturopathic techniques to induce abortion, although they allege they can help prevent spontaneous abortion/miscarriage. The one-way street that is SCAM.

Herbs? Theres a problem. I will admit, I am not one for social media. Twitter is a time suck and Facebook opaque and pointless. I certainly do not grok the concept of influencers. So TikTok? So out of my geezer understanding. But, per the Rolling Stone (geezer cred?) TikTok is a popular source for information on DYI abortions using pennyroyal, blue cohosh, and mugwort. Herbs that are not efficacious but are certainly toxic and could be fatal. As one PubMed review noted:

the ingestion of plants to induce abortion involves the risk of severe morbidity and mortality.

Hard to believe, but when it comes to medical advice it is suggested:

not to listen to what you hear on TikTok.

It is a question with no real answer: would a SCAM provider be any better?

It turns out self-managed abortion is not that uncommon, with 7% of US women of reproductive age (kind of redundant, women not in their reproductive age are unlikely to need an abortion) going the DYI route, often with herbs and without success.

With the Handmaidens Tale decision this year, I expect DYI abortions will only increase with resultant morbidity and mortality. Desperate people will do desperate things.

Mark Crislip, MD has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon, since 1990. He is a founder and the President of the Society for Science-Based Medicinewhere he blogs under the name sbmsdictator.He has been voted a US News and World Report best US doctor, best ID doctor in Portland Magazine multiple times, has multiple teaching awards and, most importantly, the Attending Most Likely To Tell It Like It Is by the medical residents at his hospital.His growing multi-media empire can be found at edgydoc.com.

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Alternative Reproduction? - Science Based Medicine

Nature, red in tooth and claw. According to Alfred Tennysons poem, In Memoriam A.H.H., that line describes Creations final law. Scholars say it captures the sometimes ruthless nature of well, nature. Tennysons assessment of existence is that survival is driven by competition, where the scrappy and the clever and the strong are the winners. The species that cant muster the ability to grab what they need, using tooth and claw if necessary, fall by the wayside.

Indeed, economists like Thomas Malthus saw the value of human struggle in driving progress. One can draw a line from that thinking to Charles Darwin and his On the Origin of Species, in which the power of that struggle instigates the development and differentiation of life on Earth.

Darwins theory of evolution is an example of how science can reflect the ideas of the time, says author Kristin Ohlson.

Ohlson turns that idea on its head, seeking out instead the collaborative elements of existence in her new book, Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World, published Sept. 6 by Patagonia. In the present time, science has begun to illuminate the myriad connections and bonds that different forms of life have with each other and how critical they are to survival. Its cooperation thats responsible for the interlinkages of species firing off signals to each other in an otherwise quiet forest. Such mutually beneficial relationships are also responsible for the emergence of complex, eukaryotic cells, without which multicellular organisms wouldnt exist, she writes.

Through her visits with scientists, government officials and ranchers, Ohlson finds a metaphor in these partnerships for how we humans view our relationship with other lifeforms and each other. Perhaps following the example of the species around us and the way they work together could help us tackle vexing problems such as biodiversity loss and the changing climate, she muses.

Mongabays John Cannon spoke with Ohlson in August about the origins of the book and what she learned from writing it. This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: What prompted you to write this book? How did it get started?

Kristin Ohlson: I had written this other book called The Soil Will Save Us, and I got to meet all these scientists and farmers and ranchers who were trying to come up with an agriculture that actually heals landscapes. That was, of course, really exciting. One of the things that was so exciting for me about that book was understanding that plants have this relationship with the microorganisms in the soil. I didnt know that before. The official line that gets pumped out from industrial agriculture [companies] is that plants are just takers. Theyre just sucking up all the goodness out of the soil, all the nutrients and minerals, and thats why you need to keep buying their products to replenish those nutrients and minerals. But as it turns out, plants are givers as well as takers. That mutualistic relationship that plants have with the bacteria and the fungi and the protozoa and the little animals, that whole soil community, was one of the most exciting realizations from that book. So I wanted to build upon that.

Then, I went to a conference where Suzanne Simard was speaking. She was talking about her incredible research into how trees are connected by this underground network of fungi that ferry water and nutrients and chemical messages all through the forest, helping the forest at large be a resilient ecosystem. I sort of levitated in my seat and thought, oh, cooperation in nature. Thats what I want to write about.

Mongabay: Do you think science is moving in the direction of greater recognition of the importance of cooperation, as opposed to competition, in nature?

Kristin Ohlson: Its hard for me to be the one to say that were moving in that direction. [Ecologist] Judith Bronstein [edited] the standard text now on the standard, authoritative text on mutualism. I think she would probably say that research and perspective are growing. Unfortunately, one of the things that we all struggle with is that science has to be funded. Whos funding science? Its not the scientist. The funding is not [aimed] at understanding nature and helping humans adapt and work with nature. Its usually science that ultimately will fund products to have us hack nature. So who funds science is a big roadblock.

I do think that probably more of this science is growing. I mean, people around the world are talking about [Simards] work. Its almost like magic, in a way, right? We look at a forest, and theres all this stuff going on there. And we have no clue because we cant see with just our eyes. There are these powerful connections going on among living things.

Mongabay: Why do you think theres been so much emphasis on competition, the tooth and claw, in nature?

Kristin Ohlson: I think competition and conflict are naturally more interesting to us. We couldnt have thrived as living things for as long as we have without having an instinct to be on the lookout for danger. I think thats a big part of it. We naturally give our attention to things that seem threatening. We tend not to understand that cooperation is kind of the default. We have massive cities [that] couldnt function without massive amounts of cooperation at every level. But were only drawn to where that cooperation breaks down, where theres a gunfight or a robbery, or a building falling down.

Its the same way with our bodies [that are] built from special cells that were created by a mutualistic bond between ancient microorganisms. We are built from the floor up by these elements of cooperation. All these cells cooperate within our body, and the cells cooperate to form organs, and those organs cooperate with each other. We dont notice that because thats just the backdrop. We [only] notice when that cooperation breaks down. One of the scientists I interviewed talks about cancer as being a failure of cooperation.

Mongabay: In the book, you cover the discussion around competition and cooperation in nature and how it stretches back in history.

Kristin Ohlson: What really stands out for me is how much culture affects science and how much science affects culture. The ideas that we live with now mostly stem from Darwin and his colleagues. I was interested to find out that Darwin, as he developed the theory of evolution, was a product of the ideas of his time. Maybe just in the Western world, we have the idea of the lone genius, the person who just figures it all out all by himself or herself. But no, he was very much influenced by the ideas of Thomas Malthus, who was a wealthy pastor who argued that human reproduction would always outstrip resources and that the struggle over those resources and even death were good for society. When Darwin was casting around for a theory to make sense of all these observations he had made about the great diversity of life around us and the fossil records showing that there were life forms that no longer exist, he read Malthus and his ideas about progress through struggle. The thing that really stood out for me was how science can reflect the ideas of the time.

When I was researching, it took me a while to understand that what I was looking for was scientists studying mutually beneficial relationships between species. I found [ecologist Douglas] Bouchers book about mutualism back in the mid-80s. At the very beginning of his book, he said that, for a long time, mutualism had been sort of dismissed and wasnt an active area of study, but that was really changing, and there was a big return to that. I thought, wait a minute. What happened to that big return?

Mongabay: Did Bouchers book help lay the foundation for grappling with these concepts? You also mention biologist Lynn Margulis and her work on the origins of life and how it has diversified.

Kristin Ohlson: It laid some foundation. [Margulis] was castigated for years for her ideas that we are formed from this union between two microorganisms, and thats how our eukaryotic cells developed, and that those cells were able to form relationships with other cells, and then all the diversity of life that followed. [Margulis] was tough. She really persisted in pushing those ideas even though the culture of science was pushing back pretty hard.

Mongabay: How might our understanding of cooperation in the natural world inform our responses to these crises like climate change and the extinction of species?

Kristin Ohlson: One of the things thats important to realize is that we are part of the natural world. We have separated ourselves philosophically from the rest of nature, but that is a fools errand. We are part of the rest of nature, and we are, in fact, healthier, and our capabilities are enhanced when we have a connection with the natural world. What I hope people come away [from the book] with is realizing that we have to cooperate with the rest of nature instead of just saying were humans, and its a shame that other species cant make it while we thrive.

I wrote in the book about that stream in Oregon, where, back in 1957, somebody put a random stream through a culvert because they wanted to put a road over the top of it. And it turned out that the culvert completely disrupted salmon migration up that stream. The culvert was too high, and also, the water coming through the culvert came down at such an angle that it scoured the bottom of the creek and ruined the salmon spawning habitat on that side of the culvert. For 62 years, this culvert had prevented salmon and also Pacific lamprey from migrating up [the stream].

People could have said, what a shame, but we need that road, so were not going to change anything. But no. People studied exactly why this culvert was preventing that migration, and they changed it a couple of years ago. Theres a culvert now that the salmon and lamprey can move up. I think its 16 or 17 miles [26-27 kilometers] of the stream above that old culvert where there are now salmon and lamprey. In that case, people were saying, OK, we can have both. We can have the road, and we can have the salmon migration if we just figure out what the particulars are. Its not only a boon for the salmon and the lamprey theyre getting more and really nice habitat but [also for] all the creatures that feast upon the salmon and the lamprey. Then, as I found when I was doing the chapter about Suzanne Simards work, those salmon carcasses that those creatures take out of the river and eat part of and drop in the forests deliver a very specific form of nitrogen essential to forests flourishing.

Mongabay: Can you talk about the cooperative efforts of farmers and ranchers in Nevada working with scientists to restore wetlands in the U.S. state of Nevada?

Kristin Ohlson: That didnt start as an effort to rebuild wetlands in Nevada. It started with scientists and government agencies wanting to improve streams so that this one local trout could survive. To improve those local streams, they had to get some ranchers to change the way their cattle were managed. That part of the United States is an area where theres been huge friction between ranchers and government agencies and scientists for years. I think ranchers in that area generally felt under attack by a range of people who say that cattle ranching ruins landscapes, that [beef] is bad to eat.

Yet they are people who love the landscape, love the land [and] want to live in a thriving ecosystem. But it was hard for them to change their ways when these scientists and government agencies first got in touch with them. But they did start to make some changes in the way that they managed their cattle, mostly in terms of how much time the cattle could spend by these creeks. It was a not-insignificant change for the ranchers because it meant more work for them.

[But with] this small change of how they were managing their cattle, nature started to fill in those degraded sides of the creeks. Thats one of the things that I just loved about that story was that nature was ready with seeds that were already in the soil or that drifted in on the wind or that came from the animals that came to drink there. Vegetation started growing around the streams, and the ranchers were cheered somewhat by that.

Then, the beaver came in and just completely changed this landscape. The before-and-after pictures are just stunning. In the past, you see these same creeks that are just narrow and dry on all sides. [Today, there is] a completely different ecosystem coming up with all this riparian vegetation and big ponds that the beavers had built, which is bringing in wildlife, the actual water table around the creek started to change. It was just such an inspiring story, not only [of] the land changing, but of the relationship among the ranchers and the scientists and the government agency people changing. They all felt like it was such a triumph, even though they all had to change a little bit.

Mongabay: It is a really fascinating case. What other stories from the book stand out to you?

Kristin Ohlson: I just loved all the stories, and I loved doing the research. One of the stories that I just loved [and that] really became a kind of a guiding metaphor for me is at the end of the first chapter. I was talking to Katie McMahen, who was a colleague of Suzanne Simard and who is starting some new research to try to regenerate a landscape in Canada that had been ruined by a mine tailings [dam] flood. One of the things [McMahen] was doing was taking soil from the forest nearby that hadnt been ruined and putting handfuls [in the holes where] she was planting these new little trees out in this ruined landscape. She said, its ecosystem memories and legacies. Its little bits of DNA, its seeds, its little bits of fungi, fungal spores, bacterial spores, all these things that were part of that vibrant forest ecosystem, and were borrowing it to start new life there. I just love that idea that, even in really degraded landscapes, there are probably still some ecosystem memories and legacies. I really do like to extend that idea to the landscape of human relationships, and I believe that even now, especially in the United States, where things are so conflicted and [there is] so much political disagreement, that there are those legacies and memories that will help us evolve a more cooperative culture.

Banner image: Flowers and bees share one of the most well-known mutualistic relationships in nature. Image by Ralphs_Fotos via Pixabay (Public domain).

John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find himon Twitter: @johnccannon

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Examining cooperation in nature: Q&A with author Kristin Ohlson - Mongabay.com

To the editor,

I am writing in response to the science presented in the letter Simple scientist questions hot potato abortion issue (Aug. 4).

The suggestion that there is a simple definition of life is misleading. Rather, there is a whole set of attributes that set the living apart from the inanimate.

READ MORE: Simple scientist questions hot potato abortion issue

READ MORE: Abortion ban: It cant happen here, right?

The individual is simply defined as a separate organism. By the authors own logic on using this, however, I would argue that a human embryo is not yet an individual as defined by biology, as it is reliant on the living maternal tissues to which it is intimately connected for survival and is therefore far from separate.

Genetic similarities and differences are not used in defining the individual in biology, simply because it gets complicated. For example, many species do sexual reproduction but also produce clonal offspring that are genetically identical to a single parent. Honeybees produce some individuals with a single set of chromosomes (male drones) and others with two sets (female workers).

A number of populations of whiptail lizards are exclusively female and do not reproduce sexually at all, yet their offspring are not strictly clonal due to chromosome rearrangements in the production of eggs. What if we simply apply genetic identity to defining the individual for just humans then? It still doesnt work. If I get a liver transplant, for example, does that mean that my new liver has an identity and rights separate from my own?

Clearly we have moved far beyond simple definitions in modern society, and prefer not to live as worker bees that are solely part of the collective whole with no voice or choice.

Catharine White

Terrace, B.C.

Editors note: Catherine White, PhD teaches biology at Coast Mountain College and is responding to John Krisinger, PhD who taught biology and nursing at Northwest Community College.

Do you have a comment about this story? email: michael.willcock@terracestandard.com

abortionLetter to the EditorScience

Here is the original post:
Abortion rights: the science is not so simple after all Terrace Standard - Terrace Standard

Scientists generally agree that evolutionary biology was born in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species. The idea that species can mutate (i.e., change over time) was not new. Decades earlier, Darwins grandfather, Erasmus, had proposed something similar, designing a ladder-like diagram to show how humans evolved from single-celled organisms. Darwin went a step further, suggesting that natural selection was the mechanism by which species adapted to their environments.

But theres more to the story, admits Steve Dorus, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University. Darwin surmised that natural selection wasnt just about survival. He argued that some of the most dramatic differences between species were reproductive traits like ornaments and armaments, says Dorus, referring to peacock tails and beetle horns, respectively. These traits came about because they were subjected to a type of selection associated with reproductive competition.

Darwin called his new theory sexual selection, which he outlined in his 1871 tour-de-force, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Whereas Origin sidestepped human evolution, Descent tackled it head-on. The thought of males vying for access to females, who, in turn, desired the biggest, most attractive mates, brought evolution into sharp focus. Natural selection and sexual selection explain how species have evolved over time, Dorus adds.

Analyzing the origins of biodiversity is at the heart of the Center for Reproductive Evolution (CRE) in the College of Arts and Sciences. Housed in the biology department, the CRE explores patterns and processes of sexual selection, including their underlying molecular mechanisms and genomic consequences.

The center was co-founded by Dorus, Weeden Professor Scott Pitnick and Professor Emeritus John Belote in 2016. A shared interest in the study of reproductionalong with a recognition of the potential synergism of combining our research efforts, Pitnick sayspersuaded everyone to join forces. The 2019 appointment of Assistant Professor Yasir Ahmed-Braimah has brought additional expertise in genomics and bioinformatics.

Our philosophy is grounded in interdisciplinary science, says Dorus, who, like his colleagues, studies diverse biological systems, including flies, beetles, mammals, birds and fish. The Center for Reproductive Evolution offers complementary approaches to fundamental questions about sexual and ecological selection, diversification and speciation, and evolutionary genetics and genomics.

The teams workhorse is the common fruit fly. Formally known as Drosophila, this small, ubiquitous creature is one of the oldest, most effective genetic model organisms. That they are easy and inexpensive to culture in a lab environment is a boon to the CRE.

And thanks to new and emerging technologies (along with funding from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation), the CRE is helping rewrite the rules of biological research. The center is collecting, storing, analyzing and disseminating information like never before, Dorus says. What was once impossible is now commonplace.

The CRE is part of the Universitys Big Data and Data Analytics research group. Established in 2018, the group develops and applies data analysis methodologies to various fields, including genomicsthe study of an organisms genes. Working at the nexus of evolutionary biology, genomics and computer science means dealing with copious amounts of data, says Dorus, who helped found the group with Pitnick and several others, including Professor Chilukuri Mohan, an artificial intelligence expert in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

In addition to resolving behavioral, morphological and physiological mechanisms of reproduction, the CRE excels at genetic mapping and characterizationdetermining the location and function of genes that confer specific phenotypes. Such research explains why individuals of a species often have similar, but rarely identical characteristics. (Think eye color, skin tone or face shape in humans.) Genetic mapping also provides insights into complex evolutionary processes stretching back millions of years.

Ahmed-Braimah is part of a new wave of Syracuse scientists fluent in omics-based technologies and advanced algorithms. (Omics refers to subdisciplines like genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics.) Technology is rewriting the rules of biological research, says Ahmed-Braimah, the Big Data group's first biology hire. Whereas we used to have lots of theory and little data, were now inundated by data.

To appreciate the science of the CRE is to understand the complex relationship between sperm and the female reproductive tract (FRT). Only since the 1950s have scientists confirmed that the FRT plays a key role in sperm maturation, a process in which sperm cells become competent to fertilize eggs. Sometimes sperm are not compatible with the FRT where they reside, leading to what is known as idiopathic infertility. Its a major human health burden, says Dorus, adding that the disease strikes about 30% of infertile couples worldwide.

Technology is rewriting the rules of biological research. Whereas we used to have lots of theory and little data, were now inundated by data.

Caitlin McDonough-Goldstein G20, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, became interested in idiopathic infertility while a student at Syracuse. Under Dorus and Pitnicks supervision, she tested thousands of tissue samples from Drosophila FRTs. Analyzing the flies gene expression and protein production helped McDonough-Goldstein understand the FRTs molecular nature. It also made her realize how changes after mating can regulate reproductive events and ensure fertility.

McDonough-Goldsteins work serves as a blueprint for other studies of ejaculate-by-female interactions. For instance, it has informed those by former CRE postdoctoral researcher Erin McCullough, now an assistant professor of biology at Clark University in Massachusetts, and former Syracuse Ph.D. student Emma Whittington G19, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oslos Natural History Museum.

Whittington, in fact, discovered that female-derived proteins contribute to sperm composition in the FRT. Although the precise ramifications of her findings are still being evaluated, they suggest that males and females contribute to sperm production. The development of sperm transcends the male and female reproductive tracts, requiring sophisticated molecular continuity and cooperation between the sexes, says Dorus, adding that Whittingtons findings were the subject of a recent cover story in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Zeeshan Syed, a fourth year CRE postdoctoral researcher, revels in laboratory and computational biological research. Witness his involvement with the CREs Drosophila Evolutionary Phenomics (DEP) project, which considers the evolution of biodiversity on an unrivaled scale.

Syed is part of a team of researchers quantifying about 25 complex traits in 150 different species of fruit flies. The traits include body dimensions, sex-specific lifespan, patterns of reproductive aging, sperm and egg morphology, courtship and remating behavior, to name a few. Its work thats 50 million years in the making, he says.

Involving colleagues from Cornell and Stanford universities, the DEP project aims to sequence the full genomes of all 150 species. Its hard to imagine a bigger Big Data project than this one, says Ahmed-Braimah, adding that such initiatives are a dream for scientists of his ilk.

Still, the DEP project is an exercise in logistics, what with maintaining live cultures of many different species and running myriad experiments to measure their diverse traits. One of Syeds jobs is to organize the activities of a small fleet of undergraduates. (Some 30 biology majors have logged more than a thousand hours on the project over the past four years.) Hes also responsible for providing individualized training in fluorescence microscopy and morphometric analysis, the latter of which is used to measure the length of fly sperm.

If you want to conduct big data science, you need to be prepared to lead a diverse team of researchers, Syed says. Working with professors Pitnick, Ahmed-Braimah, Dorus and Belote on the DEP project has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, turning me into a well-rounded, highly integrative biologist.

Pitnick, for one, thrives on working with young researchers. Our undergraduates are curious, insightful and creative, he says. Many of them improve our research in meaningful ways, and nearly all of them co-author multiple publications.

Case in point: Pitnick protg Amaar Asif 22 was among a handful of undergraduates who co-authored a major paper for the peer-reviewed Cells. The lead author was Pitnick, who, while measuring fly sperm, uncovered a novel developmental mechanism enabling flies with small testes to produce unusually long sperm. For Asif, the chance to contribute to such a discovery was transformative.

Our undergraduates are curious, insightful and creative. Many of them improve our research in meaningful ways, and nearly all of them co-author multiple publications.

Theres so much we dont know about this mechanism, and there are very few science papers to reference it, says Asif, who earned bachelors degrees in biology and neuroscience. Its uncharted territory.

An ongoing priority for the CRE is to understand the evolutionary link between sperm and FRT length. Pitnick laid the foundation in the 1990s, when he found that sperm in some species of Drosophila can grow up to two and half inches in length20 times longer than the fly itself and a thousand times longer than average human sperm. Pitnick also realized that as sperm became larger and fewer in number, the females got less of them per copulation. As few as a couple dozen sperm per mating, in some cases, he points out. This caused the flies to mate more often.

The takeaway here is that big, high-investment sperm have a better chance of penetrating the limited storage space of the FRT. Making giant sperm isnt easyit takes a lot of energy, Pitnick continues. Our research demonstrates that female choice and male competition require considerable investment on both sides. Thus, CRE strives to figure out how genetic and molecular mechanisms work together in an evolutionary sense.

The CRE helps us make sense of biodiversity and our place in it, not to mention the problems facing humanity, like disease and climate change.

Of course, tasks that used to take years to complete, like assembling an organisms genome, can now be accomplished in days or weeks. And with breakthrough studies of cellular and molecular mechanisms, scientists like Ahmed-Braimah can interrogate trait evolution with unrivaled speed and clarity. His current research into the changes that female Drosophila undergo after matingchanges that influence feeding behavior, metabolism, immune function and egg productionis incumbent on a slew of materials and methods.

Because functional genomics research provides a vast readout of cellular and molecular processes, we can access an immense amount of information. This helps us develop testable hypotheses more quickly, says Ahmed-Braimah, a computational and evolutionary genomicist.

Pitnick agrees, lauding the incredible variation that stems from natural and sexual selection in terms of the traits themselves, their underlying genetics and their interactions. This variation helps us make sense of biodiversity and our place in it, not to mention the problems facing humanity, like disease and climate change, he concludes. Perhaps part of the solution is found in a fly buzzing around your overripened fruit.

This story was published on September 20, 2022.

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Sex, Selection and Biodiversity - Syracuse.edu - Syracuse University