One out of every six patients in the United States is treated in a Catholic hospital that follows the policies of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These policies prohibit abortion, sterilization, contraception, some treatments for miscarriage and gender confirmation, and other reproductive care, undermining hard-won patients’ rights to bodily autonomy and informed decision-making. Drawing on rich interviews with patients and providers, this book reveals both how the bishops’ directives operate and how people inside Catholic hospitals navigate the resulting restrictions on medical practice. In doing so, Bishops and Bodies fleshes out a vivid picture of how The Church’s stance on sex, reproduction, and “life” itself manifests in institutions that affect us all.

Human Assisted Reproductive Technology: Future Trends in Laboratory and Clinical Practice offers a collection of concise, practical review articles on cutting-edge topics within reproductive medicine. Each article presents a balanced view of clinically relevant information and looks ahead to how practice will change over the next five years. The clinical section discusses advances in reproductive surgery and current use of robotic surgery for tubal reversal and removal of fibroids. It looks into the refinement of surgical procedures for fertility preservation purposes. Chapters also discuss non-invasive diagnosis of endometriosis with proteomics technology, new concepts in ovarian stimulation and in the management of polycystic ovary syndrome, and evidence-based ART. The embryology section discusses issues ranging from three-dimensional in-vitro ovarian follicle culture, and morphometric and proteomics analysis of embryos, to oocyte and embryo cyropreservation. This forward-looking volume of review articles is key reading for reproductive medicine physicians, gynecologists, reproductive endocrinologists, urologists and andrologists.

Developmental biologists have been driven to investigate growth factor signaling in embryos in order to understand the regulatory mechanisms underlying a given developmental process. Thus, it is critical to explore the technical methods and experimental designs for growth factor signaling in embryos.

Focusing on specific pathways or pathway components, Analysis of Growth Factor Signaling in Embryos provides the methods and guidelines for experimental design to study major aspects of cell signaling in vertebrate embryos. The book covers a broad range of topics in signaling and a variety of current model organisms. Section I explores specific signaling pathways or pathway components. In this section, some chapters highlight the biochemistry of signaling pathways during development, which is often distinctive from that observed in cell culture systems. Section II discusses ionic regulatory mechanisms and the two chapters in Section III examine ways of investigating gene regulation in response to extracellular signals. Finally, Section IV addresses emerging strategies that facilitate integrated analyses of cell signaling" in vivo" in embryonic systems.

Featuring contributions from expert researchers, Analysis of Growth Factor Signaling in Embryos will provide a foundation for further explorations of the cellular regulatory mechanisms governing vertebrate embryonic development.