Tag: Premium

Matthew Parris’s answer? “Playfulness”:

Doing pointless, purposeless things, just for fun. Doing things for the sheer devilment of it. Being silly for the sake of being silly. Larking around. Taking pleasure in activities that do not advantage us and have nothing to do with our survival. These are the highest signs of intelligence. It is when a creature, having met and surmounted all the practical needs that face him, decides to dance that we know we are in the presence of a human. It is when a creature, having successfully performed all necessary functions, starts to play the fool, just for the hell of it, that we know he is not a robot.

He recalls an vivid example from the time he and friends were looking at ancient cave art in the southeastern Sahara Desert. Amidst the usual buffaloes and gazelles, there was a series of five-dot clusters that confused them. Then a friend understood – “if he’d daubed them in paint, the fingers and thumb would have left five blobs just like the ones we had been puzzling over”:

All at once, it was clear. The bush people, lounging about after dark in their family shelter, perhaps around a fire – basically just hanging out – had been amusing themselves doing a bit of rock art. And perhaps with some leftover red paste, a few of the younger ones had had a competition to see who could jump highest and make their fingermarks highest up the overhang.

This was not even art. It called for no particular skill. It was just mucking about. And yet, for all the careful beauty of their pictures, for all the recognition of their lives from the vantage point of my life that was sparked in me by the appreciation of their artwork, it was not what was skilful that brought me closest to them. It was what was playful.

(Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt)

A reader writes:

I’m a physician, and I wanted to encourage this to become an ongoing thread, as it’s a fascinating and important topic. Two clarifications, however: first, Bailey claims that the FDA recommends genetic testing prior to warfarin administration. This is incorrect. The FDA neither recommends nor recommends against genetic testing because it is not clear that it is necessary or cost-effective, according to multiple studies. What the FDA does support, in its 2010 statement, is the use of genetic information in dosing if it happens to be available. This is an important difference.

Second, Tabarrok claims that this is a First Amendment issue. This seems clearly wrong, as medical and scientific accuracy determines much of what drug and device manufacturers can and cannot say about their products. Likewise, it’s obvious that physicians have no First Amendment protection for giving out false medical advice in an established doctor-patient relationship.

Another:

Sure, in this country we protect speech. We do, however, restrict the rights of companies to profit from disseminating damaging misinformation. This issue here is not the safety of the testing service, rather the problem is the harm done to vulnerable consumers through the dissemination of misinformation. Here’s a 2010 report issued by the Government Accountability Office addressing this concern. The video [seen above] highlights the harm that can be done if personalized genetic information is sold and interpreted to consumers and by amateurs.

Another reader is bummed about the FDA’s move:

I had my genome sequenced four years ago through 23andme.  The health reports I received indicated that I have the markers for six times greater than average chance of developing macular degeneration (a debilitating eye disease).  Since I have a spot in the center of my vision left over from a meningioma brain tumor the size of a tennis ball (also indicated in my health report) I thought it wise to see my doctor.  I might have been so inclined without the report since my grandmother went blind from the disease and my mother is coping with it now, but the report reinforced my concern and I got checked out.  Fortunately there were no signs of the disease, but the fact that that the FDA is coming down hard on 23andme (and none of the other sequencing companies) seems ridiculous.  They’re providing information, not a diagnosis.  Had I not already had my tumor removed I would have been far better prepared to take the symptoms seriously were they to occur today.  I have nothing but good to say about 23andme.

Shaheen Pasha also praises the service:

When my results came back, my ancestry composition turned out to be fascinating. But my medical report was even more compelling. My health traits report indicated an elevated risk for autoimmune disorders, including Hashimoto’s disease. That hit home for me. After a 6-year struggle with multiple doctors to figure out what was wrong with me, I received my official diagnosis of Hashimoto’s in August, just weeks before I received my 23andMe results back. Perhaps if I had had a report indicating the possibility of such an illness in my genetic code, I could have been spared the headache of dealing for years with skeptical doctors who thought my ailments were all in my head.

More Dish on the topic here. Update from a reader:

Seems pretty clear from this letter that although the FDA spent a lot of time trying to work with 23andMe (14 meetings, hundreds of emails, etc), 23andMe chose to disregard their multiple warnings.

Charles Camosy, author of For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action, sees overlap between the pro-life movement and animal welfare activists:

Charles also spoke with K-Lo about this connection:

[O]ne thing which frustrates me to no end is that merely holding my position is often identified with activism and extremism. “Oh, you’re one of those people who blow up clinics and yell at women,” I’m told. Of course, over half of the U.S. identifies as pro-life, so this caricature is unfair and irresponsible. It is nevertheless used to good effect by some pro-choicers to marginalize the views of their opponents in the public square. But something similar happens to those of us who are concerned about the welfare of non-human animals. We are caricatured as “animal-rights activists,” and this conjures up similar images of extremism. But there are many millions of vegetarians in the United States, and many millions more who will only eat meat from animals who were treated well. So, one of several things that pro-lifers and those who are concerned for animals have in common is that our opponents, rather than engage our arguments, will often simply try to paint us as extremists who shouldn’t be taken seriously.

He elaborates on his position:

Animal-rights thinkers like [Peter] Singer sniff hypocrisy from pro-lifers who defend the dignity of prenatal and neonatal children, but then ignore the dignity of animals who seem to be more sophisticated than even the smartest newborn baby. Elephants mourn their dead, dolphins recognize themselves in a mirror, and chimps can teach their children sign language. Pigs can play video games, and even chickens can beat humans at tic-tac-toe. Now, I absolutely insist that all human beings — including those who are prenatal, neonatal, disabled, or injured — are worth more than even the most sophisticated non-human animal. But I can also see how an animal-rights secularist could be confused by self-described pro-lifers who are adamant about nonviolence with respect to human beings, but then ignore and even directly benefit from the horrific violence inflicted on animals.

Camosy’s previous videos can be found here. Our full Ask Anything archive is here.

SCOTUS is going to have to answer that question:

The Supreme Court will hear two challenges to the requirement that all employers provide birth control coverage to their workers. One comes from craft store chain Hobby Lobby and the other from Conestoga Wood Specialties, a custom cabinet-making company in Pennsylvania.

The owners of both companies have argued that the requirement to provide employers with contraceptive coverage is a violation of their religious liberty. And, in Hobby Lobby’s case, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: The craft store won a preliminary injunction against the health law requirement this past summer. The Department of Justice then appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, leading to today’s granting of cert for the case.

Dahlia Lithwick examines the case:

The court will need to address several questions here, beginning with whether a for-profit corporation can be a “person” capable of exercising religion freedom. Citizens United taught us that corporations count as people when it comes to campaign speech. Does this weird concept of personhood extend to their religious rights? The 10th Circuit said yes. The 3rd Circuit said no. More questions: Does the birth-control coverage benefit substantially burden a company’s exercise of its religious rights, if it has them? Is the contraception mandate nevertheless justified by compelling government interests because it is a vitally important element of affording women equality in health care?

Schwartzman and Tebbe find no precedents:

Never has the Supreme Court suggested that profit-seeking companies may exercise religious freedom rights. In contrast, many Supreme Court cases before Citizens United had indicated if not outright insisted that corporations do enjoy speech rights. These corporate religious freedom cases are truly without precedent, yet they are coming to be viewed by the media and the courts as though they are part of a natural legal progression.

Jeffrey Rosen worries the case could have major consequences:

The case has huge significance because, if the broad version of the constitutional challenge is accepted, any for-profit corporations whose owners claim that they are organizing their businesses to further religious principles could claim exemption from a host of federal regulations. As Judge Illana Rovner pointed out in her dissent from the Seventh Circuit case granting a religious exemption to the health care mandate to for-profit corporations, a ruling along these lines “has the potential to reach far beyond contraception and to invite employers to seek exemptions from any number of federally-mandated employee benefits to which an employer might object on religious grounds.” For example, Judge Rovner noted, an employer who is a Methodist and objects to stem cell research might refuse to cover an employee’s participation in a clinical trial of stem cell research for Lou Gehrig’s disease; an employer who is a Christian scientist might insist that the ACA’s mandate of coverage for traditional medical care is a violation of his religious beliefs; and an employer who is a Southern Baptist and objects to gay marriage and surrogacy might refuse family leave to gay employees that would otherwise be required under federal law.

Finally, Sargent sizes up the politics of the case:

A Bloomberg poll last March found that more than six in 10 Americans, and nearly 70 percent of women, rejected the GOP’s rationale for opposing the contraception mandate, seeing it as a matter of women’s health, and not religious liberty, with more than three quarters saying the topic shouldn’t even be part of the debate — suggesting that the middle of the country soundly rejects the GOP’s framing of the issue. And so, Dems will use this news to try to shift the argument over Obamacare on to cultural and health care turf that has already proven favorable to them.

Gary Marchant covers the FDA’s crackdown on genetics company 23andMe:

[T]he FDA was not required to take this heavy-handed and drastic action. We know this because many of the exact same genetic tests are already being provided to consumers through their physicians, without any FDA approval. There are approximately 3,000 genetic tests now commercially available through your doctor, of which only a handful have received FDA approval. So it is apparently now unlawful for 23andMe to sell you a genetic test but OK for your physician to order the exact same test, at a much higher cost to the consumer. This is an unjustified and unwarranted double standard.

There are important reasons why at-home genetic testing may be preferable to consumers.

To many, their genetic information is very private, and they prefer to get the results privately at home rather than through their physician, who will likely put the information in the patient’s medical record. It is much cheaper to get tested through 23andMe, which is currently offering its entire battery of genetic tests for only $99. It would cost many hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get the same tests through one’s physician, and health insurance does not cover the cost of most genetic tests presently. As a practical matter, most physicians are unlikely to order the complete set of genetic tests offered by 23andMe, so those who are interested and curious to get as much genetic information as possible will be blocked from doing so if they must go through their doctor.

Drum admits that he’s “sort of agnostic about the issue of whether personal genome services should fall into the category of highly regulated diagnostic tests”:

[W]hile your genome may be medical information, interpreting your genome and explaining whether it puts you at risk for different diseases is very close to medical advice. And not just general medical advice, of the kind that Dr. Oz purveys on television. It’s specific, personal medical advice, of the kind that only licensed physicians are allowed to provide.

That’s the argument, anyway. If 23andMe is going to perform a lab test and then send you a personal letter suggesting that you, personally, are or aren’t at high risk for some disease, it’s acting an awful lot like a doctor.

Reihan joins the conversation:

One gets the impression that the FDA is now seeking to protect us from hypochondria, in which case it will have to do more than regulate harmless saliva testing kits. Perhaps the FDA should redefine internet-enabled devices as medical devices, as these devices are used to access WebMD and Yahoo Answers, where all kinds of information is shared about medical conditions, not all of which is relevant or reliable.

Nick Gillespie thinks the FDA’s rules are outdated:

Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, has an important new book out called The Cure in the Code: How 20th Century Law is Undermining 21st Century Medicine.. Huber writes that whatever sense current drug-approval procedures once might have had, their day is done. Not only does the incredible amount of time and money – 12 years and $350 million at a minimum – slow down innovation, it’s based on the clearly wrong idea that all humans are the same and will respond the same way to the same drugs.

Given what we already know about small but hugely important variations in individual body chemistry, the FDA’s whole mental map needs to be redrawn. “The search for one-dimensional, very simple correlations – one drug, one clinical effect in all patients – is horrendously obsolete,” Huber told me in a recent interview.

A reader writes:

One of your readers noted the link between experiencing miscarriage and being pro-choice. I want to add another thought to that. I had two early miscarriages and one child who almost died at birth. I obviously don’t speak for all women, but for me, the grief I felt at losing my pregnancies in the first trimester was nothing – and I mean NOTHING – compared to the fear and grief I felt when my daughter lay dead in my arms at birth, before she was revived. It seems to me that losing a pregnancy at two months is different from losing it at seven months is different from losing a born child. The experience of loss changes as that life progresses inside you, and to me that reveals the simplistic thinking behind the idea that an embryo or fetus is no different than a born child.

A PhD in genetics writes:

I don’t mean to minimize the sadness people feel when they lose a pregnancy, but there’s an important issue here that is being ignored in your thread: for the vast majority of early miscarriages, what the couple lost was not, and never could have been, a “baby”. For some reason, maybe because the human genome is full of repetitive junk that mis-pairs easily, the rate of spontaneous abortions (i.e., miscarriages) due to chromosomal abnormalities is quite high. When something is very wrong with the genetic makeup of the embryo, it doesn’t develop properly and the body rejects it, as it should. It is not the case that if, somehow, that fetus could have stayed in the uterus, a healthy baby would have been born.  I wish there was more education about this; I think people would have an easier time accepting this outcome if they understood.

Another reader:

I have been reading this thread with great interest and, like another thread you have published, it is “so personal.”  I lost my first, very wanted and very planned pregnancy to miscarriage.  I had an ultrasound at eight weeks and my husband and I saw the heartbeat.  We were assured that our chances of miscarriage were very slim at that point.  Nevertheless, unbeknownst to me, the baby died within days.  It wasn’t until I was nearly twelve weeks pregnant and had told all of my friends and family that I started to bleed.  An ultrasound revealed that I had had a “missed miscarriage,” one where the body fails to detect fetal demise.

The idea of waiting for my body to figure out what had happened was far too painful to bear.  I had a D&C the next day.  It was truly the saddest period of my entire life thus far.  I was deeply depressed.  I was quite certain I would never carry a baby to term.

Fast forward four months and I was pregnant again with what would be my first child.  One of your readers said of her three early miscarriages: “Those ‘babies’ (mushy bunch of cells, really) were as real to me though as my lively 17-month-old son is now.”  My own experience of miscarriage was the opposite.  My child (and her younger sister who followed) is a person I know.  She has a personality and opinions.  Losing her or her sister would destroy me forever.  In contrast, I think of my miscarriage only when someone I know is pregnant or when I read a thread like this.  I never wonder what that child would have been like.  I was never mourning the death of that baby; I was always mourning the demise of that pregnancy at a time when I so desperately wanted to have a child.  Carrying a pregnancy to term was all the closure I needed.

I also can’t help but wonder if the early pregnancy tests available now create unnecessary grief.  I learned of my pregnancies before I even would have missed my period.  Knowing you are pregnant, even for a few days or a few weeks, is impossible to unknow.  Losing that pregnancy probably would not have been a known miscarriage for our mothers or our grandmothers.  While infertility is its own misery, it is probably of a different kind than repeated miscarriages.

Another:

Long-time reader, first-time writer. Your thread on miscarriage has been fascinating and heartbreaking to read, and I wanted to share a bit of my experience and perspective. When my son was 2.5, we decided to try for another baby. I got pregnant quickly, but at the 7-week ultrasound, we discovered that the embryo had not developed at all – a “blighted ovum.” The pregnancy test was positive, but there had never been an embryo or fetus. However, this still requires waiting for the body to miscarry naturally (which can take up to several more weeks), or a D&C. We scheduled the D&C.

On the day of the D&C, we went to the office for the procedure. It was affiliated with a hospital, but was a special maternity office. They rushed me in pretty quickly once I arrived. I like to think they were being conscious of women in the process of miscarrying sitting in the waiting room with very obviously pregnant women, new moms, and newborns, but maybe I was just lucky.

I asked the physician why I had been referred to her for the D&C, and why my regular OB/GYN didn’t do it. She paused, as if trying to figure out the best way to answer me, and then said, “Well, this procedure is basically the same as an abortion. And many OB/GYNs are not trained to do this, because of political issues around abortion – many medical schools don’t provide training in abortion, and so women are referred to the few doctors who can perform the procedure.”

I’ve been active around issues of reproductive health and rights for years – volunteered with Planned Parenthood, attended rallies and marches for choice, I have a master’s degree in public health – so I’m not unfamiliar with the politics and debate around abortion. And I knew that it was the case that many physicians were not trained in abortion procedures and that there is a shortage of qualified physicians to perform abortions in many areas of the country. But I’ve been fortunate – not only did I live in New York at the time, where the politics around reproductive choice are decidedly more liberal than in most other areas of the country – but I’ve also been lucky enough to not experience any of these restrictions, etc., first hand.

And then, as a few days and weeks passed after the D&C procedure, and some of my emotions and feelings about the experience settled a bit, I started getting – angry? Confused? It was crazy to me that at a time when a woman and her family needs comfort, familiarity, support, that it would be necessary to refer her to a brand new physician at a brand new facility for the D&C procedure, based solely on the politics around abortion. Regardless of one’s feelings about abortion, the D&C is a legal medical procedure, done for many reasons, many of which have nothing to do with the choice to remain pregnant or have a child – and the fact that there are OB/GYNs who are not qualified to perform it because of ideological objections to one circumstance in which the procedure is performed (i.e. elective abortion) is INSANE – detrimental to women’s health, detrimental to women’s autonomy, and (maybe least worrisome, but still a problem) logistically ridiculous.

Anyway, please keep sharing others’ stories. One of the most memorable things about my experience was that as I shared it with a select few friends and family members, nearly every woman had a “me too” story. It helped me immensely to feel I wasn’t alone in the experience, but also amazed that so many women I’d felt close to had never shared this particular part of themselves. Silent suffering, indeed.

Noting that our current political angst has a long pedigree, David Runciman argues that lamenting “the failings of democracy is a permanent feature of democratic life, one that persists through governmental crises and successes alike.” Unsurprisingly, Tocqueville got there first:

The history of modern democracy is a tale of steady success accompanied by the constant drumbeat of anticipated failure. The intellectual commentator who first spotted this distinctive feature of democratic life (and who did most to explain it) was Alexis de Tocque­ville. When he traveled to America, in 1831, Tocqueville was immediately struck by the frenetic and mindless quality of democratic politics. Citizens were always complaining, and their politicians were endlessly throwing mud at one another. The grumbling discontent was frequently interrupted by bursts of outright panic as resentments spilled over. Yet Tocqueville noticed something else about American democracy: that underneath the chaotic surface, it was quite stable. Citizens’ discontent coincided with an underlying faith that democratic politics would see them right in the end.

Runciman goes on to note that intellectuals are particularly prone to hand-wringing. The reasons why:

First, and most obviously, democratic politics entails free speech, which must include the freedom to say that democracy doesn’t work. Second, democracy is, as Tocqueville put it, an “untimely” form of government. Its strengths are revealed only in the long run, once its restless energy produces the adaptability that allows it to correct its own mistakes. At any given moment, democracy tends to look a mess: shallow, petty, and vituperative. Democracies are bad at rising to the occasion. What they are good at is chopping and changing course so that no occasion is too much for them. Finally, rationalist modern intellectuals are inherently suspicious of blind political faith. It is unnerving to encounter a political system that works only because ordinary people believe that it works. Ordinary citizens get frustrated with the workings of democracy but rarely, if ever, give up on it. The people who tend to lose faith are intellectuals who can’t reconcile themselves to the mismatch between the glorious promise of democratic life and its grubby reality.

Colin Marshall thinks so:

His next feature film, The Great Budapest Hotel, which comes out in March, takes place in its titular location. His new short film Castello Cavalcanti [seen above], too, takes place in its titular location, a hamlet tucked away somewhere undisclosed in Italy. Then again, hasn’t Anderson, aesthetically and referentially speaking, always enjoyed something of a European period? (Maybe we can call it European by way of his native Texas, which, for me, only adds to the visual interest.) This, combined with his apparent fascination with the objects and built environment of the early- to late-middle twentieth century, has won him a great many fans sympathetic to his sensibilities. (Along with, of course, a handful of detractors less sympathetic to them.) This brief but vibrant new piece should, for them, resonate on several levels at once.

Forrest Wickman has more on Castello Cavalcanti:

Starring Anderson favorite Jason Schwartzman, an American who crashes into a piece of his own past, the short is—like so many Wes Anderson ads—also an opportunity for Anderson to pay tribute to his cinematic ancestors.

Specifically, Castello Cavalcanti seems to be full of nods to the work of Federico Fellini. (Another director, by the way, who made commercials.) In The Wes Anderson Collection, Anderson cites Fellini as an influence for his work in caricature. Here, the caricatures are all over town, but the Christ statue in the center seems to have been air-lifted from La Dolce Vita, alongside the motorcycle-riding paparazzo, and the car race itself seems to be an homage to the car race in Fellini’s Amarcord. And it’s not just Fellini: The title character seems to be named after Brazilian-born director Alberto Cavalcanti, of whom Anderson is a fan.

Kristie Puchko isn’t bothered that Anderson made the film for Prada, remarking, “True to Anderson’s style, the colors are vivid, the dialogue is sharp, and the performances are brightly dynamic.” Peter Weber compares the Prada connection to Chipotle’s artsy, anti-factory farming “stealth ad” that went viral in September:

My bet is that, as explicitly stated by Chipotle, Prada is trying to reach a generation of young consumers who don’t necessarily sit through commercials on TV. And if you’re not going to shell out for a high-dollar spot during, say, the Super Bowl, you have a lot more money available to pay top directors and actors to make interesting, 8-minute films that people will go out of their way to watch. Isn’t that more fun?

Previous Dish on Anderson here, here, and here.

More readers share their stories:

My wife and I have suffered 2-5 miscarriages, depending on how you count them (the second time she miscarried quadruplets). We were not using in vitro fertilization, so the chances of us conceiving quadruplets is somewhere around 1/800,000. With the first miscarriage, I think we took some (small) comfort in discovering how often they occur – that the traumatic event we were living was not some special misfortune that God had reserved for only us.  But the bizarre macabre nature of seeing four lifeless embryos on the screen afforded no such comfort.  I remember my wife’s words on the car ride home after we scheduled the D&C: “I feel like a walking tomb.”

I want to thank you for posting these stories.  They aren’t stories people like to recount but they are so common and they touch those involved so deeply.  The fact that this community has emerged on the blog of a gay man with no children is profoundly touching. The human capacity to empathize and share in the joys and sorrows of others is celebrated on the Dish, and it’s why I’m a subscriber.

Another:

Reading this thread is hard. Not only because I have had a two miscarriages, but also because of my family history.  In the years after my older sibling’s birth and mine (four years), my mother had six miscarriages. As a result, her OB put her on a “artificial” estrogen, or DES,  to help her carry full term.  I was on the tail end of her using the drug.  As a result, I have several abnormalities of my reproductive organs and have had several small tumors removed from my cervix. I was told at 19 that I would never be able to conceive or carry to term a normal pregnancy.

I had resigned myself to being childless.  My birth control choice was more for prevention of disease rather than pregnancy.  When I met the wonderful man I married, I told him that I probably could never have children and we discussed adoption.  Six months after becoming engaged, I missed two periods (not unusual because of my abnormalities; my cycle is very irregular), but then I started bleeding heavily at work. Because I worked in a hospital I went to the ER where they did a blood test that showed I was pregnant.

Over three days, I alternately cried, prayed and bled.

My future husband flew back from a business trip early to be with me and we both grieved.  My mother gently reminded me that miracles occur on a regular basis and that I was proof of that.  Fast forward a year and half later, and a skiing accident landed me in the ER again.  I was asked if I could be pregnant and I smiled at my husband and said yes (another missed period, but not unusual), so they did a blood test before they would x-ray my ankle.  I joked with my husband that we could give the “positive” test results to the parents for Christmas.  And we did, because I was indeed pregnant.

They called the perinatologist on staff and made me an appointment for the next day.  Because of my medical history, I was very much a high-risk pregnancy.  Because my hormone levels are so weird (because of the DES exposure), we could only estimate the date of conception and how long until safe delivery.  I had ultrasounds that guesstimated I was about 12 weeks pregnant.  I was put on immediate maternity leave and monitored on a biweekly basis.  I delivered a healthy baby boy six months later via c-section. (Because of previous surgeries, my cervix never dilated at all despite 12 hours of labor and pitocin).

When my son was two,  I “felt pregnant” again and blood tests confirmed it.  For about four months, things went smoothly then terrible cramps, bleeding, etc.  It didn’t feel like labor but rather more like a rolling sensation through my pelvis. After about six hours, the tiny little girl slid out of my body.

I wept copiously and so did my husband.  Despite the fact that she never drew a breath, our family priest offered to baptize her.  We had no service but that and had her remains cremated and sealed into a small walnut box that will go with us when we die.

Two years later, again I “felt pregnant” and had a blood test. Negative. But I still didn’t have a period. Weeks later my son had a nightmare and he climbed into bed with us. He poked me and told me that my stomach was kicking him. My husband looked at me, jumped out of bed and sped to the nearest gas station.  He bought a EPT test and told me that the attendant looked at him in wonder (3 am, frazzled man in jeans and t-shirt).  I peed on the stick and then waited … positive.

I called my OB the next day and told them; they got me in that day. We took a blood test, two different ultrasounds and saw the tiny little boy kicking and cried.  I was six months along and delivered that lively little boy three months and ten days later via c-section.  During that c-section the doctor saw why I didn’t lose this little boy; I had a large tumor growing from my cervix into my uterus.  It prevented me from losing that pregnancy.  I had to have a hysterectomy, because the frozen section showed a particularly aggressive type of cervical cancer cells.

My younger son has some secondary DES-related problems, and both boys are at a higher risk for testicular and other cancers.  There is not a lot of research out there on the effects of the fourth generation, but in some ways, despite the problems, both my husband and parents are grateful to DES, otherwise I would not be here.  I still have periodic tests and I have to be more vigilant than the ordinary woman, but I will always grieve for the soul of my little Kristina Katherine and the unknown child that I lost.

Another:

I’m a subscriber, and long-time reader, but have never written in before. I’ll be honest with you: although I read the quoted piece you posted initially, I can’t bring myself to click the link and read the full thread, because I know it is he articulation of my greatest fear.

A little over two years ago (my wife remembers the dates and due dates; I’ve blocked them out), my wife and I had a miscarriage. It was about a week or so after a positive pregnancy test. Since it was our first time being pregnant, we approached the pregnancy like I imagine most first-time parents do: unrestrained glee. It happened to be the week before Fathers’ Day and she got me a Fathers’ Day card. We went out to a nice restaurant to celebrate.

When she started bleeding, we went in for an ultrasound. I should tell you at this point that I’m a lapsed Catholic/agnostic who hasn’t been to church in years. When we went in for the ultrasound, I found myself praying as we looked at the monitor, straining to see signs of life and hoping that things were ok, in spite of what we’d seen to that point. There was nothing there. Since it was so early, we hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy, but we told family and close friends what happened.

Months later, we found out that we were pregnant again. Again, we told no one. This time, we had an ultrasound at six weeks and saw a heartbeat. Seeing that on the monitor was like nothing else that had happened in my life. To know that I would be a father meant everything to me.  We decided we wouldn’t do a fancy celebratory dinner – just in case – so we did something casual. Although my wife was reluctant, I convinced her that we should start enjoying the fact that we were pregnant – we’d seen a heartbeat! – and should look at baby items, which we did. We started to think about how best to tell our families (Christmas ornaments? Ultrasound pictures? Something more creative?).

About three weeks later, we went in for another ultrasound. We were still nervous, but, again, we’d seen a heartbeat. When the ultrasound tech came in, she started the procedure and kept moving around the probe, not saying anything along the lines that expectant parents want to hear.  She said she would need to get the doctor to look at the image. At that point, I remember looking at that somewhat confused, but somehow already haunting image, and asking God to be with us – asking Him if he were there, could he please make sure they pointed the ultrasound wand at the heartbeat we knew was already there, so that we could go on with our lives and figure out how best to tell our families we were pregnant.

When the doctor came in, he told us we’d had another miscarriage. The embryo was dead. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. It was hard to breathe. Another round of sobbing telephone calls to our family to tell them the news, along with another awkward rollout to our close friends.

My email’s long enough, so I won’t bore you with the details, but my wife and I have been seeing a fertility specialist for the better part of a year, and are now pregnant again. We’ve had a roller coaster ride of blood tests the last few weeks (everything looks normal, congratulations!; your blood work indicates a likely miscarriage, you should be prepared). Today we had a second ultrasound at seven weeks. The first showed a very early heartbeat. We were both sick to our stomachs with worry in the days leading up to the ultrasound. Again, despite my lapsed faith and our history, I found myself saying continuous Hail Marys through tears at the doctor’s office today while we waited for the image. We saw another heartbeat.