Yesterday we announced our NEW Oncofertility Decision Tool Web Portal. This online portal serves as a one-stop-shop for health care providers in need of tools to facilitate fertility preservation conversations with their patients whose disease, or its treatment, threatens fertility. In addition to decision tools and aids, we have collected and organized the existing literature discussing oncofertility communication strategies and provided online access to the publications in our web portal. Many of the publications come directly from Dr. Woodruff’s various Oncofertility books- the same books you may have read chapter summaries about in this very blog. The web portal has taken all of those book chapters, along with journal articles, and compiled them for health care providers. They are organized by publication year and patient population.

The FDA and the EPA are revising their joint fish consumption Advice and Questions & Answers to encourage pregnant women, those who may become pregnant, breastfeeding mothers, and young children to eat more fish and to eat a variety of fish from choices that are lower in mercury. This is a DRAFT for which you may provide comment. Once finalized, it will replace the current advice which was issued in 2004.

Despite the fact that fertilization requires mutual, active participation by both eggs and sperm, gender roles are often projected onto reproductive biology, leading to the portrayal of eggs as passive and sperm as active. For example, the opening credits in the 1989 movie Look Who’s Talking portray a common perception of fertilization. As the Beach Boys’ song “I Get Around” plays in the background, we see sperm inside a women’s reproductive tract moving toward her egg. The scene is narrated by one of the sperm, though we can hear some of the other sperm talking.