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01 / 05
Making Eggs Without Ovaries

Asimov Press | Scientific Research

Making Eggs Without Ovaries

“For nearly all of human history, there was only one way to make a baby. When a man and a woman love each other very much . . . well, you know the rest. But for many people, the usual method of baby-making doesn’t work. This is especially problematic for biological women, whose ovaries lose the ability over time to release healthy eggs. By age 40, most biological women are no longer able to reproduce. And in recent years, rates of infertility have increased along with the average age of childbearing. 

The first method to circumvent some of the difficulties of conceiving a child, in vitro fertilization (IVF), came in 1978. During IVF, eggs are collected from the ovaries and mixed with sperm. As the fertilized eggs become embryos, they are transferred into the uterus. These basic methods have greatly improved in the last four decades, and more than 10 million people have been conceived using IVF. About 800,000 children are born from IVF every year. However, this technology still relies upon eggs that are formed naturally, which for many couples is simply not an option.

But what if, as the Osaka team’s breakthrough in mice suggests, there was another way to get eggs? In the last decade, several researchers — myself included — have been exploring the tantalizing prospect of growing eggs in cell culture.”

From Asimov Press.

Axios | Nutrition

Fast Food Consumption Decreased, CDC Data Shows

“Kids ages 2 through 19 consumed an average of 11.4% of their daily calories from fast food on a given day between August 2021 and August 2023, according to data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

  • That’s down from an average of nearly 14% in 2013 and 2014, per CDC data.
  • For adults age 20 and up, average calories from fast food fell from about 14% in 2013 and 2014 to 11.7% during mid-2021 to mid-2023.
  • Food reported as “restaurant fast food/pizza” on survey responses was considered fast food for these analyses, CDC’s data brief said.

Zoom out: About 30% of youth ages 2 through 19 ate fast food on any given day between August 2021 and 2023. That figure exceeded 36% between 2015 and 2018, CDC found.”

From Axios.

Cardiovascular Business | Health & Medical Care

Surgeons Do First Fully Robotic Heart Transplant in US History

“A team of surgeons with Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston has made history, performing what is believed to be the first fully robotic heart transplant in the United States. 

The procedure occurred in March 2025. Kenneth K. Liao, MD, PhD, chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and circulatory support at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, and colleagues completed the transplant using an advanced Da Vinci surgical system. 

The patient’s chest did not need to be opened all for the procedure—everything was done through small incisions.”

From Cardiovascular Business.

Gavi | Vaccination

Immunization Effort to Avert over 605,000 Cervical Cancer Deaths

“By 2023, Gavi had worked with over 40 countries to provide the HPV vaccine to 23.7 million girls. This massive immunisation effort is projected to avert over 605,000 future deaths from cervical cancer, a testament to the vaccine’s life-saving potential.

In 2023 alone, Gavi-supported countries vaccinated more than 14 million girls – more than the total number vaccinated in the previous decade combined. Thanks to an unprecedented scale-up of vaccine introductions, dedicated investment and expanded access since 2023, Gavi is on track to reach its ambitious goal of protecting 86 million girls with the HPV vaccine by 2025, a milestone that is expected to prevent more than 1.4 million future cervical cancer deaths.”

From Gavi.

Blog Post | Population Growth

No, Prosperity Doesn’t Cause Population Collapse

Wealth doesn’t have to mean demographic decline.

Summary: For decades, experts assumed that rising prosperity inevitably led to falling birth rates, fueling concerns about population collapse in wealthy societies. But new data show that this link is weakening or even reversing, with many high-income countries now seeing higher fertility than some middle-income nations. As research reveals that wealth and fertility can rise together, policymakers have an opportunity to rethink outdated assumptions about tradeoffs between prosperity and demographic decline.


For years, it was treated as a demographic law: as countries grow wealthier, they have fewer children. Prosperity, it was believed, inevitably drove birth rates down. This assumption shaped countless forecasts about the future of the global population.

And in many wealthy countries, such as South Korea and Italy, very low fertility rates persist. But a growing body of research is challenging the idea that rising prosperity always suppresses fertility.

University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde recently observed that middle-income countries are now experiencing lower total fertility rates than many advanced economies ever have. His latest work shows that Thailand and Colombia each have fertility rates around 1.0 births per woman, which is even lower than rates in well-known low-fertility advanced economies such as Japan, Spain and Italy.

“My conjecture is that by 2060 or so, we might see rich economies as a group with higher [total fertility rates] than emerging economies,” Fernández-Villaverde predicts.

This changing relationship between prosperity and fertility is already apparent in Europe. For many years, wealthier European countries tended to have lower birth rates than poorer ones. That pattern weakened around 2017, and by 2021 it had flipped.

This change fits a broader historical pattern. Before the Industrial Revolution, wealthier families generally had more children. The idea that prosperity leads to smaller families is a modern development. Now, in many advanced economies, that trend is weakening or reversing. The way that prosperity influences fertility is changing yet again. Wealth and family size are no longer pulling in opposite directions.

This shift also calls into question long-standing assumptions about women’s income and fertility. For years, many economists thought that higher salaries discouraged women from having children by raising the opportunity cost of taking time off work. That no longer seems to hold in many countries.

In several high-income nations, rising female earnings are now associated with higher fertility. Studies in Italy and the Netherlands show that couples where both partners earn well are more likely to have children, while low-income couples are the least likely to do so. Similar findings have emerged from Sweden as well. In Norway, too, higher-earning women now tend to have more babies.

This trend is not limited to Europe. In the United States, richer families are also beginning to have more babies than poorer ones, reversing patterns observed in previous decades. A study of seven countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia — found that in every case, higher incomes for both men and women increased the chances of having a child.

This growing body of evidence challenges the assumption that prosperity causes people to have fewer children. 

Still, birth rates are falling across much of the world, with many countries now below replacement level. While this trend raises serious concerns, such as the risk of an aging and less innovative population and widening gaps in public pension solvency, it is heartening that it is not driven by prosperity itself. Wealth does not automatically lead to fewer children, and theories blaming consumerism or rising living standards no longer hold up.

Although the recent shift in the relationship between prosperity and fertility is welcome, it is not yet enough to raise fertility to the replacement rate of around 2.1 children per woman — a challenging threshold to reach.

But the growing number of policymakers around the world concerned about falling fertility can consider many simple, freedom-enhancing reforms that lower barriers to raising a family, including reforms to education, housing and childcare. Still, it’s important to challenge the common assumption that prosperity inevitably leads to lower birth rates: Wealth does not always mean fewer children.

This article was published at The Hill on 6/16/2025.