Genetics and Pregnancy: The Silent Struggle

David Haig, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, has taken an evolutionary approach to the study of pregnancy and proposed a new theory in relation to genetics. He was troubled by the statistics that "an estimated 529,000 women a year die during pregnancy or childbirth. Ten million suffer injuries, infection or disability." This knowledge led him to rigorously study the genetics involved in pregnancy, which he calls a "silent struggle" comparing it to a tug-of-war. Though many people believe babies just sit in their mother's womb, they are in reality at a constant battle with the mother for nutrients. "Its placenta aggressively sprouts blood vessels that invade its mother's tissues to extract nutrients. " Haig proposed that it were also fetuses that caused pre-eclampsia, which is a dangerously high blood pressure which often occurs late in pregnancy. This hypothesis was proven by Ananth Karumanchi, also from Harvard Medical School, who along with colleagues found that fetuses tend to inject too much of a protein called sFlt1, which leads to pre-eclampsia.

The article goes on to explain factors of how genetics affect the behavior in offsprings and problems which have been studied. If you're interested in these things, I recommend that you check it out.

Genetics is a rather new study. It began with the Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel, who in 1895 began studying the different traits associated with plants. Over the years this study became more defined as scientists gained a better understanding of genes with experiments which would have previously been classified as impossible and radical. In addition, the advacements made in technology have enabled scientists to perform more rigorous studies that have new and interesting information on how the human body works.