| The minipill (progestogen-only Pill, or POP)
If you enjoy a good sex life, you almost certainly want to protect yourself against unwanted pregnancy. The minipill can do that for you. But you have to remember to take it every single day of the year. No breaks at all - even when you're on your period. It's not quite as effective as the ordinary Pill, but it's a good deal freer of side effects. And it's particularly useful for some groups of women who cannot take the Pill - for instance, new mums who are breast-feeding. However, it does have some disadvantages, and we'll tell you about them in a moment. What is the minipill? There's a lot of confusion about this name. Many women don't understand it - and, regrettably, even a few doctors have got the wrong end of the stick about it! The minipill is not just a low-dose version of the Pill.
Twins adopted as embryos: 'Living proof' stirs stem cell debate
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. When President Bush vetoed a bill June 20 that would have provided federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, Mike and Nicole Bell of Traverse City, Mich., were among those Americans rejoicing. The Bells have two children, 17-month-old twins Michael and Paige, born via a relatively new method called embryo adoption. Michael and Paige once were so-called leftover embryos, stored frozen in a lab -- the same type of embryos many scientists want to use for research. They very well could still be there, if not for Mike and Nicole. "They were orphans in a different sense of the word," Nicole, 35, told Baptist Press. "Embryos are not just cells. They're little people. "We are opposed to embryonic stem cell research but we are in favor of other types of stem cell research -- adult stem cells, [umbilical] cord blood stem cells.
Me and my travels
Big family holidays to Cornwall. Me, our kid and all our cousins all went down. You can imagine Cornwall in the early 1970s being hit by a load of Mancs. It didn't know what had hit it: we used to rob it blind. No one down there seemed to know that shoplifting existed. Cheapest holidays I've ever had. MY BEST EVER HOLIDAY WAS... I can't remember. My memory is absolutely terrible. It's crystal clear until I was 17 and then there are just massive gaps. I'm told I went to Cuba to film a video; I genuinely don't remember ever being there. TRAVELLING USED TO BE... All about finding drugs. When we first went to New York in the mid-1980s, crack was just being written and talked about. That was our main mission - to find out how to make crack proper.
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