Britain

Sex & The ’60s: Joan Holloway Inspires Brits to Get Boob Jobs

'Mad Men' season 1 still with Christina Hendricks (The Telegraph UK)

‘Mad Men’ season 1 still with Christina Hendricks (The Telegraph UK)

This week, we’re examining sexuality data from the 1960s, in celebration of the upcoming final half-season of “Mad Men” beginning Apr. 5th.

Happy Friday! Bombshell Joan Holloway (and the gorgeous actress behind the character, Christina Hendricks) has become well-known for her dangerous curves throughout the course of “Mad Men.” (That’s not editorializing, that’s a fact, and everyone agrees.) In Britain, Hendricks is credited with sparking an increase in breast implants.

In a 2011 article in “The Telegraph,” the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) found that the number of women having “breast augmentations” rose 10%+ in 2010 from the 2009 figure. This equals out to 9K+ British women per year.

The BAAPS estimates that overall plastic surgery procedures have tripled from 10.7K+ in 2003 to 36.4K+ in 2009.

A BAAPS source suggested that Hendricks was an influence, especially with the hourglass figure coming back into fashion. But the source wasn’t the only one to name-check Hendricks for her curves. Britain’s Equalities Minister and Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone proclaimed Hendricks to be “fabulous” while urging the need for more curvy role models. And she would know: Featherstone was voted the “most fanciable MP in Parliament” in 2010.

 

Lucy and Maria Aylmer: How Many Twins Look Racially Different?

Twin sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer (BoredPanda)

Twin sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer (BoredPanda)

This week, the Internet has been fascinated by a set of English fraternal twins Lucy and Maria Aylmer. But there’s something special about them: Lucy has pale skin and red hair, while Maria has brown skin and brown curly hair.

In other words, one twin looks white, and the other twin looks black.

Their parents have a mixed racial background: their mother is half Jamaican, and their father is white.

Occasionally, stories like theirs pop up every now and again. In 2009, another British mixed-race couple produced not one, but two, sets of identical twins who each looked very racially different from their sibling.

But how common is this?

Unfortunately, there are no statistics that track this. From “The Associated Press:”

The phenomenon is so uncommon that there are no statistics to illustrate its probability, although it is thought likely to become more common because of the growing number of mixed-race couples.

To give you an idea on exactly how uncommon this is (using numbers!), Dr. Sarah Jarvis of Britain’s Royal College of General Pracitioners, said in 2009 (though it still applies today):

“Even non-identical twins aren’t that common. Non-identical twins from mixed parents, of different races, less common still. To have two eggs fertilized and come out different colors, less common still. So, to have it happen twice must be one in millions.”

But that’s just a guess, though the BBC reported chances closer to 1 in 500 in 2011. We won’t know until we actually start tracking the numbers.

The UK Introduces “3-Parent Baby” Bill

Human embryos (Bloomberg)

Human embryos (Bloomberg)

Britain made history this week by becoming the first country to introduce a “3-parent baby” bill.

Approved by the House of Commons, the Human Fertilization and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015 seeks to eradicate genetic diseases that are passed from mother to child via defective mitochondria. (Defective mitochondria causes diseases such as brain damage, heart failure and blindness.) The genetic diseases would then cease to be passed to future generations.

For those who aren’t up on their fifth-grade science, here’s how it works: There are two healthy parents, save for the defective mitochondria (the cells that convert food into energy). A third woman would donate her healthy mitochondria via a modified in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technique. From then on, the mitochondria are permanently altered for the better.

There are two ways the procedure can be executed. For visual learners, diagrams are below:

Method 1 - Embryo Repair (BBC)

Method 1 – Embryo Repair (BBC)

In the first method, the nuclei from the parents’ fertilized embryo is added to the donor’s fertilized embryo. The modified embryo is then placed into the womb.

Method 2 - Egg Repair (BBC)

Method 2 – Egg Repair (BBC)

In the second method, the nucleus from the mother’s egg is placed into the donor egg, with the healthy mitochondria.

In fact, calling a resulting baby from the procedure a “3-parent baby” is a misnomer: The donor would only give about .1% of her DNA. It would only change the portion that houses the genetic disease. Per the BBC, reproductive ethicist Dr. Gillian Lockwood notes:

Less than a tenth of one per cent of the genome is actually going to be affected. It is not part of what makes us genetically who we are. It doesn’t affect height, eye colour, intelligence, musicality.

If the measure passes through the House of Lords, the first baby to benefit from this procedure could be born next year.

NPR notes that U.S. agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have also been looking into the process, since 1-4K American children are born with a mitochondrial disease (numbers per the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation).

It’s safe to say that Britain will pave the way with how they handle this measure, and the world will be watching (and learning).