Birth Right

The placenta is starting to get the respect it deserves for its crucial role in fetal development. It really is an amazing structure. Formed not by the mother but by the embryo ~ or rather, the blastocyst, the group of about 100 cells that will become a baby ~ the placenta and its workings are still a mystery to us, but one that is now being studied more seriously. "In reality, it’s an organ that is every bit as sophisticated as a liver or a heart," says Stanford University geneticist and immunologist Peter Parham: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/350741/description/Life_Support