Religious views
Some Christian leaders indicate that IVF is acceptable (provided that no fertilized embryos are discarded in the process). Many Christian couples who cannot have children thus can go for IVF, with both the husbands sperm and the wifes egg and this is in line with the churchs teaching. However the issue is more problematic with donor eggs. There are also some Christian leaders (especially Catholic) who are concerned about all in vitro fertility therapies because they disrupt the natural act of conceiving a child where gamete donations, both egg and sperm donations, are seen to "compromise the marital bond and family integrity". and they encourage infertile couples to consider adoption instead. In the Orthodox Jewish community there is no consensus as to whether an egg donor needs to be Jewish in order for the child to be considered Jewish from birth. In the 1990s religious authorities said that if the birth mother was Jewish that the child would be Jewish as well, but in the past few years rabbis in Israel have begun to reconsider, which in turn is causing more debate around the world. Conservative Rabbi Elliot Dorff has suggested that there are arguments for both sides (birth mother or genetic mother) in religious scripture. Dean of the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University believes that any child where the birth mother or the genetic mother isnt Jewish should go through a conversion process in infancy, to be sure that their Judaism isnt questioned later in life.
In pathology, a contracture is a permanent shortening of a muscle or joint. It is usually in response to prolonged hypertonic spasticity in a concentrated muscle area, such as is seen in the tightest muscles of people with conditions like spastic cerebral palsy, but can also be due to the congenital abnormal development of muscles and connective tissue in the womb. Contractures develop when normally elastic tissues such as muscles or tendons are replaced by inelastic tissues (fibrosis). This results in the shortening and hardening of these tissues, ultimately causing rigidity, joint deformities and a total loss of movement around the joint. Most of the physical therapy, occupational therapy and other exercise regimens targeted towards people with spasticity focuses on trying to prevent contractures from happening in the first place. However, research on sustained traction of connective tissue in approaches such as adaptive yoga has demonstrated that contracture can be reduced, at the same time that tendency toward spasticity is addressed. Contractures can also be due to ischemia (restriction of blood flow) leading to the death of muscle tissue, as in Volkmanns contracture. They can also be caused by excessive myofibroblast and matrix metalloproteinase accumulation in wound margins following injury. See also
Arthrogryposis
Burn scar contracture
Capsular contracture
Clubfoot
Dupuytrens contracture
Freeman–Sheldon syndrome
Marden–Walker syndrome
Muscle contracture

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