In her much-discussed new book, "Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, " Annie Murphy Paul describes the ever-expanding efforts of researchers to determine how maternal diet, weight, stress, exercise and other factors can influence fetal development.

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Experts aren't sure how organophosphates might interfere with fetal brain development, although they do know that in insects the pesticides slow the breakdown of acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter.

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Gore also called for increasing wetlands by 100, 000 acres per year and reducing contaminants that threaten fetal and childhood development, such as mercury.

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In the years immediately following the initial successes of IVF, the U.S. government established a requirement that any proposed research on human fertilization, embryos, or the later fetal stage of development must be reviewed by an ethics advisory board before federal funds could be used to support it.

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In 1988 came the first federal ban when the first President Bush barred implanting humans with fetal tissue (fetuses are far more advanced in development than microscopic embryos).

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Dr Shah could not find them earlier in development either, such as just after the fetal testes first started putting out testosterone in a 13-day-old embryo.

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