C Carbon

As chemotherapy and radiation treatments improve, children with cancer are living longer. The average five-year survival rate for a range of childhood cancers increased from 58 percent to 81 percent between 1975 and 2005, according to statistics from the National Cancer Institute . But although many of these children now survive cancer-free into their reproductive years, their fertility might not. In young women and girls, direct radiation and chemotherapy drugs can stop egg production by the ovaries--meaning that along with the tumor, hopes for pregnancy are often eradicated. [More]