Is Possession 9/10ths of the Law?

Readers of this blog may recall that my MacBook Pro was stolen from my car while it was parked in my driveway on a residential street in Bethesda, MD. Like a complete idiot I had left it in my unlocked car overnight and like an even bigger idiot I had not password protected the computer (huge gasp of shock from the reader). Fortunately, the computer was fully backed up just 48 hours earlier and I successfully restored all of my files (including the photo of me in my Boy Scout leader uniform which I have mercifully deleted from the blog).

Last night my son, Seth, came running downstairs and asked me to check out the weird message on my iTunes account. On my iTunes account info page my name had been changed to Marvin Dixon and my phone number had been replaced by a number that I did not recognize. This was not the first time I had seen this name. On Wed night I had received an email that listed my email account but with the name Marvin Dixon, not my name…

So I called Mr. Dixon who informed me that he had indeed purchased a MacBook Pro from a local Pawn Shop and had no idea it was stolen. Didn’t he wonder why it had all those files still on it??? Nope, he just figured someone needed the cash and sold it to the Pawn Shop. He said that he had taken it to the Mac store and they had helped him enter his name into the computer and the .Mac account! I was so pissed off at Apple if this is true. I had called repeatedly to Apple to ask if the computer could be listed as stolen based upon the serial number so that if someone took it to the Apple Store then it would send up a red flag. Not possible I was told repeatedly.

So I called the police, having previously filed a report and gave them the information about the new owner. The officer was very polite. I then asked him what happens next. Well, if Mr. Dixon did indeed purchase it from the Pawn Shop then the computer is now his!! So can I ask the great legal minds reading this blog to comment on this statement? Is possession 9/10th of the law?

Meanwhile, how about IVF. Does it work? How well does it work? That is today’s Question of the Day from the Doctor now known as Marvin Dixon…

52. How successful is IVF?


Overall, the success rates for IVF have improved markedly since 1978 (when Louise Brown was conceived), but success rates vary widely depending on the couple’s infertility factors and the clinic performing the IVF procedure. Success rates for U.S. IVF clinics are published on the CDC’s website (http://www.cdc.gov/ART/index.htm). The standardization of clinic success rates evolved from 1994 passage of the Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act (the so-called Wyden law), which seeks to protect U.S. consumers from inflated IVF success rates. Importantly, many subtleties influence clinic-specific IVF pregnancy rates, including patient selection bias (that is, some clinics tend to treat tougher cases, so their success rates might be lower than those of clinics that take only routine cases).

For women younger than 34 years of age, most will achieve pregnancy within one to three treatment cycles; indeed, many succeed in their first attempt. For women older than 35 years, the success rates tend to decrease simply because the aging process affects the quality of these women’s eggs. For a detailed discussion of IVF success rates, couples should visit the website for the clinic where they are considering treatment. They should also discuss their specific likelihood of success with their reproductive endocrinologist. IVF pregnancy rates do vary by clinic, so patients should carefully scrutinize their chances for success at the particular clinic rendering treatment.