"The story struck a chord while I'm preparing a chapter from a N.I.H. conference in October at which we discussed why eggs are lost from the ovaries. hourglassAccording to the text-book story, women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, a total store of about a million, and they run out with time. The ovary is like an hourglass with sand grains trickling down, but most eggs are lost by a mysterious degenerative process and very few are reserved for ovulation. It's virtually an empty organ at the menopause. "