Oocyte Renewal in Older Women Under Attack

In 2004 and 2005, Jonathan Tilly from Harvard University reported that female mice create new eggs throughout their lifetime, refuting the standard belief that females cannot form eggs after the fetal stage. Some people don't like that idea.

The USF study, published in the March 2007 issue of the journal Developmental Biology and highlighted April 26, 2007 in Nature, counters the controversial findings of reproductive endocrinologist Jonathan Tilly, PhD, and his team of Harvard scientists. [..]

Since then, other papers have refuted Tilly’s surprising finding that mice can produce eggs throughout their lives. Now, David Keefe, MD, professor and chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at USF, and colleague Lin Liu, who also holds a post at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, say they can find no evidence to support his hypothesis that women may generate new eggs after birth.

Keefe goes on to say that his team could find no evidence, using the most sensitive techniques, to support Tilly's conclusions. Based on this, Keefe concludes that Tilly was wrong and the traditional dogma remains true.

Which is all well and good, except Tilly analyzed
(.pdf) the paper (Liu et al.) and found many fatal flaws -- four of which he outlined, the first of which seems to be the most important.

First and foremost, Liu et al. consistently make statements that are not in agreement with their own data.

The rest of the analysis follow along similar paths, with Liu et al.
drawing conclusions that are inconsistent with their data or not conducting tests properly.

Tilly also ably takes to task two other papers that claim to refute his work, which is quite entertaining in a nerd-fight kinda way.

The truth won't be known until future tests can be completed, but I would bet Tilly is right.

No Evidence Older Women Generate New Eggs [USF Health]