Your column on “Are Aphids Born Pregnant” was interesting and informative, however,you said that one known case of human parthenogenesis was known. I’m assuming that you are talking about the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary. I don’t think that this case should even have any mention in your column. The Virgin Mary’s pregancy was never proved by any historically accurate source. There also isn’t any scientific evidence that I know of that can support human parthenogenesis. Mary, like all other human females, has two X chromosomes (Therefore no Y chromosomes). Most people who went through basic biology in High School know that an X chromosome and a Y chromosome are needed for a male to develop in a woman’s uterus. This totally disproves Christ’s birth was an immaculate one from a scientific standpoint. Mike, NJ
Hey, Mike. Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board. You’ll learn over time that Cecil (and the members here) have kind of a warped sense of humor, which Cecil was displaying to full droll effect in the column in question (which is here , BTW).
Your excellent description of the problems involved with human parthenogenesis is the kind of thing that led Cecil to repeat in another column the old saw that the “H” in Jesus H. Christ stands for haploid .
Stick around. We have a million of them.
NYC IRL III
is on April 15th. Do you have what it takes?
To this thread I’ll add two useless little tidbits. The first is a question: some virgin must have been artificially inseminated at some point, right? Just curious.
Remember that legend about that virgin who was impregnated in the Civil War by a musket ball? Unfortunately for this lass and a soldier, this ball hit the male in the scrotum and picked up some sperm, which survived the trip and subsequently hitting the girl in the abdomen. Presto! Ballistic parthenogenesis!
I don’t see how this story could be disproven, but I’ll give it a 0.001% chance of being true.
Boris B wrote: “I don’t see how this story could be disproven, but I’ll give it a 0.001% chance of being true.”
Agreed! But the chance of surviving the infection that would follow a minnie ball in abdomen at that time should help out a great deal.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
And anyway, Jesus’ birth was NOT “immaculate”! The immaculate conception refers to Mary being born free of original sin.
Your brain-in-a-jar,
Myron
Imbibo, ergo sum.
Thanks for the link, tomndebb. I knew I had seen that somewhere on the web.
And yeah, I hate to think what the chances of surviving a gunshot wound, possible infection from the ball, and a complicated pregnancy would have been in the 1860s.