I heard that humans can reproduce without interaction of sperm and egg–that some small fraction of births (one in a million is the number I recall) is the result of an egg cell that splits spontaneously and grows into a fetus. Is there any truth to this?
I’m inclined to think it would be a HELL of a lot more than one in a million.
IANAS…But seeing as how the egg does not contain all the chromesomes neccesary for developement, I don’t see how it could be.
I think it might certainly split once or twice, but it’d die off quite quickly. That’s what I remember out of a bit of Biology back several years ago at any rate, so take some salt.
ACTUALLY, there is a way to get pregnant, and still be a “technical virgin”, or without having intercourse. If a couple are fooling around, naked, unprotected, and said male happens to ejaculate on said female’s vaginal area, sperm can indeed penetrate inside and impregnate her.
But, I don’t think that quite qualifies as a “virgin” birth.
I heard that it would be possible for lesbian couples to have a child via some sort of DNA hocus-pocus (as you can tell, I am obviously an expert on this subject
Apparently it would only be possible for them to have a girl, since neither “Mother” possesses the Y Chromosome. (sorry, no link) I guess technically you could call this a virgin birth, since intercourse is not required. It all depends what you consider to be virginity which is kind of off-topic from the OP, but it’s still an interesting question. Suppose this hypothetical lesbian couple had each, never slept with a man? Are they virgins because the loss of one’s virginity is a penetrative act? Or are they not virgins because they have engaged in a sexual relationship with each other?
If this is too inappropriate for the OP/ board, please feel free to tell me off 
Throwing “human parthenogenesis” at Google returns fewer than 30 hits, most of them in the areas of mythology (and animé, with only two hits on anything scientific. Both references are to listings of printed (non-web) journals that have had a single article mentioning the possibility. My guess is that it simply does not happen among humans.
Greenkeys, it may well be possible to manipulate genetic material to force a human virgin birth in the future. It would be rather similar to cloning. It does not yet seem to have happened.
(And your post is well within tolerances for this board and this crowd.)
No, an egg can’t split spontaneously and form a fetus. An egg only has one set of chromosomes, and needs to get the second set from the sperm (or from really really fancy cell biology techniques, but that’s another story). What Greenkeys mentioned is one of the latter, in which an egg is taken from one person and one set of chromosomes is taken from a cell of another person and injected into the egg. ( IIRC, some scientists announced over the summer that they had done this, although I don’t remember whether it involved human cells or not. They certainly didn’t take it beyond a few cell divisions if human cells were involved.) Hypothetically, this could be used to make a non-clone, male-involvement-free baby, as long as the donor of the second set of chromosomes was female.
Cecil on parthenogenesis in turkeys and parthenogenesis in aphids. In the latter article (Nov 1989), Cecil mentions the fact that there is only one known case of human parthenogenesis.
Who would be, of course, Jesus H(aploid) Christ.
Are you sure? Doesn’t “virgin birth” necessarily result in a female?
Actually, it’s not the truth. It is an (old) urban legend that was completely fabricated. See this Snopes link:
Also, how exactly did people “fly in” back in the 1860s? Did they flap their arms?
Hot Air Balloons.
Tom’s not really known for hewing to reality.
I thought the H stood for Howard: Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name. :D:D
It never occurred to me that anyone might actually believe that. Quite sad, really. :rolleyes:
Sad, indeed. :rolleyes:
On the contrary, the story has often been passed along as truthful. Snopes mentions a “Dear Abby” column, and I’m fairly sure it was in one of the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader books (which granted, are not known for their veracity).
As far as the web is concerned, this site and this site acknowledge that the story is a myth, but this site and the museum it refers to do not.
In any event, if you post an oft-times repeated urban legend with no accompanying commentary (or even a smilie), prepare to be called on it. We are here to eradicate ignorance, no?
BTW, I’ve never heard of Tom Waits.