At Christmas we are asked to believe in miracles. Misers suddenly becoming
philanthropists, a man too fat to get down chimneys globetrotting with a
load of reindeer and a virgin giving birth. The last one is hard to believe.
Even Mary is reported as having complained to the rather alarming messenger
(with wings and bearing lilies): “How can this be? I am a virgin.” And
surveys suggest rising numbers of nonbelievers among Church of England
clergy (33 per cent, up from 25 per cent a decade ago). The irony is that
today’s reproductive medicine actually makes virgin birth highly feasible.
If, for you, theological miracles need no explanation, look away now. For
everyone else: virgin birth is a familiar phenomenon in nature. Birds do it,
bees do it, but my inquiries as to whether educated fleas do it have
regrettably drawn a blank. Greenfly have it down to a fine art, filling your
roses with hosts of their number through a process known as parthenogenesis.
The zoological definition is the development of an egg into an embryo without
the participation of a sperm, and greenfly produce brood after brood of
female offspring before accepting males into their number for overwintering.
The keen-eyed will have already spotted a wrinkle here. Jesus should by rights
be a girl, though the appellation “son of God” seems clearly to suggest
maleness.
And there is another problem. These examples are all of lower-order creatures.
In 1958, however, a Russian scientist claimed to have found colonies of
all-female lizards living in Armenia. Subsequent investigation revealed that
some whiptail lizards, certain Komodo dragons (since you ask, one called
Flora who lives in Chester Zoo) and other higher-order animals such as
bonnethead sharks and even turkeys, can do the virgin birth thing.
Mammals? Unfertilised mouse eggs can be induced to develop into embryos but
then die, but more of this anon.
The Lancet printed a “virgin birth” story
In humans, eggs occasionally do develop in the absence of sperm but, instead
of forming a baby, the end product is something known as a teratoma, a
rather creepy tumour which is full of hair and teeth. Nevertheless there are
persistent reports of virgin birth in the case literature.
In 1874, for instance, the American Medical Weekly published an
extraordinary story from the diary of a field surgeon during the Civil War.
His notes told of a soldier he attended who had been shot in the leg; the
bullet had ricocheted off the bone and carried away his left testicle before
lodging itself in the stomach of a woman standing behind him. Some 278 days
later, the same surgeon delivered a baby to this woman who continued to
maintain that she was a virgin. The Lancetreprinted the story
several months later and in 1959, it popped up in the New York State
Journal of Medicine, this time under the heading “Two unusual cases of
gunshot wounds to the uterus”. An appearance in not one but three proper
medical journals has caused many since to quote this case as cast iron
evidence. So, a genuine virgin birth?
Virgin on the ridiculous more like. If the name of the author of the 1874
piece isn’t enough (Capers), there is also some deeply implausible detail –
such as the army surgeon finding the bullet lodged in the scrotum of the
baby. It proves the old maxim – if hoaxing, lay off gilding the lily.
Then there is the curious case of the 19 virgins. In 1955, a geneticist called
Helen Spurway from University College London, wife of the famous biologist
J. B. S. Haldane, had reported that female guppies in her laboratory
aquarium were giving birth to young fish in the absence of males. She
speculated that although it would be very rare, it might be possible in
humans and moreover could be proved using the rudimentary science (as it was
then) of genetic testing.
The boy who had no father
A now defunct tabloid newspaper, the Sunday Pictorial rose to the
challenge and advertised for women with children who thought they were
virgins (as you do) to write in.
Astonishingly 19 women did so, 11 of whom were subsequently immediately
rejected by the investigator, one S. Balfour Lynn, since they had all been
impregnated by men, but believed that because their hymen remained intact
after conception, they counted as virgins. The remaining mothers and
daughters were investigated for genetic similarity. Genuine virgin births
should mean they were identical. One pair seemingly was but later a
skin-graft operation between them was eventually rejected, meaning that
there must have been differences.
Finally, there is the case of the boy whose blood showed he had no father.
Reported in 1995, this was the case of a young boy, part of whose body was
shown to be derived from an unfertilised egg. His blood cells contained two
XXs, the chromosomal signature of a female, but both Xs in this case were
shown to be derived from his mother. His skin on the other hand contained X
and Y chromosomes typical of a boy, the Y having come from his father.
There have been many attempts, notably by another distinguished UCL
geneticist, the emeritus professor Sam Berry, to put forward possible
mechanisms. “Not to suggest an explanation or way of avoiding belief in the
Virgin Birth,” says Berry, a committed Christian, “but merely to suggest
that the Virgin Birth is not utterly ridiculous from the biological point of
view.”
The problem with virgin birth and the Christmas story is that Jesus is a boy –
which suggests he must have a Y chromosome. Creating a scenario as to how
this might be biologically possible requires a fair bit of biological
imagination and the occurrence of some rare-to-almost-never-heard-of medical
conditions.
Among Berry’s suggestions is that Mary, while outwardly appearing female,
could have actually been genetically male (ie carrying a Y chromosome)
because of a syndrome called testicular feminisation and been one
of the rare examples of sufferers who also still had a womb and had
numerous other variations of it which could produce a male baby.
Confused? I’m sure Mary would have been.
Veritable virgins
Ever since Dolly the Sheep appeared, virgin birth has technically been
possible. A clone involves taking the genetic material out of a male or
female adult cell, placing it in the empty egg of another individual and
giving it a small electrical kickstart before replacing it in a womb. Many
species have now been cloned, from mice to rhesus monkeys.
High failure rate
Cloning is an inefficient process, with a very high failure rate and there are
many reports of abnormalities in cloned animals that require them to be put
down straight after birth. Human cloning is not thought to be possible
currently.
Divine DNA?
Virgin birth might be technically feasible, but it would be highly dangerous
and is likely to be illegal for many years to come. The burning question is:
how you would get God to supply his genetic material?
