Can a women have a child by herself?

http://theartmad.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Baby-2.jpg

http://theartmad.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Baby-2.jpg

Sounds crazy right? Yes I understand how baby is made, but science is changing the game.

How does it work?

With recent discoveries, it is now possible for 2 women or 2 men to have a child without a person of the opposite sex. Source. This happens by one parent donating bone marrow that is turned into artificial sperm. Source.  The other parent donates an egg that is later inserted into a womb and grown into a child. “Any babies born from the process would be female and genetically identical to their mother.” Source.

What would happen if we had a women donate her own bone marrow and egg?

The idea that women could have a child without anyone else. So, I pose the question, how would this affect the child, if successful? Obviously there are no previous cases so, it’s all speculations and drawing parallels.

https://media.giphy.com/media/uHV4veFjX22Pu/giphy.gif

https://media.giphy.com/media/uHV4veFjX22Pu/giphy.gif

The closest thing we have to this is if a brother and a sister had a child. Siblings (excluding twins) on average share half of their DNA. Source. Since that happens it is possible that they are carriers of a recessive gene. If two carriers, in this case the siblings, get together, it is possiblethat they give the child their two recessive carrying genes causing the child to be diseased. Source. Geneticist, Colleen Brady, has a very well explained example of this:

“Say their dad {…} is a carrier for a harmful disease such as cystic fibrosis (CF). So dad has one broken copy of CFTR, the CF gene. This means that the brother and sister have a 25% chance of both also being carriers.

If the brother and sister are both carriers and have a child together, then each of their children would have a 1 in 4 chance of ending up with CF by getting a disease copy of CFTR from each parent. So the odds of this brother and sister having a child with the disease is (1/4)(1/4) or 1 in 16.

Now imagine that dad is a carrier but that his kids go on to have children with unrelated people. What are the odds that these grandkids will have CF? Around 1 in 240.” Source.

So we understand that if the gamete donors (siblings) share half of their genetics then the child will likely be impaired. That’s not the case though. If a woman donated both parts, the genetic DNA would be exactly the same. I believe there are 2 possibilities: 1. the child comes out majorly impaired, 2. the child is an exact duplicate of the mother (kind of like a clone).

How can we know?

Currently there are no studies on if having a child without another person is possible. If they were to conduct an experiment I believe they should begin on animals. I believe they should begin with mice as they did in past experience using 2 subjects to donate their gametes. After the mice are born they should be tested to see if they could function as normal; also, look for any abnormalities or disabilities.

Should that go well I believe, instead of jumping right to humans we should try it on apes. Why? As most of us learned in high school biology, the egg cell has 23 chromosomes and the sperm cells have 23 chromosomes. Math tells us that 23+23=46 chromosomes in a zygote. While mice’s chromosome number (forty) is close to that of humans, apes have 42 chromosomes in a zygote and are also more genetically similar to humans. Source.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P5aWR2M7dAg/maxresdefault.jpg

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P5aWR2M7dAg/maxresdefault.jpg

I’d suggest a chimpanzee because they are the most like humans; 98.2% of their DNA is shared between chimps and humans. Source. After birth you’d have to study the animal for any diseases or mental defects. Should all be successful after multiple trials, I believe it would be time to test it on a human subject.

Until then, we need two parents to have a child.

**Any medical terms, undefined in the post are linked to a website with the official definition**

One thought on “Can a women have a child by herself?

  1. Matthew James Manley

    I like the topic you chose. The post was very informative. Maybe one day women will be able to basically clone themselves, and if it’s successful, maybe it can help in the extinction of certain genetic diseases.

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