May 23, 2007--Virgin Births
On the very day that Reverend Jerry Falwell was laid to rest, Dr. Stanley Miller died.
Who, you might ask, was Dr. Miller? He became famous in 1953 when, as a mere graduate student, he carried out a stunning experiment in which he demonstrated how amino acids could be easily generated from the simple soup of chemicals that were presumed to be present on the early earth. And since amino acids are the building-blocks of life as we know it, his discoveries offered a plausible theory about the emergence of cellular and than more complex life forms. Which ultimately would include us. (See linked obit from the NY Times.)
Though he spent the rest of his life elaborating his early work, neither he nor his colleagues were ever able to go to the next step—building DNA and other proteins from these acids. Somehow, though, in nature that occurred and here we are.
Also in today’s Times there is a shark story. Not about an attack on a swimmer in Fort Lauderdale, but rather about a baby bonnet-head shark which died in a Nebraska aquarium. What is newsworthy are the results of the autopsy--scientists who performed it discovered that the baby had been conceived without, in their words, a “male contribution.”
The mother had been kept for three years in a tank without ever having shared it with any males. Thus, there was no chance for her to fool around. Some might wonder if late one night, an aquarium keeper, feeling sorry for the lonely bonnet-head, allowed a male into her tank so they might tryst. Always a possibility. But the autopsy showed that the baby had no male DNA at all in her body.
This pathogenesis (asexual reproduction) has been found in other vertebrate species such as some snakes and lizards, but never before in cartilaginous fishes such as sharks. So whatever might have happened after hours out there in Nebraska, this was a birth that occurred without evidence of a normal kind of father.
Thus, and I’m sure you’re way ahead of me in putting these three stories together, though I suspect that Jerry Falwell, who was known to be an opponent of evolutionary theory and much of modern science, in spite of that he could have handled the evidence of pathogenesis in snakes; but he certainly would have been quite upset by Dr. Miller’s work since it doesn’t sound all that biblical.
But I’m sure he would have liked the shark story. Virgin births, or at least one version, were something about which he could get quite excited.
Who, you might ask, was Dr. Miller? He became famous in 1953 when, as a mere graduate student, he carried out a stunning experiment in which he demonstrated how amino acids could be easily generated from the simple soup of chemicals that were presumed to be present on the early earth. And since amino acids are the building-blocks of life as we know it, his discoveries offered a plausible theory about the emergence of cellular and than more complex life forms. Which ultimately would include us. (See linked obit from the NY Times.)
Though he spent the rest of his life elaborating his early work, neither he nor his colleagues were ever able to go to the next step—building DNA and other proteins from these acids. Somehow, though, in nature that occurred and here we are.
Also in today’s Times there is a shark story. Not about an attack on a swimmer in Fort Lauderdale, but rather about a baby bonnet-head shark which died in a Nebraska aquarium. What is newsworthy are the results of the autopsy--scientists who performed it discovered that the baby had been conceived without, in their words, a “male contribution.”
The mother had been kept for three years in a tank without ever having shared it with any males. Thus, there was no chance for her to fool around. Some might wonder if late one night, an aquarium keeper, feeling sorry for the lonely bonnet-head, allowed a male into her tank so they might tryst. Always a possibility. But the autopsy showed that the baby had no male DNA at all in her body.
This pathogenesis (asexual reproduction) has been found in other vertebrate species such as some snakes and lizards, but never before in cartilaginous fishes such as sharks. So whatever might have happened after hours out there in Nebraska, this was a birth that occurred without evidence of a normal kind of father.
Thus, and I’m sure you’re way ahead of me in putting these three stories together, though I suspect that Jerry Falwell, who was known to be an opponent of evolutionary theory and much of modern science, in spite of that he could have handled the evidence of pathogenesis in snakes; but he certainly would have been quite upset by Dr. Miller’s work since it doesn’t sound all that biblical.
But I’m sure he would have liked the shark story. Virgin births, or at least one version, were something about which he could get quite excited.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:04 AM
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