Hello
again! This time around in English, perhaps some of you will
appreciate that ;)
Today
the subject will be more serious, I'll be discussing science! And it's implications for society, and I'll even touch upon censorship of science. But let
me start with a little story about how I got to find the particular
piece of science that lead to all these reflections.
So,
there I was, procrastinating and flipping through random web pages,
when I came upon this article, ”Eight things you didn’t know you could do with human sperm”
- fascinating reading, though I personally wouldn't eat anything
cooked with sperm, and also... skin softener. Seriously? Just.. ew.
Anyway,
one of the suggestions was that sperm should help against morning
sickness (as in, when you're pregnant and feeling bad all day, every
day, for the first couple of months), leading me here,
where it is suggested that oral sex (of the fellatio variety) would be an aid against this
unpleasant unpleasantness. A (male) friend shared his first thought
upon me smacking the article in his face: “what I think it's about:
women should vomit more, so oral sex should help ????” (He only
read the headline, bless him).
It is indeed a tempting
interpretation, but nay. It's actually a scientific study, which
looks into possible causes for morning sickness, and it seems it
could be a reaction of the woman's immune system to the unknown
genetic material coming from the father-to-be. Apparently, explains
Mr. journalist, the ingestion of semen helps make the female immune
system used to male person's genetic material, thus assuring that her
body doesn't react against it when exposed to it via the foetus, this
being 50% somebody else. (Normal intercourse should work just fine as well.)
I
clearly remember this study being all over my facebook front page
with comments along the lines of “more blowjobs, ladies!” - but
there's a tiny catch that people somehow seemed to miss: it only has a point if you actually intend to
have babies with person in question (- and somehow I doubt the person
sending this to my inbox had any intentions of babies, at least not
with me. Still processing that one.)
I
guess all these blowjobs wouldn't be all that useful once pregnant
anyway, unknown genetic material is already in the body, so
full exposure assured. Blowjobs before pregnancy!
But
I'm getting sidetracked. What I actually want to get at is this: the
same scientist, a Mr. Gordon Gallup, has conducted a study indicating
that there might be a correlation between all this “(un)familiar
semen” stuff and the likelihood of preeclampsia. For the non-initiated, it's a
condition arising during pregnancy, which can only be resolved by
abortion/miscarriage or giving birth, depending how far along in the
pregnancy one is, as it can elsehow be life-threatening. The
preeclampsia referred to in Gallup's paper seems to occur around the
end of the first trimester, so someone is confused, surely me,
probably wikipedia too, or maybe they're simply talking about
different things with the same name. Anywho, the theory goes,
basically,
”that preeclampsia is a biological mechanism that evolved to terminate maternal investment under circumstances in which the likelihood of investment by the sire is doubtful.”
In
words a bit more down to earth (or more creative at least):
Back
on the savannah in Africa in the dawn of times, a mother needed the
assistance of the father to bring up offspring. Therefore, it was in
her interest to have babies with a male specimen that was actually
likely to stick around after contraception.
Now,
the pre-modern human female could of course not pick and choose once
pregnancy occurred, abortions not being available (at all?) and back
in those days such useful stuff as condoms and hormonal contraception
was not invented, so she would need some other mechanism to manage
this business.
This
is where the semen comes in. Frequent exposure (ahem) to semen from
the same individual would be an indicator of some sort of
relationship, and therefore higher likelihood that male specimen in question
sticks around for the babies, too, and not just for the fun parts.
Whereas unfamiliar semen would indicate, well, one-night-stands,
guys-who-say-they'll-stay-for-the-babies-but-run-off, rape, other
similar scenarios where daddy is highly unlikely to stay and help
out.
And
preeclampsia would be body's way of chucking out foetuses consisting
of 50% such unfamiliar genetic material.
This
is argued with all sorts of research and statistics and correlations
and what have we not. Seemingly there has been no widespread outrage
about this, so I guess it has been more or less accepted within the
circles of preeclampsia research. The paper presents the numbers in
convincing ways, that's easy enough, though, but it was published, at
a respectable university, too, so I trust it's not utter and complete
hoo-ha. I don't care about statistics and numbers, so I have no way
of giving a qualified opinion on that.
I
was never really convinced by all this evolutionary stuff, though.
Seriously, you think gendered differences in our ways of hooking up
nowadays can be explained by whatever someone did when humankind
lived in caves (hundreds of) thousands of years ago?
Whatever!
---
Now, all
of this is very interesting, and many a blowjob-joke can be made, but on a more serious level, I'm
not entirely confident about the consequences of studies of the kind.
It's
a few months ago by now, but surely at least someone out there
remembers American candidate for Senate Todd Akin stating, “from
what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare.
If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut
that whole thing down."
Everybody else
has
already
written
about why Mr. Akin is wrong in so many ways, ignorant, and seriously, what's wrong
with that country? Just wow. It's not even like it's the first time something like that happened,
they just keep going on the idiocy.
Apparently Mr.
Akin's doctor source is a Mr. Willkens
who honestly believes the nonsense he's letting out, so let's just
ignore his crazy talk and hope Akin isn't elected, for the poor
people who would have to live with the consequences of whatever
stupidity he would support up and over there in Senate.
Right?
I mean, Mr. Gallup
seems to be respected in scientific circles, from what I can gather,
so no Mr. Willkens, but there's really not a far step from “pregnancy
from rape is more likely to end in preeclampsia” to “you didn't
get a miscarriage, so I guess it wasn't actually rape after all, see
how your body wants the baby and all”, at least not if you're so
beyond all common sense and empathy as Mr. Akin and similar minds.
And let's face it, if he's even in politics, it's because someone
would vote for him. Victim-blaming isn't all that uncommon.
Somehow, I guess the
logical conclusion here would be that people like Mr. Gallup should
censor themselves and only do research that might not give
controversial results. If someone might use what you discover for some purpose you cannot support, or that larger society (or me) does not find acceptable, should you then stop researching?
Of course not, I'm not asking for or
advocating auto-censorship in science, nor any other kind of
censorship. We had enough of that already, and it has done extensive
damage, perhaps still does. I'm sure Mr. Gallup means well with his
study, I'm just not sure he considered how the results might be
understood or used. Probably shouldn't be his responsibility either,
but the responsibility of those reading about it.
It is surely not the first
time such a dilemma presents itself, and there is likely no simple
answer to it. At least, I can't find anything that works for me.
So, while we wrap our
heads around that one... More blowjobs?*
*But seriously, use condoms! You can
get gonorrhoea from that stuff, and that's
not funny!
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