On February 10, lawyer Irakli Zakareishvili, who frequently spreads false information, published a Russian-language video claiming that a woman’s body absorbs, stores, and transfers the “genetic information” of her first sexual partner to her future child, even if the father is someone else. The same video was circulated on Instagram in January.
The claim that a woman’s body retains the genetic information of her first sexual partner and passes it on to a child conceived with a different partner is not supported by scientific evidence and is false.
-
What Is Telegony, and Does It Have a Scientific Basis?
The idea that a woman “stores” the genetic information of her first sexual partner and later passes it on to her offspring has been around for a long time, but it has no scientific basis. This concept is known as telegony, and it goes back to Aristotle; it alleged that heredity of an individual is influenced not only by the biological father but also by a woman’s previous sexual partners and those who have caused previous pregnancies. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, telegony should be considered a superstition, as it is incompatible with existing scientific knowledge and evidence. The encyclopedia notes that even Charles Darwin considered an alleged case of telegony when a horse was first mated to a zebra, then to an Arabian stallion, and the resulting offspring had striped legs. However, this phenomenon is more easily explained by the fact that such stripes occur naturally in some breeds of horses.
It is worth noting that there are two studies conducted on insects, specifically flies and beetles, suggesting that a female insect’s previous mate could influence her offspring. One of the researchers, Angela Crean, explained in an interview with Time that a previous male partner affected the size of fly offspring, even though the eggs were fertilized by a different male. Crean pointed out that in this case, the previous mates could be environmental factors, such as a female’s lifestyle and diet, which can influence offspring. However, it is important to emphasize that findings from insect studies cannot be applied to humans. In the same interview, Crean herself stated that there is no direct scientific evidence for drawing the same conclusion with regard to humans:
Angela Crean: “It’s something we definitely don’t want to speculate about yet with humans. There is no direct scientific evidence for that at all. At least, for now.”
-
What Is Microchimerism?
The claim that a woman “stores” the DNA of not only her first but all of her sexual partners has circulated at different times. One of the main reasons for this misconception was the 2012 study titled “Male Microchimerism in the Female Human Brain,” which was misinterpreted. Microchimerism is a phenomenon in which a small number of cells from one person are found in another person’s body. The study examined the presence of male cells in the female brain. However, sexual intercourse was not identified as a cause of microchimerism in the studies. Instead, the studies discussed several well-established explanations, such as pregnancy with a male fetus, a spontaneous abortion, a male twin that failed to develop, or cells from an older brother in the mother’s body that were transferred to a female fetus during pregnancy.
Dr. J. Lee Nelson, the study’s author, clarified in a statement to Business Insider that in most cases, the presence of male cells in a woman’s body is the result of prior pregnancy with a male child. In the 2012 study, researchers examined the brains of 59 deceased women for microchimerism and found male DNA in about 60% of them. In a 2005 study, researchers tested the blood of 120 women who had never given birth to a son and found male DNA in 21% of them.
Nelson emphasized that there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that a woman retains DNA from sexual partners. While some studies speculate that such a process might occur, Nelson stated that this is purely hypothetical at this stage. She also noted that if sexual contact were a direct cause of male microchimerism, it would have been detected in a higher percentage of women in the 2005 study.
Nelson: “To me the biggest statement is the data. If this were routinely happening, I mean, you would see it in the vast majority of adult women [without sons] that we studied.”
Another researcher from the reviewed studies, William Chan, echoed this sentiment in a comment to Reuters. Chan stated that the claim that sexual intercourse causes microchimerism is erroneous. He clarified that while some studies have mentioned sexual contact as a possible but unproven cause of microchimerism. This means that it may be a possibility, but it has never been tested or proven. According to Chan, as of today, there is no research supporting this claim, making such statements false.
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
