"Seven men - absolute infertility": Why did everyone believe in telegony
Olga Lukinskaya
About telegony - long-lost anti-scientific theory - no one would have remembered if in recent times public figures had started to mention it. At first, the children's rights commissioner Anna Kuznetsova expressed that “the cells of the uterus have information-wave memory,” calling the telegony “a relatively new science”. Then the Minister of Health of Chuvashia, Vladimir Viktorov, said that the number of sexual partners of a woman affects the ability to have children - and if there were seven of them, then infertility will definitely occur. We understand where these ideas come from and why they continue to believe in them.
Telegony is a theory that sex with any partner does not pass without a trace for a woman, and his signs (partner, not sex) in the future may affect the appearance or intelligence of children born of a completely different person. With the advent and development of genetics, the ideas of telegonia were refuted: it became clear that the blue eyes of brown-eyed parents in a child are a product of gene expression, and not traces of the premarital connection of the mother. True, then the supporters of this hypothesis began to customize a new terminology for it: if you explain that after sex there are fragments of a man’s DNA in a woman’s body, the theory begins to sound pseudo-like and seems solid.
A few years ago, the journal Ecology Letters published the results of a study in which the appearance of the offspring of Telostylinus angusticollis partly dependent on the appearance of the male, preceding their "father". In the same publication, the authors emphasize that insects have long been aware of the importance of proteins and other molecules transferred to the female with seminal fluid; in ladybirds and fruit flies, these substances can affect the reproductive organs of females and, indirectly, the parameters of the offspring.
Of course, this does not say anything about the possibility of transferring the data to a person - but supporters of the ideas of telegony do not need the approval of scientists. It turns out as with anti-vaccinations, homeopaths and deniers of the existence of HIV: the theory seems slim, sounds “smart” and logical, but also allows you to put pressure on the conscience and manipulate values - “do you want to have healthy children?”.
The DNA of a virus, for example, can “integrate” into the chromosomal material of a human cell - but such an exchange is impossible between people
The telegony was seized on by the church - the theory began to argue the importance of chastity for the health and morals of future children. Let the religious view of virginity not coincide with the fact that the concept of virginity itself has long been outdated - but is it possible to use frankly false data for argumentation? Galina Muravnik, a teacher at the Biblical Theological Institute of St. Andrew and a geneticist by training, notes in her article on Pravmir that telegony is a pseudoscience that only undermines trust in both scientists and those who refer to it.
Although it is really possible to speak of microchimerism, a phenomenon when foreign DNA remains in the body (this happens, for example, with the fetal DNA in the mother’s blood), this state does not manifest itself; only the genes of the organism as a whole work, not single cells or their fragments. The DNA of a virus, for example, can “integrate” into the chromosomal material of a human cell - but such an exchange is impossible between people. That is why a child, nurtured by a surrogate mother, does not receive any genetic information from her.
In general, the idea of telegony has no real basis. Like supporters of other non-scientific theories, its supporters fake facts, intimidate and play on nerves - and it is a pity that among them there are people endowed with the power or the opportunity to speak out to a large audience. If we talk about the number of sexual partners, harm can be caused not by their magic number, but by trivial sexually transmitted infections; so you should never forget the rules of safe sex.
Photo: alessandradesole - stock.adobe.com (1, 2)