We have been reading "She Has Her Mother's Laugh", a book by Carol Zimmer about the "Powers, Perversions, and Potential" of human heredity. In some ways, it seems pretty straightforward. A male and a female get together and later, there is a new human, who didn't exist before but does now. Many people have heard of eggs, sperm, chromosomes, and DNA. I have heard of them and we have read several stories about baby-making and what it involves. But I was shocked by what I read in Her Laugh last night.
"It began to look like there was nothing more to be done. The state prepared to put Fairchild's children into foster care and prosecute her for fraud. But then Fairchild's lawyer read about another mother who had been informed that her children were not her own."
The basic idea involves two things, it seems. One is that twins can sometimes share blood streams in the womb and so, if one twin develops any type of body cell that the other twin doesn't have, the twin without that type of cell can have gotten some from the sibling. The other is that mostly and normally, a mother does not get any cells from the developing fetus or fetuses "back" in her own body but once in a while, the mother does get cells from her growing baby. Often, healthy cells find a way of growing and duplicating.
Depending on the type of cells, it is possible for physicians and scientists to affirm that some things are impossible, depending on their understanding of human biology. The Fairchild situation developed in 2003, rather recently. New evidence and modern communication prevented the woman's state of residence from convicting her of fraud and taking her children away from her.
This situation reminds me of the basic premise of the Netflix show "Jane, the Virgin". Jane is healthy and interested in the opposite sex but her mother and her grandmother have drilled into her that she needs to wait for marriage. So, when a physician informs Jane and her mother that Jane is pregnant, they naturally challenge the statement. Jane asserts that she has never had sex, implying that she simply cannot be pregnant. She doesn't know what the audience knows, that the physician got mixed up and accidentally artificially impregnated Jane when she came in for an exam.
