Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!purdue!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!turpin
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: What's the Why and How of Mosquito Bites?
Summary: Pregnancy by fellatio followed by a knife fight.
	 (Craig Werner, can you repost this?)
Message-ID: <6707@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 89 21:12:29 GMT
References: <5399@mtgzy.att.com> <4948@tank.uchicago.edu> <9263@chinet.chi.il.us> <4987@tank.uchicago.edu>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 40

In article <4987@tank.uchicago.edu>, chappell@aylmer.uchicago.edu (Chappell) writes:
> All right, I'll bite (perhaps I should rephrase that).  Pregnancy by
> fellatio?  A low blow to zero-population-growthists.  Did anybody store
> C.W.'s post?  I would appreciate a copy.  ...

I hope CW saved his posting.  In case he doesn't repost, I will
relate what I remember.  (This will be an interesting experiment
-- if Craig does repost, we can compare how closely my memory
tracks what I read a few months ago.)

It was a story reported in a medical journal.  A woman came into
a South African hospital obviously pregnant.  The major problem
was that she had no vagina -- only a dimple where one should have
been.  Her baby was delivered by Caesarean, the mother was
scheduled for reconstructive surgery, and the doctors began
puzzling over this provably virgin birth.

It turned out that the woman had entered the same hospital nine
months earlier with several knife wounds in her abdomen,
including at least one that lacerated her intestines.  She had
been treated and released.  The wounds were the result of a fight
with another woman over a man.  At this point, the wounded
woman's preferred mode of sexual activity, as well as the route
the father's sperm swam should be fairly obvious. 

The reason I brought this story up yet again is to show the
foolishness of those who argue that because a disease could
conceivably be caught in some way, this mode must be protected
against.  The biological world is not one of mathematics, or even
one whose laws are as inviolable as those of physics.  It is the
very messy world in which we all live and is full of once in a
lifetime incidents.  When a doctor says that shaking hands does
not spread syphillis, this does not mean that it is absolutely
impossible for a person to catch syphillis by shaking hands, and
finding one such case does not disprove the doctor's claim.  What
is meant is that catching syphillis by shaking a stranger's hand
ranks, as risks are measured, way down there with becoming
pregnant by giving fellatio or dying from a 747 crashing on you.

Russell