Are Mothers Necessary?

Fathers long since ceased being physically necessary. Science knows ways of making ova develop without the help of a male. But up till now, mothers have been practically indispensable. Then along came two experimenters in Bar Harbor, Me. Dr. W. L. Russell and Patricia M. Douglass have bred thriving litters of mice whose mothers were never born.

First, there was a delicate operation to transplant the ovaries of female embryos into grown-up female mice. The embryo ovaries grew and developed. When the host-mothers were mated, the grafted ovaries produced healthy young which bore no genetic resemblance to the host-mothers. This process might be repeated indefinitely, said Dr. Russell, producing mice with any given number of unborn female ancestors.

Was all this mere scientific doodling? The experimenters hoped it might answer an-important genetic question: just how much does a mother--or even a foster mother--influence the fertilized ovum developing in her womb?

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