Dozens of women want Bronze Age hunter's babies

Ananova ^ | 4/24/03

[SteveH]

Dozens of women want Bronze Age hunter's babies

Dozens of women have asked to be made pregnant by a prehistoric iceman who died 5,000 years ago.

The body of "Otzi the Iceman" was discovered by hikers in 1991 as ice melted in the Schnalstal glacier, high in the Italian Alps.

Alex Susanna, director of the Bozen Museum where his body is exhibited, says requests have been received by many women wanting to have Otzi's babies.

He told Austrian broadcasting company ORF that all of the requests had been turned down, not least because Otzi's penis had decayed away.

Otzi was found half emerged from the ice and his body was first thought to be that of a modern climber. Closer examination showed he was still wearing goatskin leggings and a grass cape.

His copper-headed axe and a quiver full of arrows were found nearby and radio-carbon dating showed the body was more than 5,000 years old.

Story filed: 10:26 Thursday 24th April 2003

[Captain Rhino]

Sorry, I'm a billion behind in the count...

[flying Elvis]

His last words to his friends, "I'm freezing my nads off out here."

[Jhoffa_]

They'll change their tune when they realize how difficult it will be to extract support from him..

[MHGinTN]

These cells subsequently are implanted in the surrogate mother - who has no genetic connection to the resulting male offspring. Actually, if the donor ova are taken from the woman in whose body the conceptus will gestate, the resulting birth would be related genetically to the Mother, the donor, due to the prescence of mitochondrial DNA, at least! Your mitochondrial DNA comes down through the woman's side of the gene pool.

[Landru]

"Closer examination showed he was still wearing goatskin leggings and a grass cape."

I'm going to have to look into getting some of those leggings & a cape like that.

Sounds like one hellova come-on ploy to me if it's still working after 5,000 years?

... :^)

[SteveH]

I believe his entire "package" is missing.

I seem to recall that when he was first discovered in the Alps, there was a persistent rumor that a hiker (this later even morphed into a female hiker) had run off with the "package" before the mummy could be recovered by scientists for preservation and study in the lab...

[Captain Rhino]

I am not a microbiologist, so I could be in error here.

My understanding of the procedure (from reading and watching what are said to be examples of the procedure on television) is that the entire contents of the egg are extracted. This would necessarily include the egg donor's mitochondrial DNA. Since the Ice Man's genetic material is a complete set of genes, it would, of course, contain his mother's mitochondrial DNA. But none of resulting individual's DNA would contain any of the egg donor's/surrogate mother's mitochondrial DNA. Consequently, my claim that the surrogate mother would have no genetic connection to the resulting male offspring.

This is not to say the surrogate mother has no biological connection to the child. After all, it would be her uterus that supported the child to term. As biological studies increasingly reveal, the physical, mental, and emotional health of the mother during pregnancy can have a dramatic impact on fetal development. Unfortunately, if she does everything right, the Ice Man genes would develop unaltered in the best possible prenatal environment. If she abuses drugs, alcohol, is exposed to hazardous chemicals/environments, is abused, in an accident, etc. she will impact the child and perhaps alter his genetic make-up; usually for the worst if past experience is any guide.

[Chemist_Geek]

The final question is ...why??

The Ice Man has little significance genetically since he is a modern human (Homo Sapiens Sapiens). There are presently about 4 billion of that particular genotype alive today. Further, since we already have his DNA to study, why would we need a living example? So, outside of the sheer notoriety, why would any woman want to have such a child - especially when the risk of abnormality is so high?

Why do (some) women throw themselves at sports stars? Why do (some) women throw themselves at convicted high-profile murderers? Why do (some) women throw themselves at (fill-in-the-outrageous-blank)?

There's no point in asking.

[Chemist_Geek]

Out dating other guys that they thought were more fun. On the bright side, though, you'll probably get to pay the child support for these kids......

Barf. Please don't remind me...

[MHGinTN]

Actually, only the nuclear material is removed ... it's calle enucleation ... then the nuclear material of the donor is inserted. But the mitochondrial DNA remains within the egg. Another method used prior to perfecting enucleation was to zap a donor cell alongside an enucleated (half the chromosome complement of a maturing ovum) ovum, and hope the two cells combine; lots of 'anomalies resulted'. Enucleation/insertion technique was called (may still be) 'the Hawaiian technique'.

[Captain Rhino]

I take your point concerning what Abbe Hoffman (I believe)annoyingly referred to as "hero f*****'s." It appears to be a way of counting coup for some women.

Now, how would you prove...

(*!! So that's why she never dry cleaned the blue dress !!*)

My concern was focused on the child because, in this particular case, the woman (surrogate mother) only gets to be famous if the child is born alive. And accompanying the birth is the moral responsibility for any abnormalities arising from the cloning.

[AnAmericanMother]

I seem to recall that when he was first discovered in the Alps, there was a persistent rumor that a hiker (this later even morphed into a female hiker) had run off with the "package" before the mummy could be recovered by scientists for preservation and study in the lab...

According to an account I read (I think it was in Smithsonian, shortly after Ötzi was found), the police who were first on the scene, thinking he was a fairly recent death (one of a pair of hikers who had gone missing in 1934), hacked him out of the ice in a hurry with crowbars and a jackhammer and accidentally gave him the unkindest cut of all . . .

He's not all that well preserved, though, especially about the face he looks pretty grim. Tollund Man is in far better shape . . . his bones are brittle but except for his nose and left cheek being a little squished he looks like he just fell asleep . . . the Peat Bog Beauty Treatment. He's about 1,000 years younger though.

[Captain Rhino]

Thanks. I stand corrected.. The resulting child would have mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg/surrogate mother (assuming they are one in the same).

One follow-up question. And I know this will require quite a bit of speculation since no primates have been cloned to date. And certainly nothing from long dead material.

Since the Ice Man's nuclear material has to be undamaged, the cell source would have to have been protected from the effects of intracellular freezing. (A possible source that has been mentioned is the teeth.) These cells, even if intact and undamaged are ...well, to be blunt about it,...dead, long dead. Now dead DNA can be sequenced since the underlying chemistry remains the same. Wouldn't enucleation require living nuclear materials from the Ice Man to hold up their end of the reproductive process?

(I mean, after all, even Frankenstein's monster was made of fresh corpses! Sorry... couldn't resist the parallels in the zapping imagery.)

Ahem...to return to the topic, is there an extant culturing technique that could produce the needed Ice Man nuclear material? Or do we have to come up with a Critchen DNA sequencer (a la "Jurrasic Park")so that we can simply read out the dead DNA constituents and build a fresh copy for use in the cloning?

[MHGinTN]

In all seriousness, I don't know if the testes of the iceman were frozen and thus might contain viable sperm if thawed properly, and that's the only long 'shot' I see for these strange females to get there icing on the cake. (Well, not really seriously.)

[Aracelis]

Thanks for thinking of me, but our DNA is likely incompatible...well that and the major visceral reaction I got simply by reading about these looney broads. Yuk! :^)

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past which never got pinged. Hard to believe.

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[Monkey Face]

Thanks for the ping. It's almost as good as the orgasmic nasal spray from last week.

Well....;o]

[kevkrom]

all of the requests had been turned down, not least because Otzi's penis had decayed away.

I hate it when that happens.

[Serb5150]

Great thread over here!

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Wouldn't his bronze age sperm be freezer burnt?