Talk:Freemartin

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wrt the difference between non-freemartin females and freemartins: the former are decanted with fertile ovaries.

Please sign your communications. The ovaries of freemartins are functional. It's their behavior that is different. P0M 04:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I suspect a miscommunication; the anonymous person is referring to the "Brave New World" sense, whereas POM is referring to the main sense referring to bovines. WRT the question someone posted, i.e. in "Brave New World" why are 30% of women NOT made freemartins, the book is pretty clear on that. Just for future reference, let's keep the book's whole explanatory paragraph (taken from chapter 1) here:

"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred–that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins–structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit, "that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention."

This "of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety" is expressive of the general attitude of the governing authorities in the book: their first and only priority is "stability"; that the human species A. survive and B. function as smoothly as possible. They would not put such entire faith in their technology as to trust the survival of the species to it; by keeping 30% "normal" women, in the event of any disaster the "normal" method of reproduction can be reinstated. The World Controllers do not share all the prejudices which they implant in the masses; they have instituted in vitro reproduction for practical reasons, and will switch back to the old way if that ever becomes more functional.

I doubt if any of this merits being added to the article itself.

DanielCristofani 06:02, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

That's a relief. I had forgotten about the Huxley thing and almost wrote something sarcastic about the bottled bovine fetuses. I think if we do anything at all it would be best to create a disambiguation page and split bovines off from humans. P0M 06:42, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for not signing above. I assumed the comment referred to Brave New World, as you say; perhaps it could be added above the horizontal rule? Unless it is unnecessary, or the disambiguation route would be best. Stephen Compall 06:45, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Huxley sense deserves its own article. According to How_to_edit_a_page, the horizontal rule is sometimes "used to disambiguate within an article without creating a separate page", and I think that may be the best move here. I've just tweaked the lower part for better parallelism. DanielCristofani 08:25, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused by the statement "Up to 95% of the freemartin's blood cells can be derived from those of its twin brother". At birth? Throughout its life? Aren't new blood cells generated from bones/bone-marrow? Or just red blood cells. Please clarify. Thanks! 203.147.0.44 02:18, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

A contributor called Malloc made those additions. S/he also made a few technical edits to scientific topics. Then he disappeared. Without citations it is hard to know whether there could be problems with content. To me it looks persuasive, and I would be opposed to permanently removing it. Perhaps we could keep it but look for evidence. One of the things we would need to keep in mind is that the interactions between the two embryos probably start very early on, and even stem cells might get passed around. We probably need the guidance of an embryologist. P0M 05:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I'm one of the authors of a recent research report on freemartins (free full text in Stem Cells). It's nice to see the contributors of the freemartin wiki obviously have read our paper (although they haven't cited it). I'll be happy to contribute, I just need to learn the basics of the editing system first. Meanwhile, I can clarify a couple of questions in this discussion:

• The freemartin blood is indeed permanently chimeric, and can be up to 95% derived from the brother even in an adult animal. This is possible because the bone marrow stem cells circulate in the fetal blood before settling in the bone marrow, and are effectively exchanged between the twins.
• The freemartin ovaries vary considerably in structure. In some cases they are much like normal, in others they are almost like male gonads. Thus, at least in a majority of cases, the freemartin ovaries are certainly not functional. The rest of the female genitals are usually very poorly developed, so freemartins usually are infertile.

--Miihkali 10:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It looks like your publication will answer the request that the article provide adequate references to prove its assertions. I wrote or checked much of the article, but I did it on the basis of materials present in studies of human sexuality. I do not have a collection of veterinary medicine books. If you can provide a locus classicus for the basic facts of the matter, that information would be very helpful too. P0M 15:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

This article seems to imply that only freemartin female cows will mount other cows in estrus. I grew up on a dairy farm, and I can attest to the fact that many cows that are not freemartins will mount cows when they are in heat. It would be a waste of money to keep a freemartin around solely for this purpose. They don't produce much milk, so most dairy farmers don't keep them in their herds.

--Yenshee 3 September 2006

But do other cows do this reliably, like a freemartin does ? Modern farmers don't need freemartins because medical tests are available to identify which cow is in estrus. StuRat 09:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)