PARTHENOGENESIS CAN NOT BE DONE IN HUMANS

Although recent experiments in the Physiological Laboratory have produced six baby rabbits without regular copulation, there is no expectation that the experiments will ultimately have an effect upon the reproduction of human beings, it was asserted by Gregory Pincus '27, assistant professor of General Physiology.

The hope of the experiments is to find a way of producing animal life from an ovum without fertilizing it with a sperm. In the recent experiments the ova and sperms have united outside of the female, and then have been placed inside another female. "We hope to examine the growth of the egg outside of the mother's body," said Dr. Pincus, "since nobody knows exactly what the processes of reproduction are and what happens when the sperm and ovum unite.

"It would be impossible to work with human beings, even though at the end of the experiment the rabbits are perfectly normal. After all, the rabbits have no choice in the matter."