Fetuses and roundworms: more alike than you might think

by Lauredhel on November 20, 2007

in Science, reproductive justice, sexuality and health

I’ve been following the Feministe thread about a little girl with a parasitic twin. The discussion meandered into a wrangling about whether or not a fetus can be thought about as a parasite.

Coincidentally, the BBC now reports on new research out of Reading: “Placenta ‘fools body’s defences’ “. Fetal cells should, logically, elicit a ‘not-self’ immune response from the mother. A maternal immune response to the fetus can result in miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, or other pregnancy complications; but why don’t these complications happen every time? These researchers found that the fetus evades the mother’s immune system with a chemical cloaking device – in almost exactly the same way that worms do. The placenta contains a protein surface molecule very similar to the substance that protects nematodes from their host’s immune system.

How much this has to do with the actual issue of reproductive justice is pretty darn debatable, but the science is cool.

Similar Posts:

Anti-choice propaganda: following the source and the money by Lauredhel
Friday Parasites at Zygote Games by Lauredhel
Passive backlash. by Lauredhel
There’s a new dating service around, and it smells rather strongly of woo-woo by tigtog
Maybe they need Bruce Willis for the voiceover by tigtog

Tagged as: reproductive freedoms, Science

Share this post: Tweet It | Facebook It | Stumble It | Digg It | Delicious It

This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

lauredhel has written 1314 posts for Hoyden About Town. If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to the feed via RSS or EMAIL to get instantly updated for more posts like this.

{ 11 comments }

1 Ian November 20, 2007 at 5:52 am: Unfortunately this is typical science reporting, even of the better kind of science reporting — even if they get the observation more or less right there’s no context. The question of the immunology of pregnancy has been studied in enormous depth for decades. There are well over 50,000 papers on the topic. Dozens, if not hundreds, of specific mechanisms have been defined that help prevent immunologic rejection of the fetus. Acting as if this new discovery, one more mechanisms on top of the hundred already known, is the reason why pregnancies aren’t rejected is like saying the commemorative plaque on top of a dike keeps back the North Sea.
2 Helen November 20, 2007 at 6:15 am: Now, how many people clicked on Hoyden this morning and went, “Mmmm, that’s a nice bowl of pasta.”
3 su November 20, 2007 at 7:06 am: aargh, Helen – I’m having Breakfast!
4 rpg November 20, 2007 at 9:27 am: Heh, I wondered if Ian would be along to set the record straight. . .
5 Lauredhel November 20, 2007 at 1:50 pm: Unfortunately this is typical science reporting, even of the better kind of science reporting

I originally had a paragraph or two in this post about how crappy the Beeb’s science reporting is, and about how we’re probably not getting the full story, or getting a thoroughly distorted version. And I thought, Well, we already know that the fetus protects itself in various ways, but I took note of this news story because it compared a fetus directly to roundworms, which was amusing in context with the Feministe thread, and since that’s what I’m trying to point out, that’s cool. And I didn’t have Uni full-text access at the time of writing, so I felt on shaky ground criticising it without reading the actual paper. So I cut out the bit sledging the Beeb.

And then I thought, a fellow scientist will be around any minute to slam the Beeb anyhow. And here you are! Welcome!
6 rpg November 20, 2007 at 2:26 pm: Heh, so when I’ve been downloading the full texts of refs that the Hoydenne have posted, and making them available to you, I needn’t have? Not a proble, it’s just nice to know :)

Assuming that your W Aus Uni has the same access as my E Aus one, noch.
7 Lauredhel November 20, 2007 at 2:43 pm: rpg: and your efforts are appreciated! I only intermittently have access, and the gaps in the subscriptions available are strange and unpredictable.
8 Ian November 20, 2007 at 3:00 pm: The grad immunology class I teach just spent a couple hours very superficially covering some of the aspects of fetal tolerance and the immunology of pregnancy, so it kind of irked me that all the stuff I was talking about — uterine NK cells, HLA-G, all that cool stuff — was getting ignored.
9 Lauredhel November 20, 2007 at 3:33 pm: I would love to not ignore that stuff. Is there a handy post or page on Mystery Rays or elsewhere that I can link to?
10 Liam November 20, 2007 at 9:01 pm: “Mmmm, that’s a nice bowl of pasta.”

Yairs, Helen, I saw a bucket of alfalfa sprouts, then the haemostats, then I did the double-take and scrolled back up, clicked the link from Google Reader and was very. seriously. disturbed.
11 Ian November 21, 2007 at 6:21 am: I would love to not ignore that stuff. Is there a handy post or page on Mystery Rays or elsewhere that I can link to?

There’s nothing about the immunology of pregnancy on Mystery Rays yet. It’s too complex for me to write a snappy blog post about it, even for my very low standards of snappiness.