Could an immortal woman have children?

I'm not sure if this question has been asked before, but it's become relevant in regards to a character I'm thinking of. The character in question was an Artful Dodger type hired by an alchemist in the early eighteenth century to help him carry out some of his more dubious experiments while looking for an Elxir of Life. Long story short she stole and drank it and is immortal.

So of course during her two hundred year lifespan, she has slept with a certain number of people and I was thinking of a plot point in which she looks up her descendants. However this would obviously depend on her even being able to bear children in the first place. So just wondered your opinions on the matter.

I'm willing to specify any details if you wish.

edited 12th Feb '15 12:24:15 AM by Swordofknowledge

My first answer would be that if you want to write a story with her having descendants, then you can certainly decide that she can

I'd say that it depends on how the elixir of life works. If it prevents any alteration to her body (cuts healing themselves instantly, hair and nails not growing and instantly resuming their original length if cut), then pregnancy should certainly fail. On the other hand, if it simply gives her eternal youth, but allows changes to her body (wounds taking some time to heal, hair growing), I see no reason why pregnancy could not be possible.

Then there is the question of whether some part of her immortality is passed to her children.

@ C105: Thanks so much for the input. I mean, the elixir of life and its properties in the story are not science based at all but I still wanted to be a partially consistent with real life consequences, if that makes sense.

To answer your question, the elixir confers a sort of "stasis" on whoever drinks it (it's actually funny because the hair growing back to its original length example was what I was going to give for this, if I had to explain ) The drinker doesn't really have a Healing Factor—it's more of a "return" to their state when they consumed the elixir. Thus if a limb was cut off, it would rapidly regrow, down to the hangnail they had on their finger/toe. The same goes for any change like tattoos, piercings, etc. Plus if the drinker had a disease when they consumed the elixir, they would be stuck with its symptoms forever but it would never progress or be cured.

Interestingly, limbs that are...er, seperated from the body have No Ontological Inertia and decay rapidly until they turn to dust.

edited 12th Feb '15 7:08:52 AM by Swordofknowledge

Don't forget about the fact that women only have a limited number of eggs in their ovaries. Once that runs out, they will stop ovulating for good.

You're welcome Swordofknowledge

With the way your elixir works, it does not seem as if there is any way for her to have children, as the elixir will never allow for the necessary changes brought by pregnancy. Furthermore, amitakartok's comment made me realise that, given when during her cycle she took the elixir, she could be stuck at a time where she was not ovulating and there is no way she could ever begin a pregnancy (there is also the possibility of an eternal PMS).

On the other hand, if she took the elixir at the right time, she may have an ovum forever ready for fertilization. Once she reaches an era when the advances in medicine allow it, the ovum could be extracted and fertilised in vitro and allow her to have as many biological children as she wants, as the ovum would keep regenerating. Those children would always carry the same genes, meaning all children would share the same traits inherited from her mother (thankfully this would still allow for them to have different genders). Unless the decay that strikes removed limbs affect these ova as well, in which case fertilising them would not be possible.

This was my attempt at a science explanation (which I hope was not too squicky or offensive - and not too inaccurate, as I have no medical background). Of course, if the elixir works by magic, you could consider that giving life is an allowed exception to its normal mode of operation (as would be for instance the minute changes to the brain corresponding to the acquisition of new memories).

edited 13th Feb '15 6:25:39 AM by C105

@ C105: No, don't worry about being offensive or Squick factor. It's all fine. More than fine actually; it was a well thought out response that had great details. I guess the tracking down descendants plotline won't be happening after all. Oh well, that aspect wasn't really important anyway, it was just an add-on to make things a little more interesting.

PS: I had to smile at your "eternal PMS" idea. I think I might actually have someone make a comment alluding to that during an argument with her, that's how hilarious and awesome that is.

edited 12th Feb '15 10:47:00 AM by Swordofknowledge

I'm glad I could help, especially for the joke

edited 12th Feb '15 12:45:38 PM by C105

Scientifically speaking, all women will run out of ovaries if given enough time.

However, also scientifically speaking, there are no such thing as immortal humans or elixirs of life. So, once you introduce immortality, I wouldn't worry too much about biological technicalities like menopause.

Yes, when you start making a fantasy you can pretty much do whatever you want. Have you considered she might have had children before she became immortal?

@ lexicon: I'd considered it, but she was rather young, between eighteen and twenty—she doesn't really know what age she was at the time—and while that was rather grown up for that time, she had no prospects for marriage and was considered quite undesirable due to being a Street Urchin that scraped by on theft and scraps. I suppose she could have had a child out of wedlock before becoming immortal, but it just seems to convoluted as to how she would track down her descendants.

If I really want to stick with the family tree plotline, I might just have her looking for the offspring of her siblings—she had two younger brothers and both of them lived to adulthood and married.

edited 12th Feb '15 2:05:53 PM by Swordofknowledge

I also read that according to research into DNA damage caused by natural radiation sources, humans have an absolute maximum lifespan of roughly a thousand years.

Regarding the limited number of eggs issue, Wikipedia has this to say on the matter:

On the other hand... does the immortality/regeneration cover starvation on the cellular stage? Because if it does, she will have a vastly increased chance of a multiple pregnancy due to fertilized polar bodies.

In order to make the haploid DNA the egg requires to be successfully fertilized, half of the original cell's diploid DNA is discarded during division. But the egg also needs a lot of nutrients to last until the placenta is developed, so the cellular division is assymmetric, creating a huge egg and a small polar body. Polar bodies can also be fertilized by sperm but as almost all of the nutrients went into the egg, the polar body's embryo quickly starves to death - unless the immortality serum covers starvation too.

edited 13th Feb '15 6:29:22 AM by amitakartok

@ amitakartok: Wow...that's a lot of information to take in. Thanks for doing the research/knowing so much! Hmmm...well, I hadn't quite thought about that sort of starvation—since I just learned the specifics of the egg fertilization—but as far as starvation on an "ordinary" level, the drinker is and yet isn't protected.

To explain: Starvation is one of the few exceptions to the elixir's "stasis" effect that regrows lost parts, undoes tattoos and piercings, and prevents hair growth and loss. A person who drinks the elixir won't die of starvation or thirst, but they will feel its effects. In other words, their body will waste away to skin and bones along with all the other effects of starvation but they will be unable to die.

I have to consider this and try to merge all that with the information you provided. So thanks, it really helps the thought process.

Now for a spanner in the works on the idea that the elixir of life is a complete biological stasis, to the point that the body can't change: She'd smother in her own dead cells in short order after drinking it. There's a constant shedding and replacing of old cells in skin and organs. If the elixir keeps her hair and nails (dead cells) from being altered, or keeps her body from changing to support a pregnancy, it won't allow the other dead cells to shed and be replaced, either nor will it allow any of the other changes that the human body undergoes as a normal course of living.

Any chance you can point me to your source? This could impact one or two characters in a project of mine.

(Sorry; I don't have much to add to this thread. Mostly just following because I'm curious what people come up with.)

More importantly, it won't allow the neurons in the brain to change to account for the storing of new memories, meaning the poor woman would actually be stuck in some Memento-like nightmare. I assumed the elixir allowed such minute changes to happen (that, or in the universe where this happens everything about an individual is stored in her incorporeal soul).

>> "More importantly, it won't allow the neurons in the brain to change to account for the storing of new memories, meaning the poor woman would actually be stuck in some Memento-like nightmare. I assumed the elixir allowed such minute changes to happen (that, or in the universe where this happens everything about an individual is stored in her incorporeal soul)."

Indeed, that. Even more so, if there can be no changes then I very much doubt in the woman's ability to react to any stimuli at all, which means that if her body can't be changed in any way then she will spend an eternity as a so-called vegetable.

Thus, allowances have to be made. The easiest way to do it would be by making it so that whatever gave the woman immortality does not put her body in a stasis but rather does something like "removing, for her body and any part of it, the concept of deterioration".

I do admit it's kind of abstract as far as approaching this issue goes, and it relies on your ability to define what exactly it means, but on the other hand it also means that the rules of it remain vague and you have some leeway with how exactly it works. Because really, what exactly would count as "deterioration" in this case, and what wouldn't, is left to you.

• Is becoming ill deterioration? Pretty much yes, your health does deteriorate then.
• Is the body reaching its alleged natural lifespan and then not functioning properly deterioration? Well, yes, it is.
• Is getting weaker as a result of not eating well-enough deterioration? Arguable, could say yes but could also say no and instead say it is "just getting weaker".
• Is getting a cold as a result of not taking care of oneself deterioration? Again arguable, as it could count but it could also be the body simply being weaker.
• Is losing a limb deterioration? Well, potentially yes, as the limb stops working if you lose it and it's not just getting weaker or anything.
• Is forgetting things as time passes deterioration? Well ... maybe, depends on how you approach it and on what works for you better, and I'd go with a yes but remembering things forever can really change people and not necessarily for the better.
• Is getting pregnant deterioration? As much as some people want to say otherwise, I'll have to say most likely not.
• Is having periods deterioration? Not at all, it's just muscle cramps; admittedly annoying and potentially really painful muscle cramps with some additional caveats, but that's it.
• Is becoming infertile at any point as a result of age or anything else deterioration? Tentatively yes since it means that a part of the body is losing its functionality, though one might make the counter-argument that there's a point when the woman simply shouldn't have any more "ammunition".

And so on, and so on ...

So yeah. The point is, creative thinking when dealing with things that can bend the rules can get you really far.

edited 13th Feb '15 5:47:53 PM by Kazeto

I read it in a Wikipedia article but can't seem to track down which one.

In any case, academic research found direct correlation between lifespan and the capacity to repair DNA damage. Details here.

Personally, I'd just have the elixir ensuring that, so long as proper nourishment is available, the body will just keep on functioning as normal for an indefinite period of time without the age-related degrading that affects everyone else.

Starvation, thirst, traumatic injury would all have the usual effect but if those things are avoided, then the body would just keep living and functioning as if the person was perpetually the age they were at whatever point they took the elixir.

Ovaries, on the other hand, would doubtless run out for the reasons given above, but not until the character's in her forties or so, so she could have a number of children between drinking the elixir and menopause.

I'm presuming, in this scenario, that the elixir affects the cells in her body but don't "rewrite" her genetics in such a way that it would affect her offspring (or perhaps, having half elixir-tainted DNA and half normal human DNA is not enough to cause the children to be ageless).

Since the ovaries do not get replaced as the body ages/changes, then they are not affected like the cells that reproduce to replace dead cells.

This would leave her body capable of writing new neural pathways, subtly changing (e.g. absorbing and accreting calcium to compensate for wear of the bones, losing cells and gaining fresh ones and generally behaving like a normal human body.

Perhaps the elixir somehow re-jigs the cells so that radiation does not degrade the DNA over time and all replacement cells are identical (it's a magical elixir, so nothing stopping it from having a magical means of storing what the DNA should look like and ensuring all new cells conform).

You could still have it that she heals perfectly from nearly any injury but severed limbs do not "grow a new her" because they lack the heart, lungs, neural system etc to drive that regeneration (in order to replenish lost tissue, she would have to eat to gain the raw materials to create new cells etc, arms and legs don't eat, drink or breathe so they just wither and rot like any lost meat while the body grows a new limb.

Beheading would "ruin her day" as it would be separating mouth and brain from the bits that need to be fed (and separating the brain from its supply of oxygenated blood and nutrients) - so permanent death is likely to ensue in that case.

Other than that, her body will rebuild the cells and accrete calcium to build new bones. Might take a while to grow a new limb and she'd be eating a lot in the process.

The werewolves in one of my stories regenerate in a similar fashion - they heal completely and perfectly and just "stop appearing to age" at a point somewhere between 21 and 35.

But they're still able to be killed by starvation, thirst, suffocation/drowning, beheading (or similarly extensive damage to vital systems). If they avoid those things, they just keep on going.

edited 13th Feb '15 11:25:56 PM by Wolf1066

@ Kazeto: I never really thought about it in that way—in terms of preventing deterioration that is. The reason I went for "stasis" was because I was trying to subvert the usual Healing Factor by making it instead a sort of "restoration" rather than actual wound healing. But anyway, your concept is far better at being magical while still being baseline believable. So thank you.

@ Wolf1066: You also bring up some good points. One of the things I'd always wondered about immortal regenerators is why severed limbs didn't simply grow new individuals, Tomie style, and now you've explained it—or at least given the only explanation I've ever heard regarding it. With your explanation, children would be possible, and thus I think I might just throw out the whole "body in stasis" idea and go with something along the lines of what you and Kazeto posited—since the stasis has now been proven to be a silly idea at least twice now.

On a whole other hand, you've also given me some interesting ideas as to how she can be killed, since a totally separate plot point is that there are a few other immortals out there and they are not happy about her stealing the elixir from her boss and using it on herself.

You're welcome.

I spent a goodly amount of time thinking on what would be required for a living (or, in the case of vampires or revenants, "undead") creature to live for an indefinite period of time within the constraints of the laws of life as we know it for the purpose of my own werewolves, immortals and "vampires".

I've never been one to accept "vampire sealed up without food/air for centuries can suddenly be fully active" - the body has to have fuel and therefore it must eat. It must oxidise that fuel to work the muscles, therefore it must breathe. It needs water to assist in all the myriad processes that make the body work, therefore it must drink water. Certain key systems are required to be connected and operational to sustain the body as a whole, therefore serious enough damage to those will result in death - though that can be amended to "far more damage than is required to despatch a normal human" and make them seriously tough bastards to kill.

I also reasoned that super-human ability requires a super-human appetite - since all energy expended comes from the food consumed. That goes for speed, strength or enhanced healing.

I've got to admit that the regeneration restriction is something I pinched from nature itself - earthworms, to be exact. When cut in "half", only the half that has the ring segment around it (can't remember what it's called and can't be arsed googling it at the mo') survives and grows a new other end, the piece without that vital segment is dead.

I just applied it to a larger, more complex creature that has a brain and a complicated digestive system.

Of course, if the other immortals can kill her, she - or her allies - could kill them, too...

EDIT: A thought on sickness - how about the elixir's modifications to her cells has made her (like the other immortals) so biologically "alien" that viruses and bacteria (aside from the useful bacterial colonies already in her body that were similarly transformed when she took the elixir) find her no more a suitable host/environment than they would something that evolved on the second planet of Alpha Centauri A.

Of course, she'd better not have any infection when she takes the elixir or she's going to have an immortal infection that's optimised for her body for the rest of her existence...

edited 15th Feb '15 3:02:02 AM by Wolf1066

<pedant mode> "Ova" or "eggs" (ovum, for only one), folks. A woman only has two "ovaries" normally. Those are the organs that produce the ova. </pm>

@ Madrugada: Not really pedantic, don't worry. Thanks for clearing it up though.

@ Wolf1066: I'm embarassed to say that you put even more thought into this than I have so far. Before, the only question that really stuck out to me was the whole childbearing aspect—everything else was just "Shhhh...it's MAGIC".

I have a question for you that doesn't really pertain to the giving birth aspect, but I think this has sort of evolved past that by now:

She and the other immortals do possess high-speed regeneration (i.e. wounds and broken bones healing faster, limbs growing back, etc). When you say a large amount of food would be needed for superhuman healing, do you mean that they would just need to eat more if they wanted to heal faster or would she or others be compelled to eat more while recovering, as in a massively increased appetite? In other words, is more food intake "optional" or is it a physiological demand?

edited 15th Feb '15 12:41:46 PM by Swordofknowledge

Oops. Sorry Maddy. I should've picked up on that, too.

It would depend on whether the healing factor was voluntary or involuntary.

If they could will it to happen or not happen as desired, then it would be optional.

If it was involuntary, something the body does automatically (like our own healing), it'd definitely be an increase in appetite, a physiological demand - the body would be doing a hell of a lot of work and using up any reserves the body has, triggering increased hunger signals.

Just like going on a long hike or run "burns calories" and will cause feelings of hunger if there is insufficient energy stored in the body to sustain the expenditure.

If the body was malnourished because food was not forthcoming, it would affect everything - strength, endurance, "energy", the ability to heal and move etc - and the person would show signs of malnourishment/starvation.

Just think of the photos of starving/malnourished people and the open sores on their skin that aren't healing because they haven't got the resources to heal at normal human rates.

Basically, your body can't do anything without fuel to drive the process - even breathing and pumping blood use up energy that is provided by food. The faster you do things - be it within normal human capability or not - the faster you go through that fuel and the sooner you'll get the message "Oi! Stomach, here. Has my bloody throat been cut or something?" and the sooner you will need to eat to replenish that which you have used up.

When I go camping, I eat far more than do when I'm in town as I'm carrying more weight and exercising a lot more than I do in the course of my everyday life.

So your immortals are going to be as hungry as hell if they have to heal quickly from serious damage and even hungrier if they have to replenish vast amounts of tissue due to losing a limb.

Sadly, I don't have an idea of how much hungrier they will be as I don't know what percentage of our energy is expended in, say, healing a minor wound over the course of a week. It will be some small percentage of that entire week's intake of food but if they heal that instantly, they will expend that much energy out of that day's food intake right then and there.

If it's a major wound that would take months or years to heal from, then they're going to have to expend whatever energy that healing entails.

So on the whole, it's your elixir, and if you want it somehow confering the ability to control one's own healing rate, you could have them choose how fast they heal and only heal fast when they know they have access to the food reserves.

Or it could be an automatic system like it always is and the body just heals at an accelerated rate with an increased appetite.

edited 15th Feb '15 6:51:07 PM by Wolf1066