Injections

[flashpig]

I know this may sound odd, but anyway. What would happen if you injected someone IV with semen? Would it just get filtered out by the kidneys harmlessly, would the body use it as a protein source, or would something quite interesting/fatal happen? This is not a joke, and is part of a heated debate.

[Gilli]

Well, dunno what would happen but would imagine it's a sure fire way of contracting any nasty viruses carried in the semen ! ..... not least HIV

Would you care to enlighten the rest of us as to how on earth you're having a debate about this ?

[flashpig]

Well it's a discussion about how good the body is. It's not really a debate, its over. Its just once you've finished a talk with a potentially silly claim being left proven/unproven you have to find out whether it's true: and it went along the lines of "people say that you die if you get a bubble of oxygen in your blood. It's possible, but you need to have quite a deal of oxygen in your blood. I'll bet you can inject sperm into your blood and it would just get filtered away or used by the body"

To which flashpig declared "oh come on..."

"No, it's true. I bet you"

"No it's not, you just made it up"

etc.

I'm sure you've had this type of discussion before, although probably not on this particular topic.

[AllYourBase]

The sperm cells would be recognised as foreign and antibodies would be raised against them, causeing them to be dissolved and attacked by white blood cells and your immune system.
I imagine the proteins and sugars would cause a small imbalance in the natural levels found in the blood, but would quickly be balanced out by the homeostatic nature of our circulatory system and biochemistry. Anything 'usable' such as sugar or protein would be used by the various cells in the body.
My fears about doing this would be of disease transmission but also the gloopy nature of semen potentially blocking a small blood vessel before it is diltued and broken down. This could lead to a stroke.

You must have fascinating pub conversations!

[MargeB]

"Is now belongs to us"

What if you injected yourself with your own? Would it still reject it as foreign?

[MargeB]

All of this being hypothetical. I mean, what would you say in casualty? I'm a spermatozoa addict, and I was shooting up? I was really desperate for a child?

Doctor: "Been reading the Answerbank again, sonny?"

[Noweia]

If you injected yourself with your own, you would still get a reaction to it, as the body doesn't recgonise haploid cells (ie sperm cells) as being 'self' (part of your body).