a . In humans and in all mammals, a mother’s immune system, contrary to its normal function, must learn not to attack her unborn baby—half of whom is a “foreign body” from the father. If these immune systems functioned “properly,” mammals—including each of us—would not exist.
The mysterious lack of rejection of the fetus has puzzled generations of reproductive immunologists and no comprehensive explanation has yet emerged. [Charles A. Janeway Jr. et al., Immuno Biology (London: Current Biology Limited, 1997), p. 12:24.]
b . N. W. Pixie, “Boring Sperm,” Nature, Vol. 351, 27 June 1991, p. 704.
c . Meredith Gould and Jose Luis Stephano, “Electrical Responses of Eggs to Acrosomal Protein Similar to Those Induced by Sperm,” Science, Vol. 235, 27 March 1987, pp. 1654–1656.
u “When egg meets sperm in mammals, zinc sparks fly. ... [They] are needed to stimulate the transition from egg to embryo.” Ashley Yeager, “Images Reveal Secrets of Zinc Sparks,” Science News, Vol. 187, 10 January 2015, p. 14.
d . For example, how could meiosis evolve?
e . “But the sex-determination genes in the fruit fly and the nematode are completely unrelated to each other, let alone to those in mammals.” Jean Marx, “Tracing How the Sexes Develop,” Science, Vol. 269, 29 September 1955, p. 1822.
f . “This book is written from a conviction that the prevalence of sexual reproduction in higher plants and animals is inconsistent with current evolutionary theory.” George C. Williams, Sex and Evolution (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. v.
u “So why is there sex? We do not have a compelling answer to the question. Despite some ingenious suggestions by orthodox Darwinians (notably G. C. Williams, 1975; John Maynard Smith, 1978), there is no convincing Darwinian history for the emergence of sexual reproduction. However, evolutionary theorists believe that the problem will be solved without abandoning the main Darwinian insights—just as early nineteenth-century astronomers believed that the problem of the motion of Uranus could be overcome without major modification of Newton’s celestial mechanics.” Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1982), p. 54.
u “The evolution of sex is one of the major unsolved problems of biology. Even those with enough hubris to publish on the topic often freely admit that they have little idea of how sex originated or is maintained. It is enough to give heart to creationists.” Michael Rose, “Slap and Tickle in the Primeval Soup,” New Scientist, Vol. 112, 30 October 1986, p. 55.
u “Indeed, the persistence of sex is one of the fundamental mysteries in evolutionary biology today.” Gina Maranto and Shannon Brownlee, “Why Sex?” Discover, February 1984, p. 24.
u “Sex is something of an embarrassment to evolutionary biologists. Textbooks understandably skirt the issue, keeping it a closely guarded secret.” Kathleen McAuliffe, “Why We Have Sex,” Omni, December 1983, p. 18.
u “From an evolutionary viewpoint the sex differentiation is impossible to understand, as well as the structural sexual differences between the systematic categories which are sometimes immense. We know that intersexes [organisms that are partly male and partly female] within a species must be sterile. How is it, then, possible to imagine bridges between two amazingly different structural types?” Nilsson, p. 1225.
u “One idea those attending the sex symposium seemed to agree on is that no one knows why sex persists.” [According to evolution, it should not.] Gardiner Morse, “Why Is Sex?” Science News, Vol. 126, 8 September 1984, p. 155.
g . “In the discipline of developmental biology, creationist and mechanist concur except on just one point—a work of art, a machine or a body which can reproduce itself cannot first make itself.” Pitman, p. 135.