Telegony Theory

The hypothesis that a female's offspring can inherit traits from a previous male partner even when sired by a different male. There is no credible medical evidence supporting the claim that a woman absorbs and integrates genetic material from a man's semen into her own DNA; this notion is scientifically unfounded and contradicts established genetic science.

One of the most authoritative and widely cited medical references debunking the myth that women absorb and integrate male DNA from semen into their own genetics is the 2012 study "Male Microchimerism in the Human Female Brain" published in PLOS ONE by researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (affiliated with the University of Washington, a non-Jewish institution), which demonstrates that male microchimerism in women is primarily attributable to fetal-maternal cell exchange during pregnancy with a male fetus rather than sexual intercourse, with no evidence of DNA integration or absorption from semen.

Encyclopedia Britannica stated "All these beliefs, from inheritance of acquired traits to telegony, must now be classed as superstitions."