Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27441478-20160730084258/@comment-477304-20160731022448

I don't really care enough to speculate on who Silver's ancestors are anymore, but I don't think there's enough logical reasoning to rule Shadow out as he is not an artificial lifeform. He is a synthetic lifeform at best as there is at least some organic components to his body (Black Doom's blood).

It's also important to remember that Project Shadow was founded on research into immortality, so it can be assumed that the goal of the project, or at very least the pretense, was to find a way to make living organisms immortal. This is backed up by Gerald's motivation for joining the project: to find a cure for Maria's NIDS. Purely creating a lifeform that is immortal would not benefit Gerald's personal goals in the project.

With the above in mind, it's reasonable to assume that Shadow is a lifeform with organic components and therefore is capable of many basic organic functions, such as reproduction.