kenm@maccs.McMaster.CA (...Jose) (10/13/88)
The following appeared in the Tuesday, October 11th issue of the
Hamilton Spectator :
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Dr. D. Page of the Whitehead Institute announced the discovery of what
appears to be the male sex trigger - a bit of genetic material that separates
the boys from the girls.
Dr. Eva Eicher, a genetisist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbour says:
"There is sexism in biology, there is no question about it. It influences
the way that biologists approach problems, such as sex determination. Even
the language of genetics, such as 'dominant', 'recessive' carry subconcious
connotations about the roles of men and women"
According to Eicher's theory - and she emphasizes that it's only that -
the genetic library of the human race contains two sex genes. One contains
the instructions for building boys, the other for making girls.
"I don't think nature works by doing nothing. There has to be an active
pathway (to womanhood)"
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First of all, hasn't Dr. Eicher ever heard of the honey bee? Sex
is determined in bees by whether or not an egg is fertilized.... thus
unfertilized eggs lacking half the gentic material develop into males.
Similarly in fruit flies, a male develops simply by virtue of not having
two X chromosomes..... Why can't humans be female by default? Obviously
further research is required to lend any substance to Dr. Page's theory,
but I don't think sexism is an issue here.
What next? Is the gay community going to demand the exixtance of
a "homosexual gene"... then we'll be prodded to find the "Cuban gene"....
then the "insurance salesman gene"? ;)
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"Fighting for Truth, Kenneth C. Moyle
Justice, and Department of Biochemistry
anything else that McMaster University - Hamilton, Ontario
seems fun at the time" kenm@maccs
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