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GAY GENES HAVE BEEN FOUND! Finally!
I read it Saturday's "Winnipeg Free Press"
Quote:
Researcher sees group of homosexuality genes
Sat Jan 29 2005
by Tom Spears
A Chicago genome researcher says he has found a group of genes that strongly influence whether a man is homosexual -- not a single "gay gene," but a group of genes acting together.
If confirmed, it would provide at least part of the explanation for what makes men gay, a question that gene scientists have sought to solve for more than a decade.
The University of Illinois at Chicago and U.S. National Institutes of Health searched through the genes of 456 men from 146 families -- each of which has at least two gay brothers.
The finding that a whole variety of genes are common to the majority of the gay men echoes other recent gene findings: Traits from body shape to heart disease are all caused by a complex mix of genes, combined with non-genetic influences such as diet.
But there's no single "gay gene" found only in gay men. And the team says that environment likely also plays some role.
The discovery also raises the prospect of aborting fetuses that carry these genes, or creating drugs to counteract the genes. While genes are unlikely to decide everything in sexual orientation, being gay or heterosexual "is probably largely determined before birth. How you acted as a parent probably doesn't play much role," said the main researcher, Brian Mustanski, a behavioural geneticist.
"Our best guess is that genes explain about half the variability, and that other (half) is probably explained by other non-genetic biological influences" that are still unknown.
One bioethicist says this discovery, if true, would counter the argument that being gay is a matter of choice and therefore morality.
However, some parents will want to test fetuses and abort them if they carry genes that suggest a child could be gay, just as some fetuses are aborted for being female, he said. Some people doing in-vitro fertilization would also want to discard embryos with any sign of "gay genes."
-- CanWest News Service
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I am shocked that people would think to abort a Gay fetus....
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Living on the edge of sanity
Last edited by RCAlyra2004; 01-30-2005 at 08:38 PM..
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