|
big damn hero
|
I remember reading this story a few days ago....and on fark no less....not exactly inconspicuous. 
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...81^662,00.html
Quote:
Meek really will inherit the earth
By JUDY SKATSSOON
13oct03
WOMEN have just 125,000 years to learn how to change a tire and assemble furniture - because that's when the last bloke will disappear from earth, according to a new book.
Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, has caused a stir with his book Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men.
In Australia to launch the book here today, Professor Sykes said the male of the species would only last for another 5000 generations before dwindling fertility and a decrepit Y-chromosome consigned him to the history books along with neanderthals and trilobites.
Women, on the other hand, could look forward to plum jobs, tax-deductible child care, clean bathrooms and global peace.
"This . . . is a look into the future at how the Y chromosome will deteriorate, and I think it certainly will," he said.
"The time scale is debatable but I think it is inevitable.
"I predict the Y chromosome will be so damaged by that time that males will only be 1 per cent as fertile as they are now."
The Y-chromosome, which carries the genetic switch to turn babies into boys at six weeks of gestation, is doomed, Professor Sykes argues.
"The Y chromosome is a genetic ruin, littered with molecular wreckage . . . a graveyard of rotting genes," he writes.
"It is a dying chromosome and one day it will become extinct."
Professor Sykes said men could be rescued with "massive intervention" but it would be quite possible to survive without them
|
Which in turn led me to this....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...21/bosyk21.xml
Quote:
Emma Crichton-Miller reviews Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes
This is a curious book: part complaint against the violence and devastation wrought on the world by men and part a series of extended forays into modern genetic science.
Bryan Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford University and a specialist in deciphering the histories written in our genes. In his previous book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, his focus was a tiny piece of DNA called mitochondrial DNA, which we inherit solely from our mothers and which remains exempt from the general mixing of maternal and paternal genes that occurs at conception. Occasional mutations allow us to identify different strains of mtDNA and, by tracing these signatures through the populations of the world, geneticists can begin to reconstruct the movements of peoples over vast distances of time and space.
In The Seven Daughters Sykes was able to overturn long-held prejudices about the pre-history of Europe and Polynesia as well as laying to rest the long-running mystery of what happened to the family of Tsar Nicholas II. It was an upbeat book, full of picturesque anecdotes, but Sykes was aware that it told only half the story.
In Adam's Curse, Sykes turns his attention to the other piece of our human DNA which avoids recombination: the Y-chromosome. Here the story is darker. While mitochondrial DNA is inherited equally by sons and daughters - though passed on only by daughters - men alone have a Y-chromosome. In addition, not only is this piece of genetic material passed down solely from father to son, it actually holds the instructions for making a man.
Far more then than simply being a reliable marker of human history, Sykes argues that the Y-chromosome is also the maker of human history, the driving force behind the rape, pillage, conquest and expansion which have shaped our modern world. Ultimately, he believes, in its blind onward rush, the Y-chromosome may also have sown the seeds of its own extinction.
To unravel this apocalyptic thesis, Sykes takes us right back to the beginning. In chapters which are absorbing but which sometimes deviate from the central thrust of the book, Sykes gives us a potted history of the discovery of, first, chromosomes, and then of the sex chromosomes, X and Y. It is quite a shock to realise that this familiar, indeed iconic, understanding of our biological identity is barely 50 years old. The complexity of this evolutionary system then leads him to ask the most basic questions of all: why are there only two sexes and indeed why is there sex at all?
For as Sykes shows, once you have sex and then gender, all sorts of mayhem ensues. Whether it is European colonisers across the globe, Scottish clan chiefs in the Highlands, the Viking invaders in Europe, or Ghengis Khan on route across Eurasia, what Sykes identifies is the Y-chromosome at work, pushing for dominance wherever it can.
Even in his own family, whether through charm or brute force, the Y-chromosome of a 13th-century Henri del Sike from Flockton in Yorkshire has overwhelmingly outperformed those of all the other men bearing the name. Sykes even hazards that some Y-chromosomes may hold the secret of determining the sex of their offspring, ensuring more sons than daughters.
Ultimately however, the chromosome may have shot itself in the foot. By constantly replicating itself in millions of sperm (unlike mitochondrial DNA which stays snugly intact in a finite series of eggs) the Y-chromosome is increasingly becoming a chaotic assemblage of damaged and useless DNA. Whether as a result of natural exhaustion or as a consequence of the environmental pollution that trails men's efforts to impress and conquer, male infertility is rising rapidly.
Sykes calculates that men are already half way to extinction and that the only hope for our species is the discovery among women of some mechanism to bypass the Y-chromosome altogether. He sees in this possibility a potential salvation for the planet as well as for the human race. Having been to an all-girls school, I'm not sure I share his optimism.
Emma Crichton-Miller has produced science programmes for the BBC and Channel Four.
|
I'm reserving judgment while I search for more news articles, but I thought instead of blindly writing the fellow off without bothering to look for it, I'd post some articles for those of us interested in learning about it.
Unless you want to carry on with the finger pointing and flippant remarks????
Carry on.
__________________
No signature. None. Seriously.
|