« Gay Sex Ban Unconstitutional | Main | Don't Call List »
June 27, 2003
Differences
Andrew Sullivan mentions an interesting genetic study found in a past NYT article:
As often noted, the genomes of humans and chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical, when each of their three billion DNA units are compared. But what of men and women, who have different chromosomes? Until now, biologists have said that makes no difference, because there are almost no genes on the Y, and in women one of the two X chromosomes is inactivated, so that both men and women have one working X chromosome. But researchers have recently found that several hundred genes on the X escape inactivation. Taking those genes into account along with the new tally of Y genes gives this result: Men and women differ by 1 to 2 percent of their genomes, Dr. Page said, which is the same as the difference between a man and a male chimpanzee or between a woman and a female chimpanzee.
Which would seem to support what I've been saying to feminists for years: Men are men and you can't make them be women. I don't why anyone would even want to, but that's a different subject.
What the Times article apparently doesn't mention, but the BBC does, is what some of those different genes may control.
The scientists found 78 genes in total on the Y, many but by no means all of them to do with sperm production.
One is the sex determining gene, the "master switch" that makes a baby boy; another is a gene that has some sort of function in the brain and is not found on the female X chromosome.
Men have an extra brain gene that women don't have? Now reckon why the NYT failed to mention that?
Posted by Rita at June 27, 2003 07:18 AM