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Loading ...Scientists claim to find Transsexuality Gene
10.27.2008 7:22pm EDT
(Sydney, Australia) A team of Australian and American researchers claimed Monday to have found a gene that plays a role in transsexuality.
The study, by scientists at Monash University in Melbourne and the University of California, Los Angeles, involved DNA samples from 112 male-to-female transsexuals and 258 non-transsexual males. The researchers said it was the largest scientific study ever conducted on transsexuality.The results appear in the scientific journal Biological Psychiatry. The research was jointly funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health.
The researchers said that they found the male-to-female transsexuals were more likely to have a longer version of the AR gene, by a 55.4 to 47.6 percent ratio.
They also said that the longer AR gene may have resulted in a weakening in the brain to detect testosterone which the scientists said “masculinizes” the brain during early development.
“We think these genetic differences might reduce testosterone action and under-masculinize the brain during fetal development,” Prince Henry’s Institute researcher Lauren Hare told the Australian Associated Press.
Trudy Kennedy, director of the Monash Gender Dysphoria Clinic, said the study supported other evidence that genetics and brain gender were important in transsexuality.
“This is something that people are born with and it’s certainly not a lifestyle choice as some have suggested,” she told the AAP.
But an Australian medical ethicist Dr Leslie Cannold warned that labeling transsexuality biological could result in it being turned into a pathology for which “treatment” should be sought.
“Such treatments could include preventative strategies like pre-natal screening and the discarding of `affected’ embryos and fetuses,” Dr Leslie Cannold warned.
Hare and other researchers in the study said that additional research into transsexuality is needed.
Anyone who believes that gender identity comes from the environmental factors are truly real idiots. This condition goes deeper than that. The only people who dare to deny that have not this condition at all. They do not know what it is like to have such a brain, feeling, impluses and reactions. I think if the environment plays the role in it, then those people have not real transsexual condition at all, and later in life they regret their transition.
josh, gender identity has little or nothing to do with sexual attraction.
I think that environment affects the way in which you express yourself but not in determining sexual attraction.
No, it doesn’t mean there is a biological basis for gender. It means there is a biological factor that may influence a person’s propensity to be a transsexual.
Not all transsexuals have this gene and and a significant number of non-transsexual people have it. The only interesting detail is that the difference in how common the gene is between the two groups is stastisically significant at a reasonable level of confidence.
This isn’t really surprising. People who strictly favor either side of the “nature versus nurture” debate for most things are idiots. Both genes and environmental factors play a role in nearly all aspects of human life.
actually, what this means is that there is a BIOLOGICAL basis for GENDER. Postmodernists and gender studies people are going to lose their minds(and their jobs)
The Gays and Lesbians are next! See how quickly the Fundies will embrace abortion on demand after the Homo gene is found and a test for it is developed. We might even learn a few new dance moves in the womb while dodging the wire clothes hangers aimed us in the name of Jeeeeeezzzzzusssss.