१ नोव्हेंबर, २०१९

"Scientists and genetic counsellors say that these unregulated tools can harm individuals and society, by causing anxiety, unnecessary medical expenses, stigmatization and worse...."

"The test 'is not grounded in science. It is not predictive. It won’t tell you anything,' says Benjamin Neale, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and an author of the Science analysis. He and his colleagues examined the DNA of around 475,000 people and found several genetic variations loosely correlated with people who said they'd had sex with someone of the same sex at least once. But none of the variants was so prevalent that the researchers could use them to predict a person’s sexual identity.... [The app's creator Joel] Bellenson says that there are much simpler ways of discovering a person's sexual preference, such as looking at their social-media accounts. 'The idea that a government would need a DNA test to figure out if someone is gay is ridiculous,' he adds.... [He] says he whipped together his app in a weekend. He knew enough about genetics and computer programming to write an algorithm, and find a home for it online. 'Genetics and bioinformatics is so mature,' he says. 'Academia can no longer control it.'"

From "Controversial ‘gay gene’ app provokes fears of a genetic Wild West/Debate highlights broader concerns about tools that use the results of direct-to-consumer genetic testing" (Nature).

५२ टिप्पण्या:

henry म्हणाले...

It's right in there with astrology or climate prediction, science wise.

Darrell म्हणाले...

No gay gene.
But plenty of gay rays.

Lucid-Ideas म्हणाले...

"...had sex with someone of the same sex..."

Whoa whoa really? There's a lot of trans getting it on trans then? Or were they women? So they are dudes? Or if they have sex with women they're having sex with the same sex?

This is getting really really confusing...so they are dudes...not women...right? At what temperature does the fluidity between sex and gender melt or solidify? Or am I even allowed to ask that question because doing so would infringe upon certain individuals capacity to just make shit up as they go along?

I guess it's just another blip in Western Civilizations long descent into becoming a 'both/and' culture instead of an 'either/or'...

...It appears we'll have both a scientific/legal definition for sex/gender, and a cultural/political one also. And the arbiters of this system will be those whichever they 'feel' a certain way from day to day.

buwaya म्हणाले...

The fear of knowledge is always foolish.
Know and deal with it.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

It's just another dimension for the Meyers-Briggs.

iowan2 म्हणाले...

Indentifying queerness is of no concern to me. Sate your sexual desires as you please, as long as you dont expose the children, or frighten the horses, it is impossible to find any energy to care.
However, when the government becomes involved and writes laws that force me to adjustment my actions to according to your self identified queerness, then some objective standard is required? No?
That's why it is so messy. Homosexuals are a protected class. How does that class get proven?

I have an casual friend who was at odds with his immediate line supervisor, finally he went to his union steward and claimed he was being harassed because he was gay. (He's not, he's married to a female) and got moved to a different spot. The supervisor got a reprimand in his file.

This whole proccess is fatally flawed. We have more that one protected class. That is one too many.

Roger Sweeny म्हणाले...

I wish I knew which was true:

1) The app is wildly inaccurate, or

2) The app is fairly accurate and we're afraid of what people will do with the results.

Cynical me leans toward the second.

daskol म्हणाले...

Whether this app is accurate or not, this is the frontier of science that will pose the most significant challenge to our culture in the coming years. How to interpret and discuss GWAS and other genetic studies in the popular scientific world as well as what studies we undertake in the scientific world are subjects of much controversy. There will be more controversy.

mandrewa म्हणाले...

The editorial is written by left-wing authoritarians.

They are arguing for denying individuals information on their DNA.

As for the question of whether or not there are gay genes, well logic would tell us that in the strong form, that is a gene that makes you gay, there is no such thing.

But for the weak form, that is genes that slightly increase the chance of being gay, there are going to be a large number.

And in this case logic and data go hand and hand. This is exactly what the data shows.

Someone is selling a test to measure the correlation between one's genes and gayness. If they've done it honestly then the correlations are going to be tiny. Possessing a certain gene will increase the chance of gayness only very slightly.

But if the person selling the test is dishonest or stupid or incompetent, they will push the genetic gayness narrative like it's a much bigger deal than it actually is.

Infinite Monkeys म्हणाले...

The way to find out is just wait, they'll tell you. At least that works with younger people. I've had casual conversations with strangers who felt the need to inform me of their sexual preference even though it had nothing to do with the topic of conversation.

I think the fear is that this will lead to women aborting based on the baby having a "gay gene". If a gene or genes become accepted indicators of gayness in adults, you know that some parents will choose to end a pregnancy if the baby has that/those gene(s).

John henry म्हणाले...

So they are saying that there is no gay gene?

Gays are not "born that way"?

It is a chosen life style?

Good to know.

I have no problem with people choosing that lifestyle.

I do have a problem with people telling me that it is not a lifestyle but is baked into their DNA. "It's who I am, dude!"

John Henry

Mr Wibble म्हणाले...

However, when the government becomes involved and writes laws that force me to adjustment my actions to according to your self identified queerness, then some objective standard is required? No?
That's why it is so messy. Homosexuals are a protected class. How does that class get proven?


Ultimately the fear is, I believe, that we'll discover that there is no gay gene.

Levi Starks म्हणाले...

We need this app planned parenthood demands it.

Bill, Republic of Texas म्हणाले...

The day a gay gene is found will be the same day abortion is made illegal.

Francisco D म्हणाले...

How is there a nexus between social science research (e.g., making an app that predicts behavior from social media accounts) and physical science research that examines DNA? One is an apple. The other is an orange.

Jaq म्हणाले...

I don’t know what is true, but when somebody tells me “there is no gay gene” I think it would be interesting for them to show their work. There used to be no black swans, until Cook went to Australia.

The test will be if the number of gay men drops as social pressure for gay men to marry women is gone.

Ken B म्हणाले...

Hmm. That dismissal from Neale is carefully worded. Just because no one marker is predictive does not mean patterns cannot be predictive.

This reminds me of the earlier attacks on amniocentesis. Knowledge is too good for peasants.

David-2 म्हणाले...

They're really worried about the door to a much bigger problem opening up: People realizing that there is real verifiable science about the heritability of intelligence and how it affects different races.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

Scientists and genetic counsellors say that these unregulated tools can harm individuals ...

They (e.g. AMA) want to continue to be gate-keepers of medical knowledge, but it's good they're losing that position.

"The test 'is not grounded in science. It is not predictive. It won’t tell you anything,'

Apparently nobody is arguing about that: "The app cited the Science paper while warning users that it did not predict same-sex attraction."

Cochran: "Find[ing] that homosexuality was genetically correlated with various kinds of unpleasantness was apparently an issue in the preparation and publication of this paper. The authors were at some pains to avoid hurting the feelings of the gay community, since avoiding hurting feelings is the royal road to Truth, as shown by Galileo and Darwin."

Carol म्हणाले...

Hey, that GenePlaza is a swell place. Just set up an account..

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

@Roger Sweeny

We're afraid of what people will do if they know which is true.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Patented Gaydar.

gilbar म्हणाले...

They are arguing for denying individuals information on their DNA.
What is it they say? Democracy Dies In Darkness?

It's like that classic Twilight Zone episode;
Where, at the end of it; the guy yells out; "IT'S A HANDBOOK!!!!"

Hammond X. Gritzkofe म्हणाले...

"...Unnecessary medical expenses...."

But..but.... You "know that everyone deserves access to medical care" (!?)

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

The blank slate theory of human development is a fundamental underpinning of a lot of political theories, and won't be easily given up. Look at this essay, tell me whose politics are more likely to be gored by the advance of genomics?

Jupiter म्हणाले...

"If a gene or genes become accepted indicators of gayness in adults, you know that some parents will choose to end a pregnancy if the baby has that/those gene(s)."

When it becomes possible to detect homosexuality before birth, only Christians will have homosexual children.

gerry म्हणाले...

There has to be a gay gene. Otherwise, sexuality involves only choices. Bakers won't be forced to make cakes and bankrupted by lawfare, and the progression to government regulation of religion, speech, art, music, etc., will be prevented.

readering म्हणाले...

Hopefully by the time technology is perfected (a long ways off, surely) the stigma of same sex attraction will be gone except in religious countries that lack the belief in technology anyway.

daskol म्हणाले...

Angela Saini just wrote a lengthy book called Superior: the Return of Race Science arguing for the less is more approach to scary knowledge. The whole concept of group difference is anathema to progressives, to the point that they will deny science to protect their worldview. I think the politics are going to be more durable than you might think, Yancey.

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

It's like that classic Twilight Zone episode;
Where, at the end of it; the guy yells out; "IT'S A HANDBOOK!!!!"

Cookbook, handbook. Sometimes those handbooks are even creepier than cookbooks.

n.n म्हणाले...

Trans/homo pride (i.e. chauvinism, purity) and political congruence ("=") has been a setback for the development of other classes in the transgender spectrum, and non-spectrum behaviors alike. Its normalization schemes have corrupted how society and people process normalization, tolerance, and rejection. A legacy of progressive policies including establishment of the Pro-Choice quasi-religion ("ethics").

n.n म्हणाले...

The fear of knowledge is always foolish. Know and deal with it.

Exactly. So, what now, normalization, tolerance, or rejection? That said, they need to lose their Pro-Choice quasi-religion ("ethics"), which is a first-order forcing of progressive corruption and dysfunction.

n.n म्हणाले...

The could follow a policy of selective-child when a child is deemed non-viable, as some societies have done with female, Down Syndrome, inconvenient ("burden"), etc. children. They could do that.

n.n म्हणाले...

The day a gay gene is found will be the same day abortion is made illegal.

Maybe. There is a correlation between normalization of sperm donators and rent-a-womb, and normalization of trans/homo, maybe trans/bi, and, to a lesser extent, trans/neo, couplets. If their exception interests are in fact a driver of these normalization schemes, and observing the setback for female interests they may well be, then that would be the most likely outcome, and a welcome choice.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

Angela Saini just wrote a lengthy book called Superior: the Return of Race Science arguing for the less is more approach to scary knowledge

She's got at least one anti-science article in nature.com, which means, like NatGeo and SciAm, Nature can't really be trusted any more. Sad.

n.n म्हणाले...

It's like that classic Twilight Zone episode

This is real or a close facsimile. Welcome to the Twilight fringe or "penumbra", a place where faith, religion, and ideology are notoriously selective and opportunistic. Oh, well. I suppose everyone has a Constitutional rite/right to define the world unto themselves.

John Ray म्हणाले...

"Loose correlation" is the give away. That means someone found so many data points that didn't match at all, thus these data points must be ignored, even though there are so many of them. The translation is that it is all garbage.

Correlation is not causation, we learned that in studying the scientific method.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Daskol wrote:

"I think the politics are going to be more durable than you might think, Yancey."

Oh, I don't disagree with this.

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

“ There has to be a gay gene. Otherwise, sexuality involves only choices. Bakers won't be forced to make cakes and bankrupted by lawfare, and the progression to government regulation of religion, speech, art, music, etc., will be prevented.”

I respectfully disagree. There was a study, years ago, that showed that boys born in 1945 or so had a higher than average rate of homosexuality. I would also bet that my partner’s view that twin births increases the rate of homosexuality in both genders (based on most twins she has known having one straight and one gay twin). One theory for the former, that might apply to the latter, is that maternal stress might increase the likelihood of homosexuality in their kids. At least for this country, that was some of the bloodiest fighting of WW II, with many of the fathers overseas and in harms way. One of the interesting aspects of that study was the hypothesis that male brains sexualize (from the default female brain) at maybe 20-22 weeks of gestation based on testosterone levels of the fetus, and that can be reduced through maternal stress. Also that there are two different aspects that are sexualized: orientation and approach. Sexual orientation, of course, is which sex is a person attracted to. Sexual approach is whether a person prefers the intrusive or aggressive mode, versus the receptive or passive role. I would suggest that Titus’ brag years ago that he was essentially always a “top” means that he is an intrusive homosexual, while “bottoms” are more likely receptive homosexuals. The theory was that one of these traits sexualized at maybe 20 weeks, and the other at maybe 22 weeks (Doctors here can jump in and correct any, or even much of this).

That all said, we had a family reunion a decade and a half ago, for descendants of one set of great grandparents, and were surprised at the number of homosexuals of both sexes who were descended from that set of great grandparents - probably somewhere between 20% and 25%, far above the norm of less than maybe 5%.

Roger Sweeny म्हणाले...

John Henry,

There is nine months between conception and birth, nine months during which one cell becomes about a trillion, a trillion cells of many different kinds connected in amazingly complicated ways. That process is an inexact one, where randomness can have a big impact. E.g., if one "identical" twin is schizophrenic, there is only a 50-50 chance that the other will also be schizophrenic.

Many things can happen during that time which will cause a person to be "born that way" even though there is no constellation of genes forcing the person to develop that way. Of course, there can be genes that will affect the odds of that happening, and this test may pick some of them up. Most characteristics are caused not by one gene, but by hundreds.

There's a fascinating new book by Kevin Mitchell, Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, which touches on this, as well as a lot of other stuff. I just finished it and thought it was really good.

Pianoman म्हणाले...

It's not in the DNA.

Duh.

How many times does that need to be "discovered" before people believe it?

Being a musician isn't in the DNA either. Nor is being good at hitting a curve ball. Or having an aptitude for architecture. Or having hobbies like philately.

Not everything is determined by genes.

Bruce Hayden म्हणाले...

The big problem here, I think, is that the left has fallen down a rabbit hole. Initially, affirmative actions and other supposedly remedial preferences were awarded based on (supposedly - see Fauxhauntis Warren) obviously innate attributes, such as race and sex. Almost everyone has either XX or XY sexual chromosomes (with a small number of often criminally inclined people having an excess number of such). And this is based on the sex of the individual sperm that manages fertilization. Race too is based on genetics. Anthropologists and pathologists can fairly accurately determine race from skeletal remains, and genetic testing can identify race and even some national origin fairly accurately these days. Ashkenazi Jews are inbred enough that they are easy to identify genetically (and a lot of geneticists being Ashkenazi Jews helps there too). And likely a majority of Hispanics having Indio (Oriental) mtDNA and Caucasian Y chromosomes shows that that category isn’t purely cultural.

At least most male and some female sexual preference can be shown to be innate. If you essentially hook up the private parts of males to electrodes, and show the guys nude pictures of attractive males and females, male heterosexuals respond to the female photos, homosexuals respond to the male photos, and a few guys respond to both. It appears though that with human females, the distinction between heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual is not nearly as sharp, which seems to imply fewer pure homosexuals, and more bisexuals. And that has been my experience, with the minority of the Lesbians I have met having been pure homosexuals, and a majority actually bisexual - I can mostly tell by the presence or absence of sexual tension (which is also how my partner has infallible gaydar in person for gay guys).

But transgenders, the new “oppressed” category, throw a monkey wrench into this. There seems to be nothing the least bit innate there. So far, it mostly appears to be a mental illness. Or, at least after puberty, after our full sexual hormones have kicked in. Before then, it should surprise few that some prepubescents may question their gender assignment. Nevertheless, we now see a couple fighting in Texas between the mother pushing to permanently sterilize her son so that he can be a she, and the father resisting, at least through puberty. And we have (often untransitioned) trans women (I.e. males identifying as female) dominating, and thus destroying, women’s sports, wherever political correctness has allowed them to compete with cis women.

The problem though for the left here is that if you allow preferential treatment for transgenders, where immutable characteristic can not be shown, then what are the limits? Should Lizzy Warren be applauded, and not condemned, for identifying as Cherokee, instead of being descended from a lily White Indian killer? How about lily White Rachel Dolezal (aka Nkechi Amare Diallo) identifying as Black (and running the Spokane NAACP)? The line becomes very hard to draw.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Frankly, my dear. No one gives a damn.

What we have here is Genetic profile collecting for the Government guys being masked by a cat killing curiosity.

But the results have to be reported to be inconclusive. Because if the Gay gene exists,then it makes all of the delusions of the Transformation of genders industry that "gender is a construct" into an obvious falsehood.

mandrewa म्हणाले...

Here's a thought experiment.

Let's imagine I have a child that by mutation acquires a gene that has the effect of setting the odds of that child becoming gay to 25%.

Or in other words, that child would have a 75% chance of becoming straight and a 25% chance of becoming gay.

Now what are the odds of that gene spreading and becoming successful in the human gene pool?

They are absurdly low. It is just not going to happen if you do the math.

Now if I had such a child the odds of his having children are actually pretty decent since after all he has a 75% chance of being straight. But the odds of a person carrying such a gene having children versus a person that does carry such a gene having children are enough different that we can say with very high odds that this gene will no longer be in the gene pool within not that many generations.

So one interesting question is, on theoretical grounds, what is the highest genetic bias towards being gay that one is ever likely to see? Now I haven't done this, and I suspect it would be a lot of work to do the math, but my suspicion is that a gene that increases the odds of being gay by even 1% is actually a pretty unlikely thing. Probably the only way it can really occur is if the gene also had some counter-weighting pro-life tendency.

Now if a substantive genetic tendency towards gayness is statistically unlikely, why then are so many people gay? Well, first of all, it isn't actually that many people that are gay.

And second, I think this is all evidence for genetic orientation not being all that genetically determined. Or in other words there is a great deal of flexibility towards sexuality built in to our genetic program, and the reason for that flexibility probably has nothing specifically to do with gayness. Or in other words the survival value of the built-in flexibility is not the possibility of gayness.

We are either in a situation where the flexibility, or the lack of tightly pre-programmed sexual behavior, is a strong advantage in another context, or this is a situation that comes from the historical genetic context. If it's a historical explanation, the potential for gayness would mean the genetic program does not currently predetermine sexual behavior down to this level, and this lack of specificity would have been the side-effect of trade-offs that occurred a long time ago.

gilbar म्हणाले...

mandrewa asked...
So one interesting question is, on theoretical grounds, what is the highest genetic bias towards being gay that one is ever likely to see?


Weird Assumptions that mandrewa is making
A) that gay people don't mate with the opposite sex and have babies
B) that (apparently, according to mandrewa) people ONLY have sex with and because of love/lust
C) that people are either ALL gay, or ALL straight (maybe this should have been A)

According to Prison Movies.... An erect penis has no conscience
According to the BBS.......... A Lady is supposed to 'close her eyes, and think of england

IF you're going to have enough children to keep your genes going; how many times are you going to have to be with a yucky person of the opposite? 10? in your life?

Mark म्हणाले...

You have to wonder why the same-sex ideologues are so determined to say that it is not a choice of the will. Of course, the underlying premise of such a position is that people who now call themselves "gay" would not be if it were merely a choice.

Mark म्हणाले...

I've pointed this out is different ways before -- but the first rule of genetics is perpetuation of the species. DNA is coded to self-replicate not only cells, but the entire organism.

But if there is a "gay gene," then it is one that is programed for extinction of the organism because a man cannot procreate by having "sex" with another man. Same with two women.

n.n म्हणाले...

the Transformation of genders industry that "gender is a construct" into an obvious falsehood.

Transaction. Transact. A state, a process.

We know that physical gender attributes (e.g. breasts, penis) can be simulated. There is some evidence that mental gender attributes (e.g. sexual orientation) can be influenced, and perhaps indoctrinated in a vulnerable population.

Mark म्हणाले...

There are some people who obstinately try to put a square peg into a round hole. And there are those who insist that a square peg goes together with a square peg.

But that's not how the universe is designed.

mandrewa म्हणाले...

gilbar, I did actually think about the distinction between a man who is sexually attracted to men and a man who is sexually repelled by women. These are not the same thing and prior to the present it was not exactly unknown for a man to be both gay and married to a woman.

I decided not to include this because my message was already complicated enough and I was worried that what I was saying would not be understood, and in fact I'm still worried that I didn't express the thought clearly enough.

Another reason for not including your qualification is that I thought about one such situation and the example I thought of didn't really change the situation. The logic was still the same; it just got more complicated to say.

But now that I'm thinking about it again, here's a different hypothesis that kind of works.

Suppose that we have a so-called gay gene whose real effect is to produce a man that almost needs sex every day. It might be quite difficult to satisfy that urge if one is not an alpha male, since the average woman is pretty picky about who she has sex with, and sort of only wants alpha males. Such a man with such drives is quite possibly only going to be able to satisfy them with men who tolerate sex with other men, since men in general, and in particular gay men, seem to be less picky about sexual partners than women.

We can even imagine the genetic payoff for such a gene. Suppose this hypersexual male is an alpha male. Well then the payoff is obvious. He has lots of children with lots of women, far more than the number of children a less hypersexual and more approximately monogamous alpha male might have.

That's not really a bad hypothesis. Except is this really what people mean when they say someone is gay?

There's also the question if this a real behavior. I wouldn't be all that surprised if people actually like this exist. But given that I don't read books which feature people like this in them or movies for that matter, I suspect that it's only a tiny group of men that are really like this.

Or lets take your hypothesis B, that is men who are not attracted to women but who will have children with them as a kind of duty. Again I don't find that implausible, and this would substantially reduce the genetic penalty for being gay, but I don't exactly think it eliminates the penalty. Remember that men are in a genetic competition with other men. Remember that a pretty large percentage of males every generation do not have children despite the fact that most of them want children.

Here's a basic fact of human sexuality. Any individual woman in any given era is twice as likely to have one or more children in her life as an individual man is. This is a dramatic demonstration of the fact that although some women are raped, most women reproduce with men that they choose, and women tend to pick alpha males.

So if we imagine a man who strongly prefers sex with men, how exactly is this going to be an advantage in the competition with men who prefer women?

And remember we are hypothesizing a behavior that is strongly genetically influenced. That is we are assuming that it's a gene and not some cultural meme that is pushing the man toward men. The point being that genes are a lot less flexible than memes.

There are a lot of cases and possibilities to consider once we expand our definition of gay to include men who are bisexual, and depending on the specific kind of hypothesized genetically influenced behavior it's either going to be the same situation as I said previously, that is not very probable, or maybe in some special cases it becomes a lot more genetically rational. But surely all instances of the latter case, feature a lot of sex with women as the end consequence. So again, in that case, are we really talking about someone that is gay?

Rockport Conservative म्हणाले...

I am not an expert on this at all. But I have an observation that may or may not indicate something about males who have transitioned to females. I have a nephew who was born looking like a male, but at puberty failed to completely develop as a male because of a genetic problem. He transitioned to female at about age 30.

I tested my DNA on 23&me. They give you the initials of names of those you share DNA with and their ancestral origins. They also give you the maternal and paternal Haplogroups. My transitioned niece is also on there, I noticed that of course her DNA recognized her paternal Haplogroup. Females do not get the haplogroup of their fathers, only males inherit that. As I was looking to see who I might recognize out of the persons who share ancestral DNA with me, I have noticed that out of the approximately 100 of the 3100, five of them who declare as females show paternal haplogroups. That includes the nephew/niece.

I have no idea how many of the 3000+ might show that, I don't know if it is statistically significant, but it certainly gives me pause for thought. I wonder if my lines carry a strange gene variant. Maybe one of your more educated people can think on that.

HoodlumDoodlum म्हणाले...

Prenatal genetic testing for "gay genes" will happen....when? Gonna be some interesting abortion discussions right about then, I tell you what.