This is moe the political side of gnetics but I find this very important information for public to understand about genetics considering recent events. Trump has signed a bill stating only two sexes will be recognized going forward, male and female, excluding any intersex or trans identifying individuals. This article talks about why biologists disagree with this statement as chromosomes and the body are much more complicated than male and female.They use two diffferent chromosome changes as examples, Turner and Klinfelter syndrome, which are two cases of intersex choromoses. Turner syndrome being women who lack an X chromosome and Klinfelter syndrome being males who have more than one X chromsome attached to the Y chromosome. These individuals lack the necessary genetic ability to make proper gametes for reproduction, what are they then in this binary?
Going on to say 1.7% of individuals are intersex, this policy excludes a lot of biological complextity. They even say that many people have genetic differences that cause a whole spectrum of what is considered male or female when studying biology. Hormonal differences and intersex chromosomes have an entire spectrum that this policy deny's. Genes cause many minor changes in what is considered male or female especially physical charcteristics like height or metabolic rates that dont fit in any binary average. This idea backed by microbiologists like Biason-Lauber, and Nathan Lents who go on to give many reasons sex is hard to categorize as binary. Lents even says it is clear that these are "not hard categories with clear definitions.”. So in the future what doies this mean for the biology of sex? Will we continue to deny genetic proof of people other then male or female?
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biological-sex-male-female-intersex
No comments:
Post a Comment