Now we’ve dispensed with the nonsense “gay gene” trope, let’s interrogate the way we talk about genetics and traits full stop
By Philip Ball,
Prospect
| 09. 04. 2019
Some people once felt that the reason to look for a “gay gene” was so that it could be eliminated. Under the headline “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’,” in 1993 the Daily Mail wrote “Isolation of the genes [causing homosexuality] means it could soon be possible to predict whether a baby will be gay and give the mother the option of an abortion.”
Revisiting that reporting now it has been announced that there is no “gay gene” shows us how much has changed over less than three decades in public attitudes to homosexuality. Sadly, there has not been a comparable change in public attitudes to genes. Few would now take the abhorrent view that a genetic propensity to being gay would constitute good grounds for termination of a pregnancy, but probably many would have no problem believing that your genes could “make you gay” in the first place. This latest interrogation of genetic determinism illustrates how far we have still to go to shift the prevailing narrative about genes.
The new research, led by a team at the Broad...
Related Articles
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Mesha Maren , Salon | 07.20.2024
By Alcott Wei, South China Morning Post | 07.13.2024
China has banned all clinical research involving germline genome editing under a newly released ethics guideline.
Germline gene engineering relates to altering the DNA in sperm, eggs or early embryos to introduce changes that can be inherited.
“Any clinical research...
By Julia Black and Margaux MacColl, The Information [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 07.19.2024
When venture capitalist Jack Abraham first began dating his wife, Gabriella Massamillo, he insisted on one condition: that when they were ready to have children, she’d be willing to conceive using in vitro fertilization. Abraham had lost both his mother...