Tuesday, December 11, 2007

"Turning Homosexuality On and Off?"

John Tierney at the New York Times reports on new research:
To their surprise, neurobiologists have discovered that homosexuality can be turned on or off in fruit flies. They’d known that sexual orientation can be genetically programmed, but they didn’t realize it could also be altered by giving a drug that changes the way the flies’ sensory circuits react to pheromones.

Within hours of the treatment, previously heterosexual male fruit flies would be courting other males, and treatment could also cause flies who had been engaging in homosexual behavior to become exclusively heterosexual, the neurobiologists report in Nature Neuroscience. You can read a summary of it here from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the home of one of the researchers, David Firestone.
That's crazy wierd. I'm really uncomfortable with this for several reasons.

Tierney lists some possible problems and issues it could raise.
So let the discussion begin. I don’t think of homosexuality or heterosexuality as an “illness” to be “cured,” but I wonder how people would use the ability to control sexual orientation — to have a designer libido. Would some people, gay or straight, who weren’t having luck attracting one gender decide to switch to the other? Would some people casually switch back and forth?

Would some social conservatives (like Leon Kass), who normally object to biologists “playing god” and pharmacologists altering “human nature,” change their minds and urge the use of biotechnology to promote heterosexuality? Would some social liberals try to restrict the use of this biotechnology? Would parents, gay or straight, want to regulate their children’s sexual orientation — and should they or their children be allowed to do so?


What do y'all think?

7 comments:

  1. Good post. I didn't hear about the study until I read about here.

    By the time it's adapted to humans--decades down the road--I expect there won't be as much of a stigma associated with homosexuality.

    If I could choose my sexual orientation, I'd choose to be bisexual and then adapt my drug regimen to fit whichever gender the partner I end up with happens to have. That's sexual ambidexterity and, much like the manual kind, the option that gives the greatest amount of choice.

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  2. The homophobic crowd's worst nightmare made possible -- a biological weapon to suddenly make them homosexual.

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  3. There are some definite societal advantages to homosexuality. Five I can think of off the top of my head:

    - Removes the factor of unplanned pregnancy. The only health risk of same-sex intercourse is STDs, period, a risk that can be eliminated by conscientious monogamy. Monogamous same-sex couples never--NEVER--have abortions, unless one of the partners is raped.

    - Reduces overpopulation. In fact, if I believed in a species-wide concept of the Gaia hypothesis (and of course I don't), I would make the argument that Western acceptance of same-sex relationships came up when it did so that there would be enough space and resources (if distributed wisely) to compensate for overpopulation in the developing world.

    - Provides new potential parents who, because they can't make each other pregnant, are a perfect fit for our overcrowded adoption and foster care system.

    - Challenges the traditional gender role system, contributing to men's and women's liberation.

    - And I hear some people enjoy it.

    Re natural vs. unnatural adaptation, I have a unique perspective on that. I was born with multiple prematurely fused cranial sutures. If I did not have extensive neurosurgery, I would have died before I was a year old. If we base our idea of what people should be on who they are in nature--and we can put aside the question, for a moment, of whether homosexuality is natural--then the neurosurgery that saved my life is as contrary to God's plan as anybody's bom-chicka-wah-wah habits.

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  4. This is kinda like the third "X-Men" movie, only creepier and with less terrible dialogue.

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  5. I haven't seen it. But I'll agree with the creepy belief.

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  6. Well, trust me on the dialogue.

    You need to get to the movies more often, Leek.

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  7. It's quite possible. I was going to see American Gangster and Golden Compass, but I got too busy. Sadly time management does not happen by itself.

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