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Medical Forum / General / General / April 2007Chimera
You hear stories everyday about someone living as one sex, but feeling like they belong to the other. From what I understand, which is little, a chimera potentially contains the recipe for both sexes. It can also cause someone to have two different sets of DNA. How much could this explain someone wanting a sex change? > You hear stories everyday about someone living as one sex, but feeling > like they belong to the other. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > How much could this explain someone wanting a sex change? You eat DNA every time your eat chicken, or a burger. Does that make you want to be a chicken or cow? A pregnant woman is full of different DNA, does that mean she wants to be a baby? You have bacteria living in your intestines that has DNA, does that mean you want to be a bacterium? The answer to all of those is no. The desire for a sex change operations is psychological. Just like breast implants, or nose jobs, or liposuction, or any other elective surgery.... The more you know about medecine, the more "amusing" you will find medical shows like House and Greys Anatomy..... >You hear stories everyday about someone living as one sex, but feeling >like they belong to the other. These people are called transsexuals. >From what I understand, which is little, a chimera potentially >contains the recipe for both sexes. It can also cause someone to have >two different sets of DNA. > >How much could this explain someone wanting a sex change? Chimeric mice were created by fusing mouse embryos as much as forty years ago, and even the ones resulting from fusing male and female embryos end up an apparently normal one sex or the other anatomically, functionally and behaviourally. Since DNA testing for paternity has become available, a surprising number of people have been shown to be natural chimeras. These people are apparently no more likely to be intersexes or transsexuals than anyone else. Intersexes are people whose genitalia are intermediate in character between male and female to varying extent. This condition can be due to genetic or environmental influences prenatally. Since there are developmental difference between the brains of male and female mammals, possibly transsexuality is related to intersexuality. Transsexuals often report that they have felt like they are in the wrong gender of body from their earliest memories on. Genetically their bodies are exactly the gender they appear to be. You have an interesting idea there, but the evidence is against it. It seems to me, it wouldn't have been awfully hard for the person who started this thread, to have done some reading about human development and about hypotheses concerning gender identity and its development in particular people. Before posting here. Gender identity is a deep and complex topic. I recall coming across an apparent male who as near as I could tell, had no personal perception of his gender identity. And I know that for some people, self gender identity perception is very strong. I have not seen the 'chimera' hypothesis published in the literature. Since the thread initiator thinks there is some connection, what would that connection be? How would it work to produce the observed (or postulated) result? So if there are some lately-originated, research-based hypotheses around about origin and development of gender identity, I'd like to hear them. Cheers -- Martha Adams [sci.med 2007 Apr 25] >>You hear stories everyday about someone living as one sex, but feeling >>like they belong to the other. [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > > You have an interesting idea there, but the evidence is against it. >Since the thread >initiator thinks there is some connection, what would that >connection be? How would it work to produce the observed (or >postulated) result? I think it is quite clear what the original poster had in mind. It is plausible to wonder whether a chimera of male + female might have some properties of both. The OP did not claim a connection, but asked about it. bae's reply was an excellent summary. There may be more in some cases, but that reply is a good start. bob > >Since the thread > >initiator thinks there is some connection, what would that [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > bae's reply was an excellent summary. There may be more in some cases, > but that reply is a good start. IF anyone is interested, here is a thread from another group that got my mind to wondering. Most of the explantaions were over my head as I have not studied medicine. http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/9b02122ec8421a55/a aa458e1b998420b?lnk=gst&q=kilowatt%40charter.net&rnum=1#aaa458e1b998420b It seems to me, that publishing a pointer like the one below to a Google group, is unfinished and lazy work. The site pointed to is a very busy place, which leaves some question as to what the pointer writer was pointing to. Only a few minutes of work would have been enough for the writer to develop an abstract useful for orientation and for advancing the discussion, and provide the abstract with the pointer. Gender identity, its perception of self gender identity and of others' seems to me very culture dependent. Thus giving us a large and interesting topic for discussion -- and a problem about avoiding stereotypes. I think it's interesting to see that as we know much more about things than we did back in the 1930's (See H.G. Wells' Science of Life or Outline of History) the distinctions we think we see are much less sharp than we used to think. It was interesting a few years back to read of different bacterial species swapping DNA and metabolic structures, which was one of the methods by which antibiotics resistance transferred across bacterial species. Chimeras are interesting too, but I'm not seeing news about chimera work. A chimp/human chimera? Interesting. I wonder if you could call a partial chromosome-21 person a chimera? (The chromosome-21 break appears several cell doublings into the fetal development. Thus the result is a patchwork of normal cells and chromosome-21 cells.) I dimly recall reading something about fraternal twins carrying each some cells from the other, but not details nor where. But from male/female chimera to questions about gender identity, I think it's just plain lazy (or very sloppy) to simply step from the one to the other without postulating some model for the connection, or pointing to one. Cheers -- Martha Adams [sci.med 2007 Apr 27] >> >Since the thread >> >initiator thinks there is some connection, what would that [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > > http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/9b02122ec8421a55/a aa458e1b998420b?lnk=gst&q=kilowatt%40charter.net&rnum=1#aaa458e1b998420b
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