-=> Quoting Robert Craft to Jean Halverson <=-
 JH> Well, what they were saying IIRC is that the female
 JH> reproductive system would attack a male dominant chromasome
 JH> after repeated male offspring. To me, highly unlikely
 JH> still. 
 RC> OTOH, the immune system certainly has a memory and there
 RC> are cases in which women have become allergic to their
 RC> husband's sperm. But an autoimmune disease involving the
 RC> ova? I'll have to check the literature.
 
 Even then it would make homosexuality extremely rarer than the 1% that
 conservative estimates say.
 
 JH> IIRC, the families studied included female offspring. I
 JH> don't think that your assessment is correct. From the
 JH> homosexuals I have heard it's more of a lack of a
 JH> father-masculine figure in the family. Maybe an overbearing
 JH> dominant mother and either no father or an ineffective
 JH> father. Regardless, I still am a firm believer that it is
 JH> a _choice_to be that way.
 RC> Well, it's certainly not completely genetic - otherwise,
 RC> there would be a 100% correlation on the twin studies.
 
 Not genetic at all. Researchers are now  busy finding  homosexual behavior  
 in animals. But they  admitted that _everytime_ it's a form of violent
 behavior toward another aggressor, not the  lovey-dovey stuff that human
 homosexuals perpetrate.
 
 JH> The same way that it is a choice to be a philanderer. I
 JH> always highly suspect any reseach that is done to try to
 JH> explain the way people behave. For instance, several years
 JH> ago there was astudy done on incarcerated males. The
 JH> researchers conclusion was that violent criminal  behavior
 JH> was a result of the male child receiving two specifically
 JH> male  genes or a double dose of male dominance. The
 JH> researchers did not study men who were _not_ incarcerated.
 JH> Can you see a problem with this???
 RC> You're referring to those with Klinefelter syndrome - the
 RC> XXY complex. While the percentage of the prison population
 RC> with XXY *is* higher than that of the general population,
 RC> the theory that XXY leads directly to criminal behaviour
 RC> has been discredited. 
 
 When was this discredited? _That_ never showed up in the newspapers.
 The study that I remember was _only_ done on inmates. Oh I just _love_
 the media .
 
 
 RC> A decade or more ago, that was a reasonable decision for
 RC> those opposed to abortion. At that time, the only measure
 RC> available in the face of genetic abnormalities was that of
 RC> abortion. However, there are a wide array of theraputic
 RC> modalities nowadays, ranging from intrauterine cardiac
 RC> surgery for formerly lethal cardiac abnormalities to
 RC> intrauterine bone marrow transplants for cystic fibrosis. 
 RC> Given the increasing range of therapies beyond abortion,
 RC> I'd not hesitate to recommend prenatal testing. 
 There is a major problem with prenatal testing though. It often  results in
 the miscarriage of otherwise normal babies. Alot of what you said about
 prenatal testing is true however it should be only done for those women
 genetically at risk. For women with genetically healthy families it should
 be done only when sonograms show an abnormality.  This is not the case
 though. 
 
 Jean Halverson
... The more things change, the more they stay insane.
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