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From: OC.TREI@CU20B.COLUMBIA.EDU
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: monosexual societies....
Message-ID: <285@caip.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 01:42:32 EST
Article-I.D.: caip.285
Posted: Wed Oct 30 01:42:32 1985
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Peter G. Trei 

> From: COBLEY A (on DUNDEE DEC-10) 
> Subject: mono sex societies
> 
>         Question
>                 For any biologist out there, what's the feasability
> of taking genes from two females and combining them together,
> replanting them in a ovum and so get birth from the result.  I
> realise that only female children could be born this way ( YY
> chromsone?)

     It has'nt been done yet, to the best of my knowledge.  There is
no good reason why it shouldnt work. It would be expensive, and
requires skilled personel and sophisticated equipment (while the
traditional alternative requires only unskilled labor).
     There is a facet to this which a non-biologist might miss.  One
inherits from one's mother not only the DNA encoded information in the
nuclear genes, but also a load of mitochondria, which have their own
DNA and genetic information. If the procedure was performed by fusing
two ova (as seems the most likely possibility), then the new cell
would have mitochondria from both parents. I have no idea how this
would effect the cell, and the person that might develop as a result.
If only the nucleus of one ova was fused with another, whole ova, this
problem could be avoided.
     There are no people with YY chromosomes. Your normal male is XY,
a normal female is XX. There are rare cases of individuals with XYY,
but this is very much an abnormality.

>         What would a society be like if all repoduction (or most )
> was done this way...?

     Thats a VERY interesting question.  I would tend to think that
monosexual species are at some kind of reproductive disadvantage
versus polysexual species, because most of the large, complex animals
we see today are polysexual.
     One advantage that polysexual species may have over monosexual
ones is specialization. For all that Mother Nature may offend some
feminists, human females are physically optimized for bearing and
caring for children while men are not (I am not saying men are
optimized for anything). In humans, female sexual characteristics are
much more impeding then the male's (there is a reason female Olympic
athletes tend to look androgenous).
     Of course, in our modern, technological society, these physical
differences are largely irrelevant. As we further mechanize the nature
of work, sex differences become less important. So: (1) would an
all-female society evolve? and (2) would such a society be stable?

     To answer the second question first, if reproduction is
predicated on the existence of sophisticated medical technology, I do
not think the society would be stable. A species which can not
reproduce without artificial aid is extraordinarily fragile, as even a
brief failure of civilisation woudl doom it. ('Lets start a baby,
Meg.'  "We cant Jean, we're out of batteries."). Also, in a given
area, small elites could easily control reproduction.

    As to the first question, if the only advance were affordable
female-female reproduction, it does seem likely that an all female
society might slowly take over.  However, I think something stranger
is likely to happen.

{enter blue-sky mode}

    Technological advances do not occur in a vacuum.  Around any
breakthrough there are a swarm of related advances, and the
interactions of these is impossible to predict.  I would suggest that
the same science which may one day give us female-female reproduction
is moving us towards a situation in which sex becomes a moot point,
particularly for reproduction.

     We are slowly but steadily cracking the code of the human genome.
It is not too wild a speculation to suggest that within the next
century we will be able to select the genes of our offspring as easily
as we assemble the components of a computer system today.  Want your
child to be beautiful?  You can.  Want a guarantee against cancer? You
can get it.  Want intelligence?  Musical talent?  Good teeth?
Longevity?  No pimples?  Soon these will be selectable at will in ones
offspring.
     Once this technology is in place (and I expect to live to see at
least some of it), sex becomes an irrelevancy. Ones' child could be
truly ONEs' child.  Male and female characteristics become optional
extras (though doubtless almost a 'standard option', at least at
first).  But why should genders be limited to two?  I expect talented
designer geneticists (they make designer genes) would come up with
viable ideas for totally new sexes, opening the door to hitherto
unknown classes of love and pleasure.

     If one could design one's heirs as easily as one designs a house,
what would they be like? The question of gender becomes a small factor
in a much larger universe of choice.

{exit blue-sky mode}
							Peter Trei
							oc.trei@cu20b.arpa
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