The Y Chromosome - Men becoming extinct?

[nemesiswontdie]

so you would like to see men die out? and then be pregnate with some random dudes kid in your stomach?....thats weird

[Mr. Spencer]

I'll be Clive Owen.

[Vector]

so you would like to see men die out? and then be pregnate with some random dudes kid in your stomach?....thats weird

*covers mouth in a vain attempt to try to hold in laughter*

[missvalentine]

so you would like to see men die out? and then be pregnate with some random dudes kid in your stomach?....thats weird

Haha! LOL!

I didn't say i was the one getting impregnated lol. That would be weird.

[nemesiswontdie]

but still, why the fuck would you want men to die out? i mean im pretty sure there is no good reason why men are better off not being alive.

[missvalentine]

but still, why the fuck would you want men to die out? i mean im pretty sure there is no good reason why men are better off not being alive.

Are you saying you would not want to be the only man on a planet full of desperate, lonely and most likely horny women?

I don't want men to die out, I'm just being silly and fantasizing about future possibility's if i had a cryogenic tube.

[nemesiswontdie]

you do make a point i do love hot horney girls

ugrhh lets get back on topic please lol

[TheSelfishGene]

Here's a book I read on the topic.
It's titled Adam's Curse, by Bryan Sykes.

I can't really recommend it, because the author is a real wanker. But it's about tracing with the unique properties of the Y chromosome. Fairly interesting stuff. There's also about a chapter at the end on future projections of what will happen.
I wrote a review of the book, mostly because I was bored. I might as well copy it here. (It's loooooooong).

The book is called 'Adam's Curse', by Dr. Bryan Sykes. The full title is actually "Adam's curse: A future without men". I should provide a bit of background. This is the second book by Dr Sykes that I've read, and will probably be the last. The first is called "The seven daughters of Eve". I'll give a very breif precis of 'The seven daughters of Eve'.

It turns out that there is a DNA sequence, which is inherrited from mother to her children, and not a mixture from both parents, like the vast majority of DNA which we inherrit is. Being male I have the DNA sequence, I got it from my mother who got it from hers who got it from hers who got it from hers ad nausem. Mine just won't be passed on to any of my children. It's at a dead end (in this branch of the family tree anyway. Some of mum's sisters have had daughters, so not all hope is lost). Now, another peculiarity of this piece of DNA is that it doesn't get mixed up with any other DNA, so if you follow it's path back, it will remain unchanged, and therefore very easy to identify. It's called mtDNA, or mitochondrial DNA.

He opens the book saying how he extracted some DNA from a famous fossil or two. Fairly interesting stuff really. Then he tracked down modern day relatives of these cave men, using the properties of this DNA. Pretty interesting, at least to me anyways. Turns out in the end, that over 95% of modern Europeans are related to just 7 women. Quite phenomenal. He then goes on to give them all a name, and calls them all 'Clanmothers', their descendants the 'Clans'.

Before I begrudgingly began reading, I knew he had done this, and I thought it pretentious at best. Seven of the last 8 chapters are devoted to the 'histories' of these women. I thought I'd hate this bit, but it's not too bad. More of an excuse to show what life at each different time period was like. I was pleasantly suprised, and overall, thought the book was quite good. Definately worth recommending to someone who has an interest, but no background in genetics.

Sound science, used in unique ways to make new discoveries. Any extrapolation or theories are clearly marked, and easy to spot. You know what's been proven, and what the Author thinks happened in the past.

Which brings me to Adam's Curse. Similarly titled, probably so those who normally hate biological sciences (unless it's used for curing homosexuals, in which case their all for it) would give it a go. The edition of this and 'Seven Daughters' I own look remarkably like 'The Da Vinci Code', but it's not the first book I've noticed this happening to (anyone who's worked a stationary cage with me at Kmart can attest that half the books now a days look like the Da Vinci Code). Anyways, I was expecting to like this one, and I did, for about the first 150 pages.

The book is about a fragment of DNA, which is only inherited from father to son. No women carry this segment of DNA. It's the Y chromosome, and if you're a man, it's what makes you a man. If you're a woman, it's why you're not one. Like the DNA I mentioned earlier, the Y chromosome too doesn't shuffle it's genes with other pieces of DNA, so it stays intact through generations. You can see that this system is nearly identical to the one in women, just in men right?

Anyways, in the first half of the book (the good part), he tells about theories on the evolution of sex. Why bother? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? Why is it so widespread? He also talks about theories of Altruism, mostly by W. Hamilton, and subsequently popularised by Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene). These parts are amazing. Dawkins' book devotes much more space to the topic of altruism, and is among one of the best books I have ever read.

Anyways, he uses this mode of inheritance to look at some interesting puzzles, to do with the vikings, Ghengis Khan, and his own family tree. This is the second act of the book, and it's starting to taper off. He fills every page with how the train ride up through the hills is, and the sun's setting and wank wank wank I was here with my son decades ago and we saw a wank piper wank wank wank it was foggy wank wank wank. Tedious at best, and it doesn't help that he's describing his own family tree as he's doing this. Unless your name is Sykes, how likely are you to really give a shit?

So, that's the second act, which I persisted through, waiting for the really good bit. The third act should probably be described as fan fiction, at best. Explanation of the past, and extrapolation into the future. About the past, he concludes that the Y chromosome devised the masterplan to rule the world, and all men are bastard sons of bastards for their evil little DNA sitting in the control seat of each on of their cells. They aren't his words, but that's the impression you get reading it. He does go so far as to call the phenomenom 'Adam's curse', and how it's to blame for nearly all of the Earth's problems, present and past. He does over-anthropomorphisise (or 'personify') each gene an awful lot (which shits schooled people like me, only because we know that people who aren't schooled are going to buy this shit hook line and sinker). I looked up the reviews on Amazon, and they are polar about this book. Either 1-2 stars, or 4-5. He also talks about a Earth spirit, which is vengeful, and working at destroying the men, and their evil curse.

He fleshes out ideas of his without any real evidence. It would be much more responsible to say that they are theories, and lines of enquiry for the future. Instead he goes and fleshes them out, again without real evidence that any of this is actually what's happening. Early on he talks about fans of the two DNA systems arguing which is better, at this point it's clear he's in the women's camp (mtDNA. Although early in the book he insists he isn't in either), as he paints this 'imaginary' science, with the mtDNA defeating the evil Y chromosome, and ensuring it's extinction. True that the Y chromosome (and men) will eventually become extinct, and unless something is done about it, women too (as sex stops). This will happen regardless of the influence of the mtDNA, and I was suprised he retells this quite scientifically. Then he looks at possible solutions. An engineered DNA insert, which will preserve the functions of the decaying Y chromosome, or IVF procedures to have two women fertilise each others eggs. He paints this latter future as the best of all. Sexual selection gone. The curse broken. No notions of property and power (tradtionally male he says) to cause war and terror. Juse lesbians as far as the eye can see (ok, I second guessed him with that last point). Of course there is sexual reproduction, just no sexes, or sexual intercourse. These problems would still exist, admittedly in a smaller magnitude. He says that power and property are exclusively human notions, and credits this to the rise of agriculture in the past (the single biggest change which influenced the history of the Earth, if you didn't know) yet when explaining sexual selection in animals, he mentions the breeding territories of male elephant seals. What a fucking idiot.

He likens homosexuality to a genetic disease. I can see his reasoning, because I can understand him EXACTLY, but he probably shouldn't have fanned the flames like that. People who haven't studied the topic somewhere else will probably think he's a bigot, and looking at the Amazon.com reviews, lots of people think he is. I won't hold this against him, but personally I think he's an idiot for using that analagy. He actually dismisses the notion of a 'Gay gene' and instead attributes the genetic component of homosexuality in men to his champion, the mtDNA. Interesting, but too bad he gives really weak, unconvincing evidence for it. If he said that it was weak evidence, and is really interesting to look into for future studies, I would be fine with this book. But he doesn't. He preaches it as gospel, and people won't think, and will believe it like gospel, thinking its current science, which shits me most.
Oh, nevermind female homosexuals. Just ask Queen Victoria, they don't exist (he doesn't state this, but his silence on the issue can be read as ignorance).

And why play up the importance of mtDNA? Why stick up for it over the Y-chromosome? As he states in the first act of the book, they are best considered together to reveal the past. Well, if you open the book, before the first act of the book, on the very first page, before the title page, there is an ad for his company, Oxford Ancestors Ltd. They use your DNA, and tell you which clan you're in, who's famous that 's in your group, and all that short of shit? Even if you know, it's not like you can do anything about it. It's only a superficial difference between which DNA you have. There aren't even any genes encoded in the sequence. And even the genes on the same loop of DNA mostly code for metabolism and things. Nothing like a big brain or height or eye color or anything you can see or easily measure to some degree. So who cares if you're 'related' to Einstein, it won't mean you're smart. Infact, your probably dumb, because you've paid 180 pounds (nearly $400) for this goon's service to find out. Even if you and I have different mtDNAs, it doesn't mean we're not releated. It just means that we'd have to go furthur back into the past to find a common ancestor. All humans are related to each other. Who cares how far into the past they diverged? 'Big picture' genetics says every lifeform on Earth is related to every other. Amazing huh? It's just a shame that I'm embarassed to be related to someone who bastardises science, to cause some stir, sell a few books, and try and faust you something that's quite unecessary, while making you believe it's somehow important.

[WeskerSexyCheez]

I'm under the impression that they've taken into account sperm banks, because the DNA carried within those donations wouldn't have mutated, so men would be around for a while after that too.

I personally would be interested in seeing what society was like with only women. I'm not saying I WANT guys to die (despite how very, VERY often I do say that) I'd just think it an interesting development.

[Mr. Spencer]

As always, Star Trek: TNG has the answer!

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Angel_One_(episode)

The USS Enterprise-D has discovered the wreckage of the Odin, a freighter that disappeared seven years earlier. It was disabled by a collision with an asteroid, and there are no life signs on board, but three escape pods are missing. The Enterprise travels to Angel I, the nearest class M planet, to search for survivors. Angel I is a female-dominated society, ruled by six elected mistresses and a leader known simply as "the elected one". It has been 62 years since the last Federation contact with the planet.

[Dan Corson]

This thread immediately made me think of the (super awesome) comic Y: The Last Man. Keep in mind though, that I didn't read the article.

[Alexia_Ashford]

I do think the Y Chromosome is mutating how he said it is, but I personally believe by the time this happens, science will have gone so far as to be able to prolong men and their existence. A world of lesbians may be some peoples cup of tea but it's not mine. I love men.

Actually, that's a point. Even in a world of women only, there would still be heterosexual women. What would they do?

[Canas Renvall]

Actually, that's a point. Even in a world of women only, there would still be heterosexual women. What would they do?

Adapt.

[nemesiswontdie]

Adapt.

i like this post

[Alexia_Ashford]

I wouldn't want to "adapt" to vayjay. They'll still never be men. Besides, women get on my nerves :re: a world of them would do my head in.. I've always gotten on better with guys.