Australian Researchers Find Transsexuality Gene

[AllanahStarrNYC]

(Sydney, Australia) A team of Australian and American researchers claimed Monday to have found a gene that plays a role in transsexuality.

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The study, by scientists at Monash University in Melbourne and the University of California, Los Angeles, involved DNA samples from 112 male-to-female transsexuals and 258 non-transsexual males. The researchers said it was the largest scientific study ever conducted on transsexuality.

The results appear in the scientific journal Biological Psychiatry. The research was jointly funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the US National Institutes of Health.

The researchers said that they found the male-to-female transsexuals were more likely to have a longer version of the AR gene, by a 55.4 to 47.6 percent ratio.

They also said that the longer AR gene may have resulted in a weakening in the brain to detect testosterone which the scientists said “masculinizes” the brain during early development.

“We think these genetic differences might reduce testosterone action and under-masculinize the brain during fetal development,” Prince Henry’s Institute researcher Lauren Hare told the Australian Associated Press.

Trudy Kennedy, director of the Monash Gender Dysphoria Clinic, said the study supported other evidence that genetics and brain gender were important in transsexuality.

“This is something that people are born with and it’s certainly not a lifestyle choice as some have suggested,” she told the AAP.

But an Australian medical ethicist Dr Leslie Cannold warned that labeling transsexuality biological could result in it being turned into a pathology for which “treatment” should be sought.

“Such treatments could include preventative strategies like pre-natal screening and the discarding of `affected’ embryos and fetuses,” Dr Leslie Cannold warned.

Hare and other researchers in the study said that additional research into transsexuality is needed.

[MiaIsabella1985]

It really doesnt seem like something that would be far fetched. If you would ask any transgendered person they would tell you with their whole heart that they were born this way. It is in fact a pattern of thinking that makes us have more female behavior and characteristics.

Thank you for sharing this information