HealthDay
News —Genetics, not just anatomy or hormones,
strongly influence gender, according to research that
raises questions about sex-assignment surgeries for
babies born with both male and female traits.
"The biology of gender is
far more complicated than XX or XY chromosomes, and may
rely more on the brain's very early development than we
ever imagined," genetics and sexual medicine expert Dr.
Eric Vilain, said in a prepared statement.
Vilain was a member of a
special panel convened Feb. 18 at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
<http://www.aaas.org/>
annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Experts estimate that
immediate gender assessment is impossible in about one in
4,000 to one in 5,000 newborns, due to "intersex"
conditions that affect their genitalia, reproductive
systems or sex chromosomes.
"Surgical sex assignment
of newborns with no capacity to consent should never be
performed for cosmetic reasons, in my opinion; we simply
don't know enough yet about gender to be making surgical
or legal assumptions," contended Vilain, an associate
professor of human genetics, chief of medical genetics,
and director of research in urology and sexual medicine
at the David Geffen School of Medicine
<http://www.medsch.ucla.edu/>
at University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. William G. Reiner, a
psychiatrist and an associate professor in the department
of urology at Oklahoma University Health Science Center
<http://www.ouhsc.edu/>,
agreed. "The most important sex organ is the brain," he
said in a prepared statement. "We have to let these
children tell us their gender at the appropriate
time."
However, most laws in the
United States assume that every person is clearly a male
or female, and many children with ambiguous genitalia
continue to undergo surgical sex assignment, according to
Cleveland State University legal expert Susan
Becker.
"The U.S. Constitution
promises equality, rights and benefits for all citizens.
But, as the Constitution is structured and interpreted,
individuals who do not meet the binary definition for
male versus female don't have the same benefits and
aren't completely protected from discrimination," she
said in a prepared statement.
A wide variety of genes
may hold the keys to gender, Vilain said. In ongoing
research, his team at UCLA has identified 54 different
genes that expressed differently in the brains of male
and female embryonic mice soon after
conception.
"Differences of gene
expression between male and female brains, very early on,
suggest that our brain may be hard-wired at a very early
stage to become male or female," he said.
