Chinese scientists turn mice 'gay'.

[brokenergy]

I don't mind it as it is trying to understand sexual arrousal between animals (or mice in this case). We have to remember that the media will always overstate everything and extreamists will use this to futher their case for a "gay cure". I think people shouldn't get hyped or angry towards this and just move on. It isn't going to impact people but it would go into understanding more about sex and the chemical processes involved.

[Vindekarr]

Aye, and Im probably just being paranoid. Im always very suspicious of whenever science tries to explain things like sexuality and culture in genetic and bioligical ways. We're beyond this guys, a human is a human, gay, straight, black, white, male. female, christian, adeptus-mechanica. Thus I find things like this and other similar research slightly concerning. We have moved on, society I damn hope has moved on, some people havent, and we always have to be on guard for people who would seek to revive old evils such as eugenics.

 

On the other hand, if they can create an airborne virus or other similar thing that prevents rats and mice from breeding, that would be supurlative for controlling mouseplagues. Plagues of mice are an ancient problem-we had a massive plague here in Australia last year, the ability to end that plague quickly and succinctly without using overdoses of pesticide would be a huge thing. Not only would you have a short term effect of avoiding rat/mouse plagues, but you would also simultaneously reduce the average farmer's stressload by a signifcant amount.

 

They should be careful though, my father told me a funny story recently: apparently during the '60s the theory was that homosexuality came from a deficiency of testosterone. Science hadnt yet realised that not only was that a load of hokey, but that their idea of giving huge testosterone injactions to "known gays" would be a bad one. A number of gay men were injected with... significant amounts of testosterone and, quite frankly, the scientists were horrified at the scale of their blunder. Rather than make them suddenly straight, it simply made the subjects humungously horny, producing the temporary effect of making them "gay-er"

 

You know what they say about best laid plans-that little story proves it perfectly.

[DarkZerker]

That is epic.

 

Whatever causes "gayness", must it be cured? No, but if it were "cured" or whatever they do to "cure" it in the future, that would be one less gap. That's how I see it, long term. People worry about gaps now, but in thirty years, who's going to care if all gays were "cured"?

[Halororor]

That is epic.

 

Whatever causes "gayness", must it be cured? No, but if it were "cured" or whatever they do to "cure" it in the future, that would be one less gap. That's how I see it, long term. People worry about gaps now, but in thirty years, who's going to care if all gays were "cured"?

 

So you're saying people who are homosexual should have their homosexual tendencies removed simply because then they wouldn't have to worry about homophobes hating them? Yeah, that ain't gonna cut it. I'm bi and I don't want to be 'cured'. It's part of who I am, why should I be changed?

[brokenergy]

I think this topic is heating up everyone, would it be possible if it were to be left alone or locked?

[Halororor]

I think this topic is heating up everyone, would it be possible if it were to be left alone or locked?

 

No, absolutely not. We can't lock a topic every single time the debate gets a bit heated. How in the world do you expect people to to learn something from each other's points ov view if we have to look ropics solely because people aren't agreeing with each other. Heated debate isn't the same as trolling or flaming, you really should learn the difference. A heated debate is good for a forum, because it encourages thought, intelligent arguing and actually doing research on the odd occassion to validate points in any argument.

 

If you don't like heated debates, then stay out of them. As long as nobody is flaming anyone else, why should it be locked simply because one person doesn't like it?

[myrmaad]

The majority of the thread has been pretty reasonable in assessing the fact that this is media sensationalism.

 

This is a reporter's article, I'm disturbed to have to remind you guys, that this is not a scientific paper, and I will point out this line, "Experts have warned about the dangers of drawing conclusions about human sexuality."

 

In my view, one bad apple does not spoil whole bunch, in a barrel of water it sinks to the bottom.

[Bertoxul]

Gay mice. That's something I never expected to hear/read...

 

lol i totally agree... i seriously didnt even know that was possible. Animals only have sex for reproduction purposes, not pleasure. Only humans have sexual intercourse for pleasure, so something other than human being gay??????

[Vindekarr]

That's not true.

 

Sex for pleasure has been seen quite often in a number of species, mainly primates, but also variopus quadrupeds.

 

Humans are, by and large, laughably horny compared to other species, especialy asexual species such as spiders. We're the bad-smelling fishnets wearing kings and queens of tarts compared to other types of organism, but that doesnt mean we're the opnly species that has sex for pleasure, it's been recorded across virtualy all primate species, but also in other creatures, such as dogs.

[myrmaad]

That's a funny rebuttal, since it leaves out the most pertinent and obvious point: not only do animals have sex for pleasure, but homosexuality is prevalent. You might want to put on your big girl panties before reading this article about it, if you want the science try this book.