Turning Homosexuality On and Off
By John Tierney

http://tierneylab. blogs.nytimes. com/2007/ 12/11/turning- homosexuality- on-and-off/ index.html? hp

What if you could take a drug that would quickly alter your sexual orientation from straight to gay, or vice versa?

To their surprise, neurobiologists have discovered that homosexuality can be turned on or off in fruit flies. They'd known that sexual orientation can be genetically programmed, but they didn't realize it could also be altered by giving a drug that changes the way the flies' sensory circuits react to pheromones.

Within hours of the treatment, previously heterosexual male fruit flies would be courting other males, and treatment could also cause flies who had been engaging in homosexual behavior to become exclusively heterosexual, the neurobiologists report in Nature Neuroscience. You can read a summary of it here from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the home of one of the researchers, David Featherstone.

It was amazing," Dr. Featherstone said. "I never thought we'd be able to do that sort of thing, because sexual orientation is supposed to be hard-wired. This fundamentally changes how we think about this behavior."

I asked Dr. Featherstone if it might be possible one day to quickly alter humans' sexual orientation. Here's his answer:

Although I am not sure my research is a big step in this direction, I think that ultimately the answer will be: Yes. After all, the goal of neuroscience is a complete understanding of brain function. Understanding in science is typically demonstrated by the ability to control a process.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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Sayang fruitflies pa lang! Kelan kaya to magiging pwede sa humans? :p Another boring day at the office. Grabe, ito na lang talaga ang way out of boredom ko: ang magbasa ng BioPsych articles. Okay lang, interesting naman! Sana magamit ko in the future. :p

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