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I Guess You'd Call Them "Poofs"?
tony [decorative spacer] January 25, 2007 [decorative spacer] 10:13 AM

It seems a researcher named Charles Roselli at Oregon Health & Science University has been conducting experiments to understand what makes sheep gay. This already sounds like a good idea. Apparently, it's drawn a lot of fire from certain circles, notably PETA, which may or may not be unsurprising. It's certainly unsurprising because Roselli has to kill sheep to examine their brains, but this isn't going to distinguish these experiments from other research projects. I assume what has particular riled feathers is that the reason for the ovine slaughter is tied to dubious motives of social control in humans, which gay PETA representative Shalin Gala seems to take issue with. In case you haven't guessed, it isn't really, but it is interesting that the suggestion of this idea spurred such a powerful response.

Comments:
What's riled PETAs feathers is the fact that they apparently don't know the first thing about reading scientific literature. They protested to the use of the word "control", claiming motives to social control. The "control" they speak of is easily apparent in the pubmed abstract for Roselli's 2006 article in Endocrine, where he describes the results of "CONTROL" animals against animals receiving the aromatase inhibitor he used to study the effects of estrogen in gendering the prenatal brain. It's an complete joke to even think that this could carry on to human research. Who in their right mind would even fathom doing experiments in HORMONAL ACTIONS in the BRAIN of PRENATAL HUMANS? Trial Lawyers would be salivating like dogs at the mere mention of it!

Posted by Symes at January 25, 2007 6:25 PM
What's riled PETAs feathers is the fact that they apparently don't know the first thing about reading scientific literature. They protested to the use of the word "control", claiming motives to social control. The "control" they speak of is easily apparent in the pubmed abstract for Roselli's 2006 article in Endocrine, where he describes the results of "CONTROL" animals against animals receiving the aromatase inhibitor he used to study the effects of estrogen in gendering the prenatal brain. It's an complete joke to even think that this could carry on to human research. Who in their right mind would even fathom doing experiments in HORMONAL ACTIONS in the BRAIN of PRENATAL HUMANS? Trial Lawyers would be salivating like dogs at the mere mention of it!

Posted by Symes at January 25, 2007 6:25 PM
I thought the comment at the very end by the psychiatrist was interesting, where he pointed out that the pubmed article did talk about the relevance of this research to human sexuality. If you're going to try to sex up your research with a line like that, you do have to expect a reaction (although maybe not as violent as this was).

Posted by tony at January 26, 2007 11:31 AM

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