Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Human origins, natural selection and the evolution of ethics
- 2 Sex determination, brain sex and sexual behaviour
- 3 Inappropriate lifestyle and congenital disability in children: basic principles of growth, toxicology, teratogenesis and mutagenesis
- 4 Substance abuse and parenthood: biological mechanisms – bioethical responsibilities
- 5 Fertility awareness: the ovulatory method of birth control, ageing gametes and congenital malformation in children
- 6 Understanding child abuse and its biological consequences
- 7 The state of wellbeing: basic principles, coping strategies and individual mastery
- 8 The state of wellbeing: on the end-of-life care and euthanasia
- 9 Current reproductive technologies: achievements and desired goals
- 10 The recombinant DNA technologies
- 11 Stem cells, nuclear transfer and cloning technology
- 12 Human-dominated ecosystems: re-evaluating environmental priorities
- 13 Human-dominated ecosystems: reclaiming the future for following generations
- 14 Human-dominated ecosystems: warfare = fitness enhancement or losing strategy?
- 15 Human-dominated ecosystems: reworking bioethical frontiers
- Further reading
- Index
2 - Sex determination, brain sex and sexual behaviour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Human origins, natural selection and the evolution of ethics
- 2 Sex determination, brain sex and sexual behaviour
- 3 Inappropriate lifestyle and congenital disability in children: basic principles of growth, toxicology, teratogenesis and mutagenesis
- 4 Substance abuse and parenthood: biological mechanisms – bioethical responsibilities
- 5 Fertility awareness: the ovulatory method of birth control, ageing gametes and congenital malformation in children
- 6 Understanding child abuse and its biological consequences
- 7 The state of wellbeing: basic principles, coping strategies and individual mastery
- 8 The state of wellbeing: on the end-of-life care and euthanasia
- 9 Current reproductive technologies: achievements and desired goals
- 10 The recombinant DNA technologies
- 11 Stem cells, nuclear transfer and cloning technology
- 12 Human-dominated ecosystems: re-evaluating environmental priorities
- 13 Human-dominated ecosystems: reclaiming the future for following generations
- 14 Human-dominated ecosystems: warfare = fitness enhancement or losing strategy?
- 15 Human-dominated ecosystems: reworking bioethical frontiers
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
‘I should see the garden far better,’ said Alice to herself, ‘if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it – at least, no, it doesn't do that’ (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), ‘but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path!
Alice's confusion brings to mind Nature's dance of unexpected twists and turns which may, or may not, provide favourable conditions for achieving reproductive success. The twists and turns are not automatically in synchrony with species’ requirements to persist through time. All life forms compete to maximize their reproductive success by counterbalancing conflicting interests and calculating cost and benefit analyses. Humans, and their Quaternary companions in evolution, exist today only because they are the descendants of those that successfully reproduced in past environments. Future generations, if they are to survive, will need to do the same and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions – not an easy ask.
The foundation of normal adult reproduction is set during fetal life. Sex, as all other functions, is the product of dancing genetic and epigenetic variables so complex that under normal conditions developmental instructions seem to appear from one adaptable informational unit. While genetics focuses on how organisms retain traits by inheriting genes from their parents, epigenetics refers to additional methods of biological inheritance that do not directly relate to the inheritance of collections of genes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bioscience Ethics , pp. 24 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009