http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/political_inheritance Comments for "The political inheritance" en http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/political_inheritance <p>Apparently genes get names. I thought they were all numbers or something. And apparently some of them are now a bit, well, politically incorrect. I can understand - if you named one the "lunatic fringe gene" when you discovered it made a fruit fly twitch and now you find the same gene in a human and it controls, I dunno, whether one has a propensity to developing diabetes or something it could get a bit confusing discussing the cause of their diabetes in terms like "you have a problem with your lunatic fringe gene". So...</p> <p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1946480,00.html?gusrc=rss&#38;feed=11">Rebranding exercise for offensive genes</a>:</p> <blockquote><p><em>The Human Genetics Organisation, which oversees gene naming, is conducting an urgent consultation with scientists to find inoffensive alternative names to genes with titles such as "lunatic fringe" and "one-eyed pinhead".</em></p></blockquote> <p>I wonder if there's a "wing-nut" gene?</p> http://www.jockcoats.org.uk/political_inheritance#comments miscellany Mon, 13 Nov 2006 01:11:13 +0000 Jock 49 at http://www.jockcoats.org.uk