Word: nih
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile, substantial reductions in Medicare and NIH subsidies for teaching and research could wipe out much of the benefit from these economies so painfully achieved. "We look at cuts as unfunded mandates,'' says Mark Laret, deputy director of the Medical Center at ucla, which stands to lose some $16 million. "We are supposed to provide all the same services and do it with less. Medicare, to its credit, is the only payer that contributes anything to the cost of medical education, and that has got to change.'' UCLA has already talked with several local hmos about a premium...
Under normal circumstances, the white gene is active only in certain cells, including brain cells, and does nothing to disrupt standard sexual behavior. In the NIH experiments, Odenwald and Zhang inserted a normal version of the gene into embryonic flies, but transplanted the gene in such a way that it was activated in every cell. That's what apparently played havoc with the flies' sex lives. With every cell sucking in tryptophan from the blood, a shortage of tryptophan developed in the brain, where it has important uses. Since tryptophan levels were altered, the researchers hypothesize, the brain was unable...
...pile up in 1991, when studies showed that identical twins were more likely to have the same sexual orientation than other pairs of siblings. That same year, a California scientist reported slight brain differences between gay and straight men, although the conclusion is disputed. And in 1993, an NIH researcher found a stretch of DNA on the X chromosome that seemed to harbor one or more genes affecting sexual orientation. But no one has proved that a particular gene promotes gayness or has offered any convincing theory of how genes could influence a person's choice of sleeping partners...
...fruit flies could not begin to account for the complex variations in human homosexual behavior. For one thing, the gene does not cause flies to renounce heterosexuality altogether. If a "gay" fly is surrounded by females instead of males, he'll fertilize the lady flies. So strictly speaking, the NIH flies are not homosexual but bisexual. And the gene produces no unusual behavior when transplanted into females: the scientists have produced no lesbian fruit flies...
Scientists caution against jumping to conclusions about the meaning of the NIH studies. To complicate the picture, some of the work shows that environment, along with genetics, influences sexual behavior. In one experiment, a small group of "straight" flies was mixed with a larger group of genetically altered "gay" flies. While the gays formed their conga lines, the straights stayed to the side -- but only temporarily. After a few hours, the straights joined in and, for the time being, acted...