Word: variants
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...implications were chilling. Since the mid-1990s, the words mad-cow disease had turned beef eaters around the world to tofu tasters as people began to die of the human variant of the disease. Then in 2004 came another disturbing report in the medical journal the Lancet: variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (VCJD), as the illness is properly called, could be spread through blood transfusions. With no way to test for the incurable illness except in the brain samples of the dead, how to ensure the safety of the world's blood supply...
...parent's nightmare dilemma: experts say there's a fifty-fifty chance your child will attempt suicide before age 20. Should you opt for an experimental medical treatment that might prevent it? Parents of children whom experts call gender variant are faced with just that question. If a child doesn't identify with his or her biological sex, the onset of puberty, says Laura Amato, a youth-suicide counselor who runs an online transgender support group, can make that child feel like "part of a real-life horror story ... because the wrong parts are changing...
...reliable data exist on how many U.S. children are gender variant, although the National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that as many as 3 million American adults are. But studies suggest that gender-variant adolescents are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other teens. Now, increasingly, hormone treatments that delay physical maturity are being seen as a lifesaving alternative for gender-variant kids, but the remedy is also generating medical and ethical questions about interfering with the natural development process. The treatment--a series of injections to interrupt the brain cascade that launches puberty by regulating...
...also too soon to know how delaying puberty plays into brain growth. Others worry about intervening with children before their gender identity is fully formed. Kenneth Zucker, a child psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, notes that his studies indicate that comparatively few gender-variant children--about 12% of girls and 20% of boys--grow into transgender adults. "Gender development is a multifactorial process that evolves," he says. Nevertheless, Dr. Norman Spack, who spearheaded the Boston clinic and has assessed 50 children under age 21, says, "I've not had one change their mind...
...year-old from Monti Lessini, Italy. Looking at the cells of the Neanderthal bones, the researchers discovered a specific DNA mutation which could lead to red hair and pale skin. “It took me almost two months to convince myself I found the first Neanderthal-specific variant at the first attempt in the first gene I selected for,” wrote one researcher, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, in an e-mail. Römpler, who splits his time between Harvard and the University of Leipzig, could not be reached for comment. While anthropologists...