© ALEKSANDAR STOJKOVIC/SHUTTERSTOCKAt least in men, homosexuality may be a function of genetics, according to a study of more than 400 pairs of gay brothers. The research, published yesterday (November 18) in Psychological Medicine, confirms the role of a stretch of the X chromosome in determining sexual preference in men, a finding first suggested more than 20 years ago. Geneticist Dean Hamer, scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health, published a study in 1993 that proposed that Xq28, a region of the X chromosome, might play a role in determining whether a man was gay. “When you first find something out of the entire genome, you’re always wondering if it was just by chance,” Hamer told Science of the new study, adding that the research “clarifies the matter absolutely.”
Hamer, who recently wrote an opinion piece in The Scientist about the responsibilities of researchers who study sexual orientation, only studied 38 pairs of brothers in his 1993 study, but he told New Scientist that he sees the new paper as confirmation of his work. “Twenty years is a long time to wait for validation, but now it’s clear the original results were right,” he said. “It’s very nice to see it confirmed.”
But as was the case in 1993, not all researchers are convinced that science is homing in on the biological roots of sexual preference. Even the senior author on the Psychological Medicine paper, Northwestern University psychologist Michael Bailey, had his doubts. “I thought that [Hamer] did a fine but small study,” he ...
