NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
    • The Great NZ Road Trip
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • Deloitte Fast 50
    • Generate wealth weekly
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Premium
Home / Politics

Letters: World on collision course as we pass point of no return

Whanganui Chronicle
30 Jan, 2020 04:00 PM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save
    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Australian bushfires, among other bad-news events, including royal ructions and a top-level international assassination, have got the year off to a flying start.

Australian bushfires, among other bad-news events, including royal ructions and a top-level international assassination, have got the year off to a flying start.

Well, with royal ructions and US assassination by drone of Iran's top military commander and the even worse consequences — not forgetting, of course, the Australian bush fires — 2020 is off to a flying start.

Of course, it's election year for us, so we can expect a display of human guile and bad innuendo there, as usual.

As I write this, more bad news is hitting the headlines about a possible epidemic of viral-pneumonia from China. Is this the one? You can't help but wonder.

But eclipsing all of these for me is venerable old David Attenborough's warning that we are right now passing the point of no return on runaway global warming. His words put me in mind of nothing more than the old tale of the sorcerer's apprentice.

We have learnt how to exploit our home and those we share it with and have set about doing so as if nothing else mattered.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Too late we are beginning to realise what interdependence means to us all but, unlike the fairy tale, no kindly old wizard is going to kick our collective backsides, put everything back right for us and set us back on the right path like naughty children.

We are all in sole charge now of a world out of control and still trying to pass the buck on whose job it is to put on the brakes.

The big choice now is who we will save from the wreckage as we hit the wall. Should be easy for a clever species like us.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

L.E. FITTON
Whanganui

READ MORE:
• Letters: Well done, Whanganui
• Letters: Look after our hospital, Whanganui; we're lucky to have it
• Whanganui Chronicle letters: Freedom vs responsibility
• Premium - Letters: Recognition for value of Whanganui arts would be a help

Discover more

Politics

Letters: Media must hold council to account

22 Jan 04:00 PM
Politics

Letters: Bad law and bad tenants

23 Jan 04:00 PM
Politics

Letters: Give our council due credit

27 Jan 04:00 PM
Politics

Letters: Health practices shrouded

28 Jan 04:00 PM

Studying 'gay gene'

In his 2016 book, The Gene, Siddhartha Mukherjee devotes seven pages to the work of Dean Hamer, triggered by that of J. Michael Bailey and based on careful twin studies on sexual orientation. These produced results of gay concordance of 52 per cent among 56 pairs of identical twins, and 22 per cent of non-identical twins of 54 pairs.

Mukherjee states that: "Bailey had profoundly changed the conversation around sexual identity away from the 1960s rhetoric of 'choice' and 'personal preference' towards biology, genetics and inheritance."

Hamer, however, needed a much larger study to identify the "gay gene" and the work on the human genome by 1991 was "at least conceptually within reach". He was granted US$75,000 to find homosexually-related genes.

Analysis of family information derived from 1000-plus relatives of his 114 gay male cohort provided, first, the fact that the "gay gene" must be carried on the X chromosome and, second, that the pattern of heredity was a side-stepping one through generations, forward and across, "like a knight's move in chess".

"Hamer," writes Mukherjee, "had suddenly moved from a phenotype [sexual preference] to a potential location on a chromosome ... a genotype. He had not identified the gay gene, but he had proved that a piece of DNA associated with sexual orientation could be physically mapped to the human genome."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

In attempting to locate the gene's position on the X chromosome via the 40 gay siblings, Hamer found that 33 shared a small stretch of the chromosome called Xq28. Random chance had predicated only 20 would share that marker. The difference of 13 extra was less likely than one in 10,000.

Commenting on a decade's worth of uncompleted work to establish the "gay gene", Mukherjee offers: "The gay gene might be a stretch of DNA that regulates a gene that sits near it or influences a gene quite far from it [or] perhaps it is located on an intron ... the sequences of DNA that interrupt genes and break them up into modules". Whatever the molecular identity of the determinant, this much is certain; sooner or later we will discover the precise nature of the heritable elements that influence sexual identity."

RUSS HAY
Whanganui

No more DHBs

David Bennett ( letters, January 29) concludes his letter with, "seriously, time to do away with this board". I will go further — it's time to do away with ALL Hospital Boards.

V. MEREDITH
Whanganui

•Send your letters to: Letters, Whanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Whanganui 4500 or email letters@wanganuichronicle.co.nz

NewsletterClicker
Save
    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Politics

Herald NOW

David Seymour and Chlöe Swarbrick talking Paris Climate agreement and foreign investment changes

Watch
Politics

Revealed: What ministry staff were told about proposed Govt agency triple-merger

Premium
OpinionSimon Wilson

Simon Wilson: Maurice Williamson, Greta Thunberg and the battle for Howick


Sponsored

Digital tool helps kids make better food choices

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Politics

David Seymour and Chlöe Swarbrick talking Paris Climate agreement and foreign investment changes
Herald NOW

David Seymour and Chlöe Swarbrick talking Paris Climate agreement and foreign investment changes

Act Party Leader David Seymour and Green Party Co-Leader Chlöe Swarbrick on Herald NOW talking Paris Climate agreement and foreign investment changes.

Watch
02 Sep 07:42 PM
Revealed: What ministry staff were told about proposed Govt agency triple-merger
Politics

Revealed: What ministry staff were told about proposed Govt agency triple-merger

02 Sep 05:00 PM
Premium
Premium
Simon Wilson: Maurice Williamson, Greta Thunberg and the battle for Howick
Simon Wilson
OpinionSimon Wilson

Simon Wilson: Maurice Williamson, Greta Thunberg and the battle for Howick

02 Sep 05:00 PM


Digital tool helps kids make better food choices
Sponsored

Digital tool helps kids make better food choices

01 Sep 12:00 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP