!! spellx done
28  Chromosomes and Crime
    The Washington Post, Sunday, January 22, 1967

     The wonderful machinery of human reproduction inevitably slips
a cog now and again.  At least one conception in six now fails 
short of delivery, even in an environment of first-rate prenatal
care.  Indeed a large proportion of reproductive failures would be
monstrosities if they could be carried to term, and they cause far
less anguish as stillbirths than they would as seriously deformed
children.  The ultimate cause of these biological accidents is
rarely known.  Some of them involve the most fundamental processes
of chromosome distribution: about a fourth of stillborn fetuses,
and perhaps one per cent of liveborn infants show some anomaly of
their chromosomes.  These deviations are not only a great challenge to
medical care, they are also beginning to give us important insights
into the biology of human nature.

     Starting with Dr. J. Lejeune's discovery that mongolism is an
overdose of the tiny 21st chromosome, many investigators have been
searching for derangements of other specific chromosomes, including
the sex chromosomes X and Y.  Normal females are XX, normal males
are XY.

     We are now told of the interesting characteristics of anomalous
males who have two Y's, that is, are XYY in chromosome constitution.
Figuratively speaking, these might be super-males, but those so far
reported have apparently normal sexual development.

     They are, however, all very tall, generally six feet or over, and
many of them show dampened intelligence.

     The most extensive studies have been reported by a group from
Edinburgh headed by Dr. Patricia A. Jacobs, seven examples of XYY
males having been found among just 197 "mentally subnormal patients
with dangerous, violent or criminal propensities in an institution
where they are treated under conditions of special security".

     When stature is taken into account, the concentration of the XYY
anomaly is particularly remarkable, "in this particular group a man
more than six feet tall has an approximately 50 per cent chance of
having an XYY constitution".  In the general population, the incidence
of XYY is probably well under one per thousand.

     The XYY anomaly results from an accident in the development of
the sperm cell, two Y chromosomes moving into the same cell, when
the normal mechanism would separate them into two cells.  The anomaly
might also be the result of a later accident of chromosome separation
in the developing egg.

     Finally, an XYY male might well generate abnormal sperm as a
secondary result of his extra Y chromosome, but so far there is no
authenticated example of a second generation of XYY anomaly.

     The very first example of XYY was reported by Dr. Theodore S.
Hauschka of Roswell Park, New York.  His patient was a fertile male of
average attainment and no criminal history.  But he was very tall and
had several abnormal offspring, though none of them XYY.

     The association of the XYY chromosome makeup, who is also a tall
inmate of Lanarkshire State Hospital is an impressive example.  It
justifies the speculation that the extra Y chromosome engenders
aggressive behavior as well as height.  If confirmed, this work is
almost the first scientifically valid entry in the field of the 
genetics of social pathology.  This arena is now all to crowded
with unfounded speculation and prejudice, and the battleground of
the racists versus the environmentalists.

     Scientific caution, which must whisper that we simply have no
useful reliable information on the most important aspects of human
biology, has been drowned in this invective.

     Class and racial differences, its usual subject, are in practice
too confounded with environmental ones to support the rigorous
analyses needed to give useful answers.

     The first reports, in "Lancet" and "Nature" magazines, must be
followed by more details.  It may be hard to secure the necessary
cooperation of the patients and their families.  We surely need a more
detailed characterization of their history than "A preliminary review
of their records did not suggest that their crimes differed from those
of the other patients at the hospital; but their behavior had often
been aggressive and violent".

     We will be particularly concerned to find XYY cases as young
boys, so that the development of their potentially aggressive
behavior can be followed and more deeply understood.

     We can still only speculate on the way in which the extra Y might
influence their brains, or their hormone balance, or both, to
contribute to their pathology; and we must particularly study how
those individuals have related to their families and their community
to find the immediate roots of their aberrant behavior.

     In many ways, the patterns of XYY males who then do not develop
such serious maladaptions will be of the acutest interest.

     Unfortunately, we have no factual numbers for control purposes
on the incidence of XYY among tall men who are socially perfectly well
adjusted.  It would be astonishing if half our basketball players
showed this anomaly, but they have yet to be studied as a special
group.  

     Studies like these open a new chapter in human biology.  Even the
racists do not believe that skin color per se has anything to do with
social performance; they impute a set of other genes coincidentally
present in backward ethnic groups, whose action they perceive only
by the result the genes are supposed to explain -- poverty and
cultural disorganization.

     An extra Y chromosome is an undeniable object that can be seen
under the microscope independently of the effects it is supposed to
produce.  Nature's malfunction may thus be the route to our own
disciplined vision of human nature
------------------------------------------------------------------------