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Hi, everyone! I'm Jeremy Yoder, @JBYoder, and I'm going to be tweeting about the surprisingly complicated relationship #LGBTQ folks have had with genetic research. #DecolonizeDNA
Many thanks to @kstsosie and @LMGLandry for inviting me to contribute to #DecolonizeDNA Day, and for letting me tweet from the event account while I'm having technical difficulties with my personal account.
A bit about me, to start: I'm a gay man (pronouns he/him) and an evolutionary biologist. I study species interactions, particularly helpful ones like pollination or beneficial symbiosis, and I've used genomic data in a lot of my work. https://jbyoder.org #DecolonizeDNA
You might think I'd be a big booster of research into the genetic basis of sexuality and gender identity, and I have been, in the past. I finished my PhD the year Lady Gaga released Born this Way #DecolonizeDNA
About two years later, I watched the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in US v Windsor, and two more years later, rule that same-sex couples had a right to legally recognized marriage, in Obergefell v Hodges #DecolonizeDNA
In that second opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted the recognition by "psychiatrists and others" that "sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable." https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf #DecolonizeDNA
It really seems "born this way" has been a winning argument for LGBT rights. If sexuality is genetic, the logic goes, being gay is like the features we use to sort people into races; and discrimination based on sexuality is as wrong as it is based on race #DecolonizeDNA
(We've already had some really interesting analysis of that use of genetic traits to construct race for #DecolonizeDNA Day)
Public support for LGBT equality really has been associated with understanding that sexuality "isn't a choice" ... which we tend to read as meaning it's a genetically determined trait. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25167626 #DecolonizeDNA
So why did LGBT biologists, including me, react with skepticism last year when the journal Science published the first modern genomic study of same-sex sexuality? #DecolonizeDNA
The fact of the matter is that LGBT folks have not always seen being "born this way" as a central plank in our case for equality; and some of us have seen real risks in research about the biology behind orientation. #DecolonizeDNA
Some of those worries came true almost immediately after that article went up in Science. #DecolonizeDNA
Why would we worry about research into the biology of sexuality? Well, because understanding the biology of sexual orientation is the first step to manipulating that biology — trying to "cure" same-sex attraction. #DecolonizeDNA
This is an old, old concern. I first ran across it in writings by Douglas Futuyma, a gay evolutionary biologist who's been open about his orientation going back to the early 1980s, when it was a very different prospect to make that choice. #DecolonizeDNA
Here's Futuyma, writing with his colleague Stephen Risch, back in 1984: “Most of the psychological and medical literature on homosexual behavior concerns ways to prevent or to ‘cure’ it.” https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v09n02_10 #DecolonizeDNA
Futuyma and Risch objected to the line of research even if it was motivated by a "born this way" logic: "But whether invoked to justify oppression or acceptance of homosexuals, the biological argument is specious. ..." #DecolonizeDNA
This is because, "Appeal to biology is based on the untenable presumption that what is biologically 'natural' is also good." #DecolonizeDNA
That is, Futuyma and Risch argue (1) biological research on sexuality is hazardous and (2) it doesn't actually bolster the case for LGBT equality, because that argument invokes the "naturalistic fallacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy #DecolonizeDNA
That 1984 paper didn't particularly slow down research on the biology of orientation, though. #DecolonizeDNA
Studies of twins confirmed that sexuality is influenced by genetics: pairs of identical twins (who share 100% of their genomes) are more likely to have the same sexuality than fraternal twins (who share 50%). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-008-9386-1 #DecolonizeDNA
(This body of research tended to focus on sexuality as a binary — entirely same-sex vs entirely opposite-sex attraction — and on gay men rather than lesbians #DecolonizeDNA)
Specific genes involved in sexuality remained elusive, however. The analysis that can do this properly requires extensive genetic sequence data from many, many people, and that kind of study isn't a priority for a trait that isn't a disease or a problem. #DecolonizeDNA
And the worry expressed by Futuyma and Risch gets sharper when we're talking about specific "gay genes" — when you know specific genes, you can design drug targets for a "cure" ... #DecolonizeDNA
... or you can screen embryos for their prospective sexuality, and try to choose whether or not your child is gay ... #DecolonizeDNA
... or you can design a test for sexual orientation to reveal folks who are hiding their sexuality from antigay family, employers, or governments. #DecolonizeDNA
This isn't science fiction, nowadays. A company called Genomic Prediction announced last year that it would offer to select IVF embryos based on genetic testing of their risk for disease or disability https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032041-900-exclusive-a-new-test-can-predict-ivf-embryos-risk-of-having-a-low-iq #DecolonizeDNA
These tests might not be very effective, but the risks of testing for sexuality aren't necessarily reduced if the test is bogus; much like "conversion therapy" can't actually change sexual orientation, but it's still harmful #DecolonizeDNA
And anti-gay governments have been very interested in tests for sexual orientation, even bogus ones. See, for instance the "fruit machine" used in Cold War-era Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-fruit-machine-why-every-canadian-should-learn-about-this-country-s-gay-purge-1.4678718 #DecolonizeDNA
So this is the context in which the Science paper was released last year. It was the first really modern genetic study of same-sex sexual behavior, though not quite really sexual orientation. #DecolonizeDNA
The authors used data from the UK Biobank, which links genetic sequences to medical records — hundreds of thousands of people are included. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/eaat7693 #DecolonizeDNA
Biobank participants haven't identified their sexual orientations as such, but many have reported their sexual histories, including whether they've had encounters with people of the same sex. #DecolonizeDNA
That let the paper's authors identify genes at which different variants were associated with same-sex sexual activity. Even with that huge dataset, they found hardly any genes with strong associations. #DecolonizeDNA
(That's consistent with a theory that sexuality is related to many genes, with small individual effects, which would be challenging to measure even with millions of study participants. #DecolonizeDNA)
The paper's authors, led by Andrea Ganna, @andganna, had clearly thought about the risks of this work. They frame their results cautiously, and include an explainer about terminology, differentiating between same-sex activity and actual sexual orientation. #DecolonizeDNA
They also created a stand-alone website to provide a full explanation of the study's origins and its limitations. https://geneticsexbehavior.info #DecolonizeDNA
They even ran a sort of prototype genetic test using a subset of their data — which showed that the results of their study couldn't usefully predict same-sex behavior in a new set of people. #DecolonizeDNA
I thought they'd done a pretty good job. But I also worried about what happened when the paper was out in the world. Once results like this are published, the authors don't have much control over how other people use them. #DecolonizeDNA https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/gay-gene-study-ganna-biobank-23andme-risks.html
Folks closer to the project raised objections, too. Joseph Vitti, @josephvitti, another geneticist at the Broad Institute, where many of the paper's authors were based, published a critique on the Institute's website: https://www.broadinstitute.org/blog/opinion-big-data-scientists-must-be-ethicists-too #DecolonizeDNA
"A [genetic test] for non-heterosexual behavior could easily be used to hurt queer people, regardless of its limited or lack of predictive value," Vitti wrote, "and as scientists we should not be making it available for misuse." #DecolonizeDNA
And in fact it was less than three weeks before someone did exactly what we were worried about. A fellow by the name of Joel Bellenson created an "app" on GenePlaza, a platform that hosts tests people can run on their personal genomic data. #DecolonizeDNA
If you get yourself sequenced by a consumer genetics provider like 23andMe, you can take the raw data and run it through a GenePlaza app to make genetic predictions based on the results of published research. #DecolonizeDNA
Bellenson's app was called 'How Gay Are You?' and it claimed to use the results of the study by Ganna et al. to estimate a user's sexual orientation. #DecolonizeDNA
The page for the app had some caveats, but didn't mention that the authors of the Science paper had demonstrated that their results couldn't support a meaningful test — here's a relevant screenshot from the original app page #DecolonizeDNA
Bellenson, the developer, also wrote some stuff that really doesn't pass the smell test — comparing LGBT folks (he called us "the Alphabet people") to Jews, who, he wrote, have "had their genius driven to cosmic heights by the scorn they have faced" #DecolonizeDNA
(That idea might seem pro-Jewish on the surface, but it gets uncomfortably close to some seriously nasty antisemitic tropes #DecolonizeDNA)
To top it all off, Bellenson was based in Kampala, Uganda — where homosexuality is criminalized under a colonial-era law, and at the time of the app's release, the government was considering a bill to impose the death penalty https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/uganda-death-penalty-kill-the-gays-homosexuals-lgbt-a9151411.html #DecolonizeDNA
Joseph Vitti found out about the app, raised the alarm, and started a petition to have it taken down. The authors of the Science paper appealed to GenePlaza directly. And eventually GenePlaza took down the app. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03282-0 #DecolonizeDNA
To my knowledge, there hasn't been an attempt to resurrect the app, though quotes from Bellenson suggest he still doesn't understand what he did wrong. #DecolonizeDNA
The whole episode demonstrates that there are ethical considerations for human genetic studies that go well beyond what we have typically considered best practices in the field. https://www.wired.com/story/how-earnest-research-into-gay-genetics-went-wrong/ #DecolonizeDNA
It's not enough to get informed consent from study participants and anonymize their data; there are risks arising from some genetic studies that have to do with how their results are released and used — even after they're out of the authors' control. #DecolonizeDNA
All of this echoes another episode from the history of LGBT folks' relationship to genetic research. The 2019 paper in Science wasn't the first study of specific genes involved in sexuality — even in the journal Science #DecolonizeDNA
Back in 1993, a team led by Dean Hamer published a study doing what Ganna et al. did on a much smaller scale; they found an association between male sexual orientation and a region of the X chromosome https://doi.org/10.1126/science.8332896 #DecolonizeDNA
The reception of that study at the time was pretty variable. This was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and social acceptance of homosexuality was decades away from marriage equality. #DecolonizeDNA
One particularly awful headline was published in the Daily Mail, in Britain: "Abortion hope after 'gay genes' finding" — that is, hope that parents would now be able to abort embryos carrying "gay genes" #DecolonizeDNA
(There's a thorough rundown of news coverage of the Hamer et al. study in this 1995 media analysis paper by David Miller: https://doi.org/10.1088/0963-6625/4/3/005) #DecolonizeDNA
This is the double-edged blade of "born this way", for LGBT folks. Evidence that our differences have a genetic basis does have some rhetorical force for treating us equally. But in the wrong hands, the same evidence creates existential risks for us. #DecolonizeDNA
Back in 1993, none other than Sir Ian McKellen, @ianmckellen, wrote about this conundrum in the Guardian; the essay is archived on his website here: https://www.mckellen.com/writings/930720gayview.htm #DecolonizeDNA
McKellen's essay is really lovely, and I recommend the whole thing. But what I particularly appreciate is that he deflates the idea that science can "validate" his identity as a gay man. #DecolonizeDNA
"My initial reaction to the 'gay gene' was to laugh," McKellen wrote. "Since I was about 10, I felt I was born gay; just as my parents, whom I didn't dare confide in, used to say I was a 'born actor'." #DecolonizeDNA
"Whatever it was, genetic, social, familial, environmental, consciously or unconsciously, everything happily conspired to form my sexuality," he concludes. #DecolonizeDNA
(Something about the phrase "happily conspired" makes me a little misty, if I'm honest.) #DecolonizeDNA
That's where I stand, at the end of all this. I don't need a genetic study to tell me that my sexuality is a fundamental part of who I am, and genetic research shouldn't be necessary to prove that I deserve equal treatment under the law. #DecolonizeDNA
As an evolutionary biologist, I am still absolutely fascinated by the genetics of human behavior, including sexuality; I do think it can tell us something about how same-sex attraction has been part of our history as a species. https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/06/gay-genetic-research-dna-screening-risks.html #DecolonizeDNA
But it's also clear that there are risks to this kind of research that outweigh my scientific curiosity. Until the world is truly safe for gay people, it's not safe for "gay genes." #DecolonizeDNA
Thanks for reading — I hope that wasn't too much of an info-dump thread. I'll stay on the account to answer any questions, if I can. #DecolonizeDNA
