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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!husc6!cmcl2!philabs!aecom!werner
From: werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med
Subject: Re: Hybrids (was Life imitates art)
Message-ID: <1093@aecom.YU.EDU>
Date: Wed, 27-May-87 23:40:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom.1093
Posted: Wed May 27 23:40:10 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 07:52:23 EDT
References: <1157@sigi.Colorado.EDU> <6693@allegra.UUCP> <1664@tekcrl.TEK.COM> <2805@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 49
Summary: Superficial and deeper meanings
Xref: mnetor sci.bio:371 sci.med:2245

In article <2805@pucc.Princeton.EDU>, 6065833@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith) writes:
> Craig Werner writes, regarding a discussion of "apemen":
> >>       This ignores the fact that Apes have 48 chromosomes and
> >>humans have 46, and sounds more like somebody's idea of a hoax,
> >>or a typical article from the National Enquirer.

	And close to a dozen remind me about horses, donkeys, and mules.
However, that's not what I meant by bringing up the 46/48 dichotomy.
The article original Enquirer-esqe article described the phenotype of
the Ape-Human hybrids as though they could be described by a simple
intra-species/inter-variety cross.  The answer is not quite so simple.
What I was really referring to is the extreme intolerance of the human
species for trisomies, of which Trisomies at the sex chromosomes and
in the misnamed Chromosome 21 are the only two that are compatible with
life in a majority of cases.  Many of the rest are viable for the
early stages of development, but do not survive full-term.  In addition,
many of the other gross chromosomal abnormalites result in severe 
mental deficiency, and it is unclear whether any offspring, even if
viable, would match the description in the original article.
	It was late, so I made the comment short, expecting it either to
die or be elaborated on.  Instead people followup with the obvious,
and give a few twists to the proverbial knife in several cases.  Well,
I agree that half a posting is usually worse than one at all, and I
shouldn't have posted that half-posting, even as a followup for such
an outlandish Ape-Man story. 




-----------------------------------------------------------------------
	Final note: personal to Uma Smith, whose mail seems always
to bounce, and who started an amazingly long and unneccessary discusion
about me, and by whose inclusion of far too many lines of text in the
article I am currently following up, seems to bear me a personal
grudge.
	I looked back at my posting that got you upset.  Frankly, I
don't understand why.  If I am correct, the posting involved pro-chiral
centers.  I posted.  You followed up.  Your followup was perfectly
correct, except it was completely irrelevant to my original posting.
I clarified my position, yours being too long to even touch, and added
the extraneous comment that I did not have time to comment on it.
I cannot see that as a sexist statement, particularly when at the time,
I thought that you, like Uma Maitra, were male.
	My address is below.  Try to use it, please!
-- 
			      Craig Werner (MD/PhD '91)
				!philabs!aecom!werner
              (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
            "Reading is sometimes an ingenius device for avoiding thought."