Y bother: men are doomed after all

From The Sunday Times
August 18, 2003

MEN are doomed to extinction, victims of the decaying human Y-chromosome, the only piece of DNA men possess and women do not.

So says Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, in a book that envisages the "Sapphic reproduction" of women by genetic manipulation. 

A "genetic ruin littered with molecular damage", the Y-chromosome cannot repair itself, nor arrest the steadily accumulating damage, he reports in Adam's Curse. 

"Like the face of the moon, still pitted by all the craters from all the meteors that have ever fallen onto its surface, Y-chromosomes cannot heal their own scars. It is a dying chromosome and one day it will become extinct." 

The decline of the Y-chromosome has been well chronicled. What is new is Professor Sykes's description of the implications and the stark choices for the human race. 

He says that because the chromosome's main function is switching on male embryos in the womb, its demise means the final curtain for men. 

By his estimate, the male will go belly-up in about 125,000 years. 

But he cautions ultra-feminists against rejoicing too soon. 

"Destroying the male sex would be a very short-lived victory. Men are still required for breeding, if nothing else." 

But not for much longer, if Professor Sykes's radical solution is adopted - abandon men altogether. 

"From the genetic point of view, very little stands in its way," he says. 

His strategy for perpetuating a new female race depends on tweaking the proven technique of injecting sperm into eggs. Instead, the nucleus from a second egg would be injected. 

The only difference from any other birth would be that the baby would always be a girl. "The entire process has been accomplished without sperm, without Y-chromosomes and without men," Professor Sykes says. 

The girls would not be clones, but would comprise the same mixture of their parents' genes, shuffled by recombination, as today's children. But there would be one major difference: both parents would be women. 

It is almost bound to happen, says the professor, who can find no moral objection. "Men are now on notice," he says. 

However, Professor Sykes does not speculate on what would pass for sex once men disappear.