I have posted this blog update because I think it has something for everyone. Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia - I suggest you begin here, with Section #4, to see if you're interested and then refer back to this link to start from the very beginning.
I think that most human beings are naturally curious about the world and are especially curious about the self. It is not surprising to me, nor probably to you, that the most popular courses are those that deal with the human mind (psychology); second are those dealing with the human body (medical sciences) and the human experience (literature, art, and history), usually depending on one's science or LibArts leanings. Yes, there are other courses which deal with the marvelous wonders of the natural world, e.g. astrophysics, and there are courses which we may each believe are special and important yet don't fit this "curiosity about the self" described above (e.g. linguistics), but they do not generally teach about the Self and thus are unable to capitalize on every (or nearly every) human being's innate "human ego", that desire we all have to know more about ... well, us! When I speak of "most popular," I mean "by percentage of the student body who has taken one of these courses." Most college students cannot claim to have sat in a 300-level physics course, but a psych course? Oh yeah.
And within the vast offerings that a school's psychology department has to offer, I can think of no course that attracts greater fanfare (or greater enrollment petitions) than the one(s) dealing with human sexuality. I was never able to take one at Purdue due to the hours the course was offered (6-9PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, an obvious attempt to weed out all but the most diehard fanatics), but I hardly needed to -- because discussions of sexuality presented themselves in all manner of courses, from the obvious (endocrinology) to the not so obvious (Japanese history).
Having said all this, I encourage you to read through the above article, despite the perhaps-daunting medical terminology, because congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a truly fascinating (if tragic) genetic disorder with a dark history in 20th Century American medicinal practice as well as a perhaps-unhealthy fascination amongst a large chunk of Japanese otaku (i.e. futanari, col. "dickgirls"). I was first introduced to this disorder as a young teen when an hour-long special on PBS detailed the disorder, the history of gender reassignment surgery in America, and the science and philosophy behind sexual identity. If you are interested in any of the following questions (see first reply), I encourage you to read the entire article and to get a better understanding of how medical learning is, if sometimes taxing on the memory, highly fascinating.
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Sample questions to guide discussion and/or interest you in the article
Is sexuality mainly shaped by genetics, by physical chemicals (but not necessarily "genetics"), or by upbringing?
If it is shaped either by genetics or by other physically-grounded means, when is it shaped: at conception? weeks 8-11? birth? shortly after birth? puberty?
Given any of the choices above, we still must ask: to what extent, if any, is sexuality chosen? Can sexuality be chosen? For example, ask yourself: if you found out tomorrow that the reason you were impotent was because you were actually a man/woman, would it change how you view your sexual persona? Do you think that sort of knowledge could "make you gay"? Would "make you gay"? Would you consider yourself more gay if you stayed put (with regards to your current sexual preference) or if you were to swap? (Of course this is assuming it's even possible in the first place.)
Were you to undertake a gender reassignment surgery, would you want the doctor to operate on your penis/clitoris to reduce/enlarge it? If not, would you be keeping it out of fear of lost arousal or out of a desire to keep the specific structure despite having the rest of your genitalia modified?
If you had a daughter who was born with a micropenis and a mostly-obfuscated vagina, would you allow the doctors to operate on her postpartum? Would you want them to?
Is sexual assignment of children with ambiguous genitalia a decision best left to the parent(s)? to the doctor? to the state? or to the child themselves? If you were to leave it to the child, when should the child be allowed to decide what is to be down to his/her genitalia?
I tried to posit a question with regards to futa but I had no way of tactfully doing so. So I'll end on this note:
If Polyphemus may have his origins in cyclopamine, might the Japanese futanari not have been borne out of an artist's fascination with his girlfriend's masculinized genitalia? People say that futanari is outlandish, but I wonder if it is not any more outlandish than the Oedipal cyclopes -- exaggerated, yes, but grounded in real human experience.
As someone who tends to be overly sensitive to word usage, I sometimes throw my hat in with the militant politically correct crowd and wonder if calling conditions like congenital hyperplasia a "disorder" is appropriate. I was watching a program on dwarfism today and the host described a gene that produces the condition as a "wrong" gene.
Nature is a tinkerer and variation is the engine of evolution. To drudge up your earlier post, it goes back to our discussion of natural and unnatural and the confusion of morality with uniqueness.
Actually, "disorder" is a good word, I suppose, but I think using a word like "wrong" in the case of dwarfism may unfairly chip away at a person's humanity while also cheapening their place in the evolutionary scheme. These people are new and unusual and very much a part of the natural order. What's "wrong" about being different, even if their fitness, measured against the fitness of the average population, falls short? (no pun intended!)
I hate to do this, because I do this all the freakin' time and it must be tiring, but just today, I caught part of another program on severe microcephaly and the quality of life different children could expect --it was heart breaking-- and for a moment I considered the existence of a benevolent all-powerful god. The very thought made me laugh involuntarily aloud. Yeah right.
(written sleepily, so may be a bit long-winded)
In order for two human beings to have a productive discussion, they must agree upon the meaning behind certain words; they must agree upon certain truths; and they must agree to take the other at his word. This is the central tenet to debate -- as you recall, all contentious words must be defined either ahead of time or must be defined as they arise in discussion.
You cannot ask me to continuously rescind my claims because they are offensive to you. I suppose you can ask, but I reserve the right (at some point) to grow tired of it and to say "No; and if you can't handle that, then our discussion is over." (DISCLAIMER: speaking of the hypothetical You! o_o Not you you, Jay! XD)
As an example:
"All Dogs Go To Heaven was a pile of dog shit!"
"Um, could you please not refer to it as 'dog shit'? That implies that dogs' poop is lesser than ours, implying that dogs are lesser than us, and I'm a big dog lover."
"O...kaaaaaaay. O_o All Dogs To Heaven was a pile of shit!"
"Um, could you not even call it 'shit'? Maybe call it something a little less vulgar?"
"Right. -_- Okay, *cough*. All Dogs Go To Heaven was a bad film!"
"I really don't think you ought to be calling it a bad film, I mean--"
And the whiner is stopped right there. Right? (laughably so)
So to get to the point, I would say that it's a bit contentious of sufferers of CAH to say "do not call us sufferers". What am I to call you? You're not patients. Can I call you "the afflicted?" No, that's just as bad as sufferers. How about "freaks?" P.T. Barnum built a career around that term. No? Well, how about "genitally challenged?" Don't like that one either? Sounds too much like "mentally challenged?" Okay, so I guess "genitally impaired" and "genitally retarded" are out of the race, too, huh? Yes, I'm being a little facetious, but my point is, it isn't normal in any respectable sense of the word. "Normal" means "usual." What usually happens is normal; what does not usually happen is abnormal. There is nothing intrinsically negative about the word "abnormal", yet people choose to interpret it in that manner. I can't help that.
So with regard to the word "disorder," I pose here (as I think most in the medical community would agree) that a "disorder" is defined to be any abnormality in the course of human development (from gametogenesis until death) which impairs normal function of one or more cells resulting in pathology affecting one or more tissues.
To get to the crux of your own contention, yes, I think it is medically sound (and ethically sound) to call sickle cell anemia a "disorder" even if it confers malarial resistance to its sufferers -- ask any of them if having a sickle crisis is pleasant and see what they tell you. Similarly (same exact resistance, even) I would say that having a glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency is a "genetic disorder" even if, ironically, it confers upon its owners a natural form of resistance to falciparum malaria, the most deadly form on the planet. It is a disorder because it causes them to suffer from an easily-induced hemolytic anemia, the result of an inability to neutralize reactive oxygen species (ROS) which will ultimately damage cellular components and accelerate their (the patient's) death.
You have hit the nail on the head, though, that not all disorders are "just a disorder," and that many clouds do come with wonderfully bright, thick silver linings. That, and that it is potentially hurtful to sufferers of CAH to refer to their condition as "a disorder."
Also, you have made me realize that I will need to give this side of medicine a lot more thought. So thanks for that. I have some good questions for some doctors I know.
I never liked human sexuality topics in any of my courses. It made those sections of neuroanatomy classes tedious and uninteresting. I'm much more interested in feeding behaviors and muscular control.
Really? :o
Human sexuality and uninteresting in the same sentence? Bah?
I actually think there's less to learn from human sexual behavior than there is to animal sexual behavior but then again I don't care about the mechanics of eroticism or arousal as much as I care about, say, neural reconstruction and regeneration, memory formation and destruction, and peripheral/central nervous system recovery methods. My interest in the brain is purely in the areas of cognition, perception, and the interplay of the two (memory-making). Unfortunately I'm not able to study those further anywhere.
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