MEDICINE
A dog's life
John Rowan Wilson
„If rrtY dog were a human being, he would "ave been locked up years ago. He is, let's e it, an incorrigible sexual delinquent. i.,r()Irl the moment of reaching puberty he s indulged freely in every perversion ',_tir)wri to science. Homosexuality, paedofellatio, cunnilingus, fetishism, you 'tame it. When in the mood he will roger 4,•,.,11Y sex, any species, or any vertical animate object from a standard lamp to vicar's trouser bottoms. If he has stopPed Short of actual rape, that is simply 413111 lack of the necessary technical skills. Yet the law does not pursue him. He is iThauled into court and told that he is a eLlace to society. He is not locked away 0" nattersea Dogs' Home for several years remanded for a vet's report to see :nether some form of medical treatment 'wan be devised to clean up his psyche. The ir!rst that is likely to happen to him is an afrqseible nip from the object of his otae,c,,titms or a slap on the rump from his 01er. His balls are acting up today, we ,r—rve indulgently. Dogs will be dogs. reorlput the matter more scientifically, we po;gnise that the sex hormones are svvirll substances, an4 once they start to ti.ung around in the blood it is farewell Precepts of Malcolm Muggeridge or havYa Mother Church. Unfortunately we for always resisted a similar explanation beiaanerrant sexual behaviour in human retagt„,„s' Until fairly recently it was all the, L'ed as a form of vice, introduced into lawf worldhy Satan to distract us from sordititl, fruitful copulation. When the abParej °f this view became generally apcents Lit was succeeded by Freudian con110ro,-, "uilt up on childhood environment. hap,.. hu78exuality in r;se ,,, . particular became a rrri51; pting-ground of theories con fathe rivalry, aloof self-effacing a,,flid what not. Long expensive "ring Or analysis were recommended to arbit",e wretched individual back to some Nobo'drtlY defined concept of normality. Patiorir 'seeined to notice that while the other lay on the couch discussing his posed fixation his % to s dog (popularly supPie se d ; fighting fit) was quietly oc Xliai -ae corner of the room, having „ Sonte-`ernourse with the curtains. gond his drecent work suggests that man f°8 ntaY at last be moving on to t Year a ing oot , in this respect. Just over s"klooriti_g,? the Medical Research Council bcirrie st,,"2,12TY Unit at Edinburgh published ;'()rnion,lules designed to compare the sex 4hoinr4! excreted in the urine of the male tFelterosexual With that of the male le\;IBV' In a small series they found test levels' of the male hormone se-410seku-e, were consistently lower in 1.Irifle than in that of heteroan uelodw s°nle of the readings were els, Th what are accepted as normal tiabilit ey also found that there was a in testosterone levels in indivi duals who practised both forms of intercourse. The experiment met with some criticism, which was hardly surprising in view of the many entrenched opinions on the subject. However, a group of workers in Boston have now published a much larger study which confirms the findings of the Edinburgh workers. In this American study, comparison of the blood of thirty male homosexuals with fifty heterosexuals showed that testosterone levels in the blood were significantly lower in those who practised homosexuality. What about female homosexuals? The Edinburgh workers found variations here also. Though the normal patterns of excretion of sex hormones are of course different in women, they nevertheless produce a certain amount of testosterone in their urine, and the lesbians who were tested produced considerably more than the heterosexual women. They also excrete less of the female hormone oestrone. These observations obviously raise the question of whether minor abnormalities in the secretion of sex hormones may not be the governing factor in pushing an individual towards an interest in his or her own sex. It is, after all, fairly widely accepted nowadays that we are all composed of a mixture of male and female impulses. It would be surprising, in view of the variations in body chemistry between one person and another, if the balance between the two was always absolutely correct. Nobody is saying that this is an absolute explanation of human sexual inversion. Neither moral values nor psychological influences can be excluded from human sexual behaviour. Man is not totally composed of his body chemistry. However, it is certainly responsible for a large part of his behaviour, and it may well be that in the field of sex we have been paying far too little attention to it.
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