Y : The Descent of Men

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and fun
Review: "Blah Blah Blah" can sum up a lot of the sections in this book. Oh how feminists are polluting the fragile minds of this world. Some sections of this book give me mental images of Nazi Germany's war time videos with men being the persecuted Jews. I enjoyed a lot of his scientific rants, however. And some sections of the book were very informative and interesting. But, in the end, it seems he is just another person with a diluted understanding of the "findings" that the Y chromosome is dying out. Well, yes it is. In fact, with the way things are going, the Y chromosome should die out in about 10 million years. I sure hope the feminist movement can last that long! Please don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gender equality. I believe whole-heartedly that women possess all of the power/potential of a man. I mean, men are in fact bi-products of women: the Y chromosome started as a genetic mutation in the realm of brain development. X X is the default genetic makeup for human beings. But, let's clear up this misconception for all my worried brethren out there. If the Y chromosome dies, so does the present human race. Humans are one of the only mammals with a "Y chromosome" type factor for sexual development. There are no longer Y chromosomes in some rodents, one of our closest genetic relatives, however there are still males in the species. I quote: "SRY has been lost in at least two groups of rodents. The mole voles of eastern Europe, and the country rats of Japan have no Y chromosome, and no SRY," Professor Graves said. "Somewhere else in their genome, a new sex determining gene must have taken over the function of SRY. Which gene or genes took over this task, and how they work, are questions we will be investigating in future." Damn men... Well, as the saying goes, you can't kill bad grass! It's also interesting to point out that once this genetic change occurs a hybrid species will form that can't mate with the original human. So it seems that whole human race of present times is dying out, and all the blame goes to those evil testes! The next time you feel like men are to blame for the problems of this world, turn on the TV and watch a reality show with women on team that must eliminate memeber periodically, with the last woman left the winner; this is a good view into the world without men. Humans are innately corrupt...not men. It's ok to have testicles, brothers.

Rating:
Summary: Written by Chicken Little?
Review: An episode in Star Trek - The Next Generation portrays the Enterprise crew encountering a planet populated entirely by androgynes. The cast representing these creatures is clearly composed of only women. As clones, their appearance and outlook is nearly uniform and gender becomes a social ill. If Steve Jones is correct, this condition is the future of the human species. In this book Jones gives a full account of the rise and descent of masculinity, from the formation of the Y [male] chromosome to the current decline in sperm count in human society. As Jones makes clear, we all start in the womb as neuters, but various processes dictated by the father's chromosomes, turn some of us into males.

Jones opens his account with a touch of irony - it was a woman, Nettie Stevens, who identified the male chromosome in 1905. It took nearly a century to perceive the gene controlling sex determination - the SRY [sex recognition gene]. From there Jones explains the role of that short, 20 gene DNA string and its impact. Embryo development relies on sperm-borne chemicals. This input is part of the reason maleness drives the pace of evolution. Sperm is an invader, and the body resists invaders. The chemical changes reflect that fundamental dichotomy and there's nothing universal about male sperm. Its variety reflects the rapid evolutionary pathways taken by various organisms. And few species have evolved as rapidly as humans, Jones reminds us.

That haste, however, has led to vulnerability. Male lines, particularly in our own species, die out quicker. Jones' example is expressed in the recognition that all the family lineages since William the Conquerer had died out. Nor are his examples confined to humans. Hermaphroditic slugs in the French Pyranees are exhibiting an increase in female-only lines. Given his evidence for this happening in modern men, one can only wonder at the cause of this unisex phenomenon.

For it's modern men that are the target of this book. Whatever forces in evolution have reduced the size and impact of the Y chromosome, modern civilization has exacerbated its decline. Clinics in various nations record reduced sperm counts, notably in Italian taxi drivers, American businessmen, Scots shopkeepers. Jones isn't applauding these trends as some proto-feminist. He wants, through this book, for males to become aware of the fate their descendents will confront. Maleness is likely to disappear, and offers pointers to prevent that extinction. More focus, he stresses, needs to be made on the impact of various foodstuffs and industrial chemicals.

Depressing as much of this sounds, there is much to be learned from this book. Jones' ability to impart good science in a readable style makes this book an ideal acquisition. While facts galore are presented here, pedantic stumbling blocks are not. He has no more axe to grind than the desire to increase our awareness of ourselves, both male and female. As he notes, understanding of the operations of sexual mechanisms is still in its infancy. This book will stand for some time until more of our body's hidden secrets are revealed. For we men, let us hope it's not too late. The recent announcement of the mapping of the Y chromosome renders Jones' forecast obsolete, but most of his data remains valid. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Down for the count?
Review: An episode in Star Trek - The Next Generation portrays the Enterprise crew encountering a planet populated entirely by androgynes. The cast representing these creatures is clearly composed of only women. As clones, their appearance and outlook is nearly uniform and gender becomes a social ill. If Steve Jones is correct, this condition is the future of the human species. In this book Jones gives a full account of the rise and descent of masculinity, from the formation of the Y [male] chromosome to the current decline in sperm count in human society. As Jones makes clear, we all start in the womb as neuters, but various processes dictated by the father's chromosomes, turn some of us into males.

Jones opens his account with a touch of irony - it was a woman, Nettie Stevens, who identified the male chromosome in 1905. It took nearly a century to perceive the gene controlling sex determination - the SRY [sex recognition gene]. From there Jones explains the role of that short, 20 gene DNA string and its impact. Embryo development relies on sperm-borne chemicals. This input is part of the reason maleness drives the pace of evolution. Sperm is an invader, and the body resists invaders. The chemical changes reflect that fundamental dichotomy and there's nothing universal about male sperm. Its variety reflects the rapid evolutionary pathways taken by various organisms. And few species have evolved as rapidly as humans, Jones reminds us.

That haste, however, has led to vulnerability. Male lines, particularly in our own species, die out quicker. Jones' example is expressed in the recognition that all the family lineages since William the Conquerer had died out. Nor are his examples confined to humans. Hermaphroditic slugs in the French Pyranees are exhibiting an increase in female-only lines. Given his evidence for this happening in modern men, one can only wonder at the cause of this unisex phenomenon.

For it's modern men that are the target of this book. Whatever forces in evolution have reduced the size and impact of the Y chromosome, modern civilization has exacerbated its decline. Clinics in various nations record reduced sperm counts, notably in Italian taxi drivers, American businessmen, Scots shopkeepers. Jones isn't applauding these trends as some proto-feminist. He wants, through this book, for males to become aware of the fate their descendents will confront. Maleness is likely to disappear, and offers pointers to prevent that extinction. More focus, he stresses, needs to be made on the impact of various foodstuffs and industrial chemicals.

Depressing as much of this sounds, there is much to be learned from this book. Jones' ability to impart good science in a readable style makes this book an ideal acquisition. While facts galore are presented here, pedantic stumbling blocks are not. He has no more axe to grind than the desire to increase our awareness of ourselves, both male and female. As he notes, understanding of the operations of sexual mechanisms is still in its infancy. This book will stand for some time until more of our body's hidden secrets are revealed. For we men, let us hope it's not too late. The recent announcement of the mapping of the Y chromosome renders Jones' forecast obsolete, but most of his data remains valid. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and fun
Review: I feel puzzled to see that this book has invoked sharp hostilities among some (mainly US) readers, ascribing "Feminist propaganda at its finest" or "Written by Chicken Little?"
I don't believe Dr Jones "deserves" such fanatical labeling. What he is talking about is how a mollusk biologist views the human (or mammal in general) reproduction mechanism, and nothing more, nothing less.
IMHO, the book is simply interesting and fun as a bedtinme reading (like his other books.)
Or is it that the authour's British writing style never catches on in the US?

Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: I quote from his book, "...males are, in many ways, parasites upon their partners. Their interests are to persuade the other party to invest in reproduction, while doing as little as they can themselves." In Steve Jones opinion men are rapidly becoming obsolete. In plain words, Steve Jones imply's that all men are are walking erections that are trying to get as many partners as possible. Fertalization is the only thing that men have to offer according to him. I find that opinion funny because I remember my father working to support the family more than he spent impregnating my mother or other women.
Steve Jones take a very simple philosophical answer and turns it into a genetics and evolutionary psychology arguement. There are Men and there are Boys. Same as there are Women and there are Girls. Everything in this book describes the average selfish teenage boy, but Steve Jones insist that Men are like this to. I'm offended by his attack on male masculienty. As is everything, when taken to extremes it is a negative, but it's very existence is positive. I can't even think straight because him. In Steve Jones's world it's perfectly okay to raise a child without a father. Ya sure it can be done, but that doesn't mean it ought to be done. I quote Chris Rock (Bigger and Blacker) "Sure you can drive a car with you're feet with you want to, but that doesn't make it a good idea."

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not cohesive
Review: Jones has an interesting approach - contrasting the weakness of the y chromosome with the outward behavior of men, but the book basically boils down to a series of anecodotes. They're all interesting, but it isn't cohesive enough to rank among the best popular science writing.

Rating:
Summary: Addled, confusing, no point
Review: The author may have an interesting message somewhere, but who could find it? The writing is convoluted, the author is wallowing in his self-loathing, and with no apparent goal in mind. I don't care if the author hates the fact that he's a man. I want to read about genetics, dang it!

I find the topic fascinating, but I couldn't get through more than the first two or three chapters... I don't even remember how far I got, because it all just swam together (on the page, not just in my mind).

I was hoping to find another book to complement The X in Sex, but this book just makes me ask "Y?" -- as in "Y should I read this rubbish?" Thank heavens for libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Starts well, but descends into titillation
Review: The first three chapters of this book stay more or less on the theme implied by the title, focusing on genetics, reproduction and the effects of hormones. The author's concluding chapter, which states that "We are in the midst of an ascent of women matched by an equivalent descent of men," is thought-provoking if not completely convincing. Unfortunately, Jones devotes most of his other chapters to more titillating subjects such as sexual behavior, erectile dysfunction, circumcision, sperm counts, paternity tests, and surrogate parenthood. The author's overall theme that men are the second sex would have been more persuasive if he had stayed with the science, which he knows how to explain.

Rating:
Summary: Jokes and arguments
Review: This book is very interesting, from a creationist perspective, since it can be used to demonstrate the genetic inadequacy of "multi-regional" theories of evolution. However, arguments about mtDNA are not convincing, since recent findings have been documenting a much faster mutation rate, than that most scientists have come to believe, including Steve Jones.

One is intriged by the confidence of Steve Jones in evolution:

1) has the casual origin of life been explained?
2) has the existence of the prebiotic soup been proved?
3) has the generation of new genetic information by random mutations and natural selection been observed?
4) have the intermediate links of evolution been found in the fossil record and in molecular biology?
5) has the mechanism of evolution been clearly established?

Steve Jones is the kind of guy that starts his lectures with several anti-criationist jokes. This is not an accident, but is deliberately designed to take every opportunity to engage in creationist trashing. It usually works, though, due to the fact that most people in the "intellectually sofisticated" audiences of Steve Jones can't tell the difference between chance and design, anti-creationism jokes and anti-creationism arguments.

When it comes to arguments, Steve Jones can be a total disaster. Recently he said to a live audience in Portugal that ever since Charles Darwin has explained the evolution of the human eye without recourse to design, it became possible for science to explain everything without design.

How about that for an anti-creationism argument? Or is it an anti-creationist joke?

One has to wonder what kind of explanation that was, given the fact that Charles Darwin was convinced that the cell was nothing but indifferenciated protoplasm. For instance, Charles Darwin din't have a clue as to the fact that the human eye as 400 000 photo-sensors per square milimeter in the retina!

This only goes to show why many evolutionists have decided to specialize in anti-creationism jokes, given their inability to come forward with convincing arguments for evolution.

One of the favorite anti-creationist jokes of Steve Jones is to start his lectures with a widely circulated set of pictures of quasi-obvious homologies of George W. Bush and a chimp and then use this to point to the "overwhelming evidence of evolution". Maybe this is the last argument in favor of evolution left to evolutionists!

This tactic has a (maybe not so) subliminar message: the attempt to link creationism to the american religious right. This has been a recent trend in evolutionist circles. Because they have lost in science, they have turned to politics.

But then again, even this anti-creationist joke is misguided, both because it proves too little and it proves too much:

1) It proves to little because the Bush-chimp "homologies" can be as well used to prove a common designer (maybe one with some sense of humour).

2) It proves too much because by using the Bush-Chimp similarities as a "proof" of evolution, evolutionists are admiting that George W. Bush is a higher animal, at least superior in intelligence to a chimp. I don't know if it this fits their own political agenda in an election year.

3) After all, if Bush is simply a product of "survival of the fittest" evolution, how can evolutionists criticize him? Even his invasion of Iraq can always be framed as a legitimate part of the darwinian "triumph of the most favored races in the struggle for life". What can evolutionists say against that? Wasn't this the subtitle of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species"? Don't evolutionists say that war is, by the nature of things, always biologically fair because it is inherently a "survival of the fittest" enterprise?

Rating:
Summary: The human male; Is he really privileged?
Review: This is definately an interesting, witty and informative book, if your interested on why half of this worlds population is male and not a quarter or less, considering our potency.
Biologically only a fraction of us are actually necessary to keep mankind going- so why are we that many then?
It covers all spectrums of male live including medically unnecessary circumcisions, quite interesting, as the Western world looks upon female genital mutilation with discontent, but tolerates it on their males, often not even old enough to decide for themselves.

The first chapter can be quiet a turn off, as it tends to be very scientific, but if you get past that, you will have a hard time putting this book down.