Source: The Mercury, 15 December, 1994, p.14 Source: The Mercury, 15 December, 1994, p.14
London. A link between fingerprint patterns and male homosexual- ity has been discovered by scientists that adds new evid- ence to the theory that sexual orientation is determined before birth. Last year, an American team reported that it had found evid- ence of a genetic predisposition to homosexuality. It reinforced an earlier study that revealed a tiny part of the brain that is responsible for sexual behaviour is smaller in women and in homosexuals than in heterosexual men. In the new study, the researchers compared the number of ridges in fingerprint patterns of 66 homo- sexual men with the patterns of 182 heterosexual men. One third of the homosexual men showed more ridges in the left hand than in the right hand, com- pared with 14 per cent of the hetero- sexual men. Since fingerprint patterns are known to have a strong genetic component, the new finds may ulti- mately help to determine when sexual orientation becomes established, according to the work by Jeffrey Hall and Doreen Kimura of the University of Western Ontario, reported in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience.
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