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Comment by elil17 | Hacker News Reader

Just goes to show how amazingly diverse and complicated sex differentiation is

I’ll probably be downvoted to the ground for being so politically incorrect, but... no.

This isn’t a “celebration of diversity” kind-of-thing. It’s an oh-fuck-look-how-this-broke kind of tragedy (particularly if you read the references posted in the commentary that indicate an amputation).

Celebrating diversity has a place. This is not it. Genetic machinery glitched majorly and these two children will have a difficult time ahead of them. Yes, we’ll get interesting one-off scientific observations, but that’s hardly a total reward.

You're reading into that comment a lot more than is warranted I think.

This does show how diverse and complicated sex differentiation is. The comment does not claim this is a virtue, or that the outcome in the article here is to be celebrated.

"Diverse" in this context I took to mean "varied", not in the sense of social diversity.

They’re not ‘varied’: one’s genotype and phenotype is female, and the other’s genotype and phenotype is male.

EDIT: Apologies, the poster below showed I am incorrect.

The female's sex is varied in the sense it differs from the standard female (gonadal dysgenesis).

Around 1 in 100 humans don't fit the standard male and female definitions according to http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

"The girl and boy each have male and female sex chromosomes — in other words, each twin has some cells that carry an XX pair (female) and some that carry an XY pair (male)."

They are both genetically ambiguous and present differently due to hormone generation rates.

You’re right, I’m wrong.

Interesting. This would imply that they're both genetic chimeras, as they don't carry a uniform genotype throughout their cells.

Yeah I meant diverse without any kind of value judgement

Not really sure how it shows that at. Sexual differentiation is not exactly diverse at all. Genetics are complicated I'd give you that and pretty amazing that it works as it does. Though there can be complications as in this case.

The fact that humans can be XO; XXY; be XY but Androgen insensitive, and so present as female; have mosaic X/XY; or be XX/XY chimeras like the twins in this article shows that sexual differentiation can absolutely be diverse.

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