MHC difference exactly predicts female faithfulness

[jvkohl]

JVK:
I've never

suggested that using human VNO affinity is known to be a reasonable approach.

In fact, I've stated twice in

this very thread that it hasn't been shown to be valid.

I didn't go back far enough to catch your

drift, sorry.

On the other hand, it also can't be ruled out UNTIL we verify that the genes

are not being expressed there and there are no receptors.

Has that been shown? I haven't seen that

research. If you know of such a paper, please cite it so I can read it.

I can recall only something

vague about pseudogenes--and they may have had nothing to do with human VNO receptors, though I've managed my

memory to think that this connection was made. Peter Mombaerts, perhaps or Richard Axel--I tried to find a

reference, but if the article is more than a few years old I don't always have a .pdf or print

copy.

The point I was making is simply that there is some evidence, in Berliner's work, that

he is finding something by researching VNO affinity.

My partial point was that work from his group

has not been replicated and it is not likely to be. If ever it is, it will deserve more thorough

review.

The choices are:

a) He was finding out something useful.

This explains

why androstadienone had the highest affinity in males but not females in his experiments and why it was found to

actually be a pheromone.

b) He was getting random results that had nothing to do with actual

pheromone/receptor affinity.

In this case, it's pure dumb luck that androstadienone showed up as having the

highest affinity in males but not females, and it's also random chance that produced the sexual dimorphism he

found.

c) He fabricated the results.

This would mean that it was known in advance that

androstadienone was a pheromone. Was it? Do you have any citation that shows this was the case?

Option d. in a multiple choice format could well be "all of the above." However, something not yet

given much consideration is that androstadienone (and its sexually dimorphic VNO affinity) might be part of a

sequence of events that allows it to interact with responses to other parts of a pheromonal chain link fence. I'm

reluctant to speculate much further on this, because people are already plagerizing what I say here for their own

commercial interests, but you and a few others may see it coming.

I am trying to be logical

about the information that we do have, and I am hoping for a response which actually and specifically addresses the

issues I'm raising, rather than a dismissal.

I don't mean to be dismissive; I recognize and value

your logic. But we have differences in our logic. Mine says to use a mammalian model--for all its worth. And it's

worth a lot more if we ignore the unlikely human VNO--at least for now, until more human VNO research is done, if

ever, which I doubt. And, to me, unpublished, anonymous, or unreplicatable research doesn't

count.

Once again, I'm NOT saying that VNO affinity is proof of anything, but that there

appears to be evidence that something is going on there, EVEN THOUGH there's no evidence that the VNO produces any

brain responses in humans.

What I'm trying to say is that because there's no evidence that the

human VNO produces any brain responses--yet there is evidence androstadienone does (despite human non-VNO delivery)

produce brain responses, focus should now be on these brain responses and how they are linked to behavior.



There has been too much focus on a non-existent (or perhaps just non-functional) organ (or vestigial pits)

for too long--and this focus is largely due to product marketing claims that are still being made. Savic, Lundstrom,

Laska, Sobel, and many others have moved on--and this is a good reason for you and I to move on also. These

researchers are not promoting any products. So even though I have commercial interests, it should be obvious that my

research interests go with the flow. I'm interested in what you will say once you read my forthcoming review (and I

hope you will do so--as it details much more than I could ever write here).

JVK