Opinion: In today’s pages: Healthcare, homosexuality, and tortillas
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A drug that can alter sexual orientation? UC Riverside’s Marlene Zuk puzzles it out:
Manipulating glutamate transmission, they discovered, allowed them to alter -- sometimes within hours -- whether the flies courted males or females. The altered males interpreted the odors of other flies (the primary come-hither signal) differently from their wild counterparts. If what’s sauce for the fly is sauce for the human, this could mean that chemicals in our own nervous systems are involved with sexual orientation too. And I’ll admit that it’s entertaining to imagine popping a pill to swing one way for a party, the other for a get-together at grandma’s. But that dystopian possibility probably isn’t in the cards. The truth is that chemicals no more control who we are sexually attracted to than they do anything else. Which is to say, they control everything and nothing.
Writer Luis Torres explains how a comal, or tortilla griddle, is central to his family story. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour argues for an end to the death penalty. USC senior fellow Celeste Fremon says asking cops to hand over financial records will just drive officers off the force.
The editorial board asks Californians to give the governor’s healthcare plan a chance, and urges Congress to follow through with funding and enforcement a plan to help Iraqi refugees. The board also explains what a World Trade Organization investigation of farm subsidies could mean for the economy.
Readers react to a proposal to do away with carpool lanes. L.A.’s Jim Bean says, ‘How is making carpool lanes into toll roads going to get more single-passenger cars off the road? If lone drivers can buy their way onto the diamond lane, they will.’