A Nobel Prize-winning German developmental biologist called the transgender movement’s claims “unscientific” and “nonsense,” and their plans to let teenagers determine their own gender “madness.”
In an interview published last week by the German feminist magazine EMMA, Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard cited hard scientific facts to counter the trendy notion that there are multiple genders.
“All mammals have two sexes, and man is a mammal,” she explained. “There’s the one sex that produces the eggs, has two X chromosomes. That’s called female. And there’s the other one that makes the sperm, has an X and a Y chromosome. That’s called male.” (English translation courtesy of Google Translate.)
While there are animals that produce both sperm and eggs, such as snails, and thus can create offspring without having to mate, this “does not change the fact that there are two germ cells, eggs and sperm, and therefore two sexes,” said the 79-year-old winner of multiple scientific awards, including the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Asked about recent assertions by Germany’s Commissioner for the Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity, Sven Lehmann, that belief in only two genders is “unscientific,” Nüsslein-Volhard replied, “This is unscientific! Perhaps Herr Lehmann missed the basic course in biology.” (Emphasis in original.)
Nüsslein-Volhard did not deny that there is variation within the sexes. “There are very ‘feminine’ men and very ‘masculine’ women, which not only has to do with cultural factors, but also with different hormone levels, among other things,” she said. “There’s a huge spectrum.”
She did, however, insist that one cannot change from male to female or vice versa. Referring to the idea that an individual is whatever gender he or she claims to be, she declared, “That’s nonsense! It’s wishful thinking. There are people who want to change their gender, but they can’t do it” because it’s built into every single chromosome in the human body and affects each individual’s development from the moment of conception.
“Nonsense” is also the word she applied to the German Federal Constitutional Court’s 2017 ruling that “gender … is also determined by social and psychological factors.” “How you feel,” she observed, “can be changed by social and psychological circumstances. But not biological sex. Wherever science is really practiced, this is also completely indisputable.”
Furthermore, “irreversible interventions” in a futile attempt to change a person’s sex can have serious consequences, she stated. Surgically removing a girl’s breasts or replacing a boy’s sex organs with fake female ones is, of course, permanent. “But the hormones also add something to the body that is not intended there,” causing changes “both physically and psychologically…. The body cannot handle it well in the long run. Every hormone you take has side effects. Taking hormones is inherently dangerous.”
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the eminent scientist is opposed to the government’s push to let children as young as 14 choose their own gender.
“This is madness!” she exclaimed. She recalled that, like “many girls,” she “was also unhappy at 14 and preferred to be a boy,” especially since she wanted to enter a field then dominated by men. Fortunately, she grew up at a time when common sense and the current state of medical technology — not to mention her own country’s recent experience with conducting medical experiments on humans — dictated otherwise, and she learned how to cope with her feelings and eventually became comfortable in her own skin.
Nüsslein-Volhard is, naturally, aware of the fact that science has become increasingly politicized in recent decades, particularly when it comes to sex and gender issues. For example, Berlin’s Humboldt University canceled a lecture by biology doctoral student Marie-Luise Vollbrecht after a group of law students complained “that the institution was turning a blind eye to her transphobic assertion that there are only two biological sexes” and other trans activist groups mounted a protest, reported 4W.
“Do they now want to abolish biology classes as well? Do we no longer want to know who we are and how gender is determined?” asked Nüsslein-Volhard.
“It’s not okay to ban a lecture because you think there might be something wrong with it,” she said. “This mixture of sensitivity and moral arrogance paired with ignorance is simply fatal.”
