14 TABOO AND GENETICS 



have grown up or may grow up to meet the 

 need of society for reproduction. 



The point which most concerns us is in how 

 far biological data can be applied to the sex 

 problem in society. Systematic dissections or 

 breeding experiments upon human beings, 

 thought out in advance and under control in 

 a laboratory, are subject to obvious limitations. 

 Surgical operations, where careful data are 

 kept, often answer the same purpose as concerns 

 some details ; but these alone would give us a 

 fragmentary record of how a fertilized egg 

 becomes a conscious human being of one sex 

 or the other. The practice of medicine often 

 throws light on important points. Observation 

 of abnormal cases plays its part in adding to our 

 knowledge. Carefully compiled records of what 

 does occur in inheritance, while lacking many of 

 the checks of planned and controlled experi- 

 ments, to some extent take the place of the 

 systematic breeding possible with animals. At 

 best, however, the limitations in experimentation 

 with human subjects would give us a rather 

 disconnected record were it not for the data of 

 experimental biology. 



How may such biological material be safely 

 used ? Indiscriminately employed, it is worse 

 than useless — it can be confusing or actually 

 misleading. It is probably never safe to say, 

 or even to infer directly, that because of this 



