Geneticists insist that the portion of the Y Chromosome passd from a father to his sons carries no genetic information. Men and women, however, do not inherit a complete genetic package made up of a combination of the genes they receive from both their parents. The resultant combination of genes in an individual certainly determines his or her physical charateristics, and most likely his or her intelligence--although admitting the likelihood is often considered politically incorrect, especially if ethnicity and race are part of the discussion.

A more contentious aspect of genetic inheritance involves a person's character and personality: the issue of whether genes or environment is more important in determining what an individual will be like on a personal level. Probably both are inportant, but strong evidence suggests that we inherit character traits as well as our physical and intellectual characteristics.

What traits we inherit, i.e., our gene "package" most likely resembles an old-fashioned "one-armed bandit" slot machine. At conception, the lever gets pulled and the wheels spin: one phyical, one intellectual, and one having to do with the "spirit," i.e. character, personality, and other "soul" traits. Around the rim of each wheel are gene "packages" contributed by each of our antecedents. When the wheels come to a stop, three packages line up--like the oranges, cherries, and grapes on the wheels--and we are born with this combination of genes that make us unique. It would be extremely rare for an individual to "hit the jackpot" by inheriting all our genes from a single ancestor. Such a result might not be much of a jackpot anyway, if the ancestor was an ugly, dishonest, nut with "issues." To switch to another gambling analogy, conception is pretty much a "crap shoot," except that their are probably more than two dice and each "dice" undobtedly has more than six sides. A large gene pool would probably lessen the likelyhood of ending up with "bad" genes.

The other possiblity would be that all the genes get stirred up into a homogeneous mass and poured out into a human "mold" then the mess hardens into a new, unique person. Besides being pretty much inconsistent with empirical evidence, such a person would be almost indinguishable from all other person. It would also make choosing a mate beside the point, at least with respect to hoping for children with "good" genes.

Genes often carry undesireable traits such as the potential for contracting certain diseases and physical disabilities such as cancer, deafness, sycle-cell anemia, and arthritis.

 One such affliction is called Dupuytren's disease (DD), an ancient affliction of unknown origin that seems to afflict descendants of ancient Vikings, which includes the Scots-Irish, ancestors of many Harpers. Click the button to read about Dupuytren's disease.