Humans Having Sex With Neanderthals Gave Us Protection Against Ancient Epidemics (sciencealert.com) 202
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: A new study argues that we have Neanderthals to thank for helping us cope with the viral tides we encountered as we marched around the globe. Stanford University researchers have identified DNA sequences that evolved in our ancient cousins can produce antivirus proteins, which more than likely gave some human populations the edge they needed to survive. Roughly 1 percent of our genome's coding was written in Neanderthal populations. But this is a broad average -- many families with African ancestry have zero, for instance, while other populations boast as much as 2 percent or more. So the question is how much of this difference comes down to the random drift of DNA being passed on around the globe, and how much is due to natural selection giving those with Neanderthal genes an advantage?
To build a case one way or another, the Stanford researchers put together a list of just over 4,500 virus-interacting proteins (VIP) made by our genome. These were all matched against a database of Neanderthal DNA that could be found in modern East Asian and European human populations, providing 152 VIP genes shared by both groups of human. Interestingly, all of these VIP genes were of a variety that interacted with RNA viruses -- pathogens that include influenza A, hepatitis C, and HIV. This isn't to say these viruses were problems for ancient humans, but rather that similar RNA viruses were more than likely prevalent enough to shape our evolution. The discovery supports a view of genetic exchange described as the 'poison-antidote' model.
To build a case one way or another, the Stanford researchers put together a list of just over 4,500 virus-interacting proteins (VIP) made by our genome. These were all matched against a database of Neanderthal DNA that could be found in modern East Asian and European human populations, providing 152 VIP genes shared by both groups of human. Interestingly, all of these VIP genes were of a variety that interacted with RNA viruses -- pathogens that include influenza A, hepatitis C, and HIV. This isn't to say these viruses were problems for ancient humans, but rather that similar RNA viruses were more than likely prevalent enough to shape our evolution. The discovery supports a view of genetic exchange described as the 'poison-antidote' model.
Europeans saving the world with superior genes? (Score:4, Funny)
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Graph of populations with neanderthal DNA and without vs average IQ would be an interesting one.
That would be best, though we could make some progress without that because natural geographic boundaries have produced step function in DNA mixing by isolating human sub-populations, making geographic location a good proxy for Neanderthal DNA admixture. The genetic makeup of the Americas is complex because of their complex recent histories of migration, but for the old world (Europe, China, Africa) geographic location of populations is a reasonable proxy. Europe and Asia have a few percent admixture wh
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I'm pretty sure that Aryl wanted to look at some kind of scientific study rather than a steaming pile of Putinoid/Anti-Semitist drivel. But thanks for playing.
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Re: Europeans saving the world with superior genes (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody is claiming they're superior genes. They offer a different trade-off (greater cancer risk, greater autoimmune disease risk in exchange for a lower risk from a selection of viruses and bacteria).
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Nonsense. ... what a brain dead idea.
Immune system traits are not trade offs
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In fact, while what they try to say can be more or less understood, is basically flawed:
"how much of this difference comes down to the random drift of DNA being passed on around the globe, and how much is due to natural selection giving those with Neanderthal genes an advantage"
Well, exactly the same. Unless they provide a new theory of directed evolution, *all* this change comes from random drift.
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Nonsense. ... what a brain dead idea.
Immune system traits are not trade offs
TANSTAAFL applies to evolution too, and even more so than most other situations.
We only have around 30,000 genes, which are largely multi-purpose and used in combination with other genes.
Because the gene itself has multiple effects, any genetic mutation is also likely to have more than one effect. Given that any change is far more likely to be for the worse than for the better, this means that any good change is often linked with one or more bad changes too. For the mutation to survive and propagate, the
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If you can't survive the HIV epidemic you won't have to worry about cancer. The advantage here is clear. If you can survive long enough to breed and have viable offspring, that's all that really matters.
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Matters if the children survive to breed as well, which means having parents, family or at least the tribe being able to raise the children.
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You could equally well argue the other way. There's no way to estimate how many of our genes were Neanderthal in source, because most of them were identical in the two populations. And don't forget the Denisovians, who were also the contributors of many specialized genes, though mainly in Asia.
FWIW, the idea of species is (usually) a gross oversimplification when descussing closely related populations. There *do* appear to have been reproductive barriers, but they were clearly not insurmountable. I susp
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You could equally well argue the other way. There's no way to estimate how many of our genes were Neanderthal in source, because most of them were identical in the two populations.
Untrue. The different proportions of inheritance of the unique alleles from the two species allows us to directly measure how much admixture there was.
Here is a "water analogy". If you have to buckets of water, and add a drop of dye A to one and a drop of dye B to the other, and then you have a sample that is an unknown mixture of the two buckets, it is a simple matter to tell what the mixture proportion is. It is the relative change in concentration of dyes A and B in the sample. It would be absurd to argu
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That analogy doesn't work because the dye doesn't have any effect on the water continuing to persist. A better argument could be shaped around blood types and disease resistance, and it might be in favor of your stance, but this isn't clear because the DNA in fossils is highly degraded, and not evenly so for all nucleotide groups, as some are more resistant to weathering than others.
The remarkable thing is that we have any residual evidence at all, but it sure is far from complete.
Re:Europeans saving the world with superior genes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I occasionally dip into white nationalists sites to keep tabs on what's going on there, and some racists are actually embracing the Neanderthal heritage thing as a justification for supposed European genetic superiority.
As usual this kind of "just so" pseudoscience is based on the highly selective choice of data that's always underpinned various racial theories. There are some 20,000 protein encoding genes in the human genome, and if you look for geographic clusters of the 324 million known gene variants you will find some, whether it's for white skin or red hair. If you look at the big picture you find that people aren't that picky about who they have sex with, such that looking for a population that is genetically inbred over the course of more than a few hundred years is a fool's errand.
Re: Europeans saving the world with superior genes (Score:1)
Took the rest of the world combined to beat 'em.
Re: Europeans saving the world with superior gene (Score:2)
Wait... you actually think it was Germany vs. the world? I think you may be missing a dozen or so nations.
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The only one worth mentioning was Japan and it was on the other side of the planet entirely. It didn't get nearly as much "attention" as Germany did.
Mussolini was pretty much Hilter's mascot.
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And those are also the populations we stereotypically associate with a high work ethic and focus on education. Go figure.
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Many East Asians also have Denisovan DNA, and Denisovans also had some Neanderthal DNA.
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One of the species classifications now[*] is that Neanderthals were Homo Sapiens.
In this system, we're h.s. Sapiens, and they were h.s. Neanderthalensis.
[*]: The whole species classification system is fictional and only intended to aid human minds that wants to pigeonhole everything and create boundaries where none exist. You were the same species as your parents, who were the same species as their parents, and so on, going back millions of generations. There is no point where you can say a parent was a
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"The whole species classification system is fictional "
Then try to breed a walrus and a lioness and see what happens.
The fact that boundaries are blurred and more focused on synchronic than diachronic differenciation doesn't make the system fictional.
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Then try to breed a walrus and a lioness and see what happens.
That they cannot breed is not because they are different species, but because the genetic drift from a common ancestor has made them genetically incompatible.
There existed an animal X that was the common ancestor to both the walrus and the lioness. This is indisputable. You would not say that this ancestor is the same species as either a walrus or a lioness. On the walrus line, there is an unbroken line of descendants from X until we reach what we call a walrus. On this line, at what point was "walrus"
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You are way over-selling this idea that "species are fictional" based solely on the the fact that there is not a sharp division (based on the possibility of reproduction)in every case of speciation. If A cannot breed with C there is absolutely no doubt that they are different species. Nothing fictional about. The existence of B that can interbreed with either does not change that at all. Suppose B did not exist (maybe it never did, or did once and died out). Are A and C now separate species (without being a
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"That they cannot breed is not because they are different species"
You are right. It is because they cannot breed that they are different species, not the other way around.
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You are right. It is because they cannot breed that they are different species, not the other way around.
No, that does not follow. There are plenty of examples of individuals that cannot breed with each other but are considered the same species. Animals that reproduce through parthenogenesis are an obvious example, as they don't have sexual reproduction, but an Irish Wolfhound and a Chihuahua are considered the same species, yet cannot breed (while coyotes and wolves are considered different species, but can).
Again, "species" is a concept we apply to "similar" forms of life, without having a firm definition
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Speciation results from reproductive isolation. If modern humans could interbreed with Neanderthals, we are by definition the same species.
This definition is faulty, which is easily proven.
In Western USA, there's a U shaped valley where lizards live. The ones at one tip of the U can interbreed with those close to it, and those again can interbreed with those close to it, all along the U shape until you get to the other end. But those at the two tips of the U cannot interbreed. Where, exactly, do you put the species boundaries?
There are also birds where the same property can be seen - one bird can breed with those east of it, who in turn can
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> This definition is faulty, which is easily proven.
No. It's your idea that's bogus. It clearly demonstrates that the ancient Aristotle approach to defining species is horribly naieve and doesn't match up with modern ideas about inheritance.
Your kind of definition would have blacks as a separate species.
That's both stupid and terribly politically incorrect.
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That's not my definition. My definition of species is that it's an always misleading term we humans use to make it easier for ourselves to describe what we see. We can say "horse" and "dog" and expect others to understand. We can even say "fox" about both a grey fox and a red fox, and get people to understand, even though a grey fox is more closely related to a terrier than it is to red foxes.
Your kind of definition would have blacks as a separate species.
No, your assumption about what my definition is is incorrect. Again, my definition is that "species" is a mislea
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It's really a meaningless distinction. Species are a useful construct, but actual distinct populations consist of a continuum of genetic variants that shade into each other.
Saying that an individual animal is a hybrid -- particularly a hybrid of closely related species that routinely produce fertile hybrid offspring -- probably says more about our terminology than it does about that individual.
We distinguish between H sapiens and H neanderthalis (or according to some H s sapiens and H s neanderthalensis) b
And all because... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And all because... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Neanderthals were really the fun ones, but could not hold their liquor. And the Sapiens girls definitely preferred them because they were bad boys, and they thought the protruding brow ridges were sexy.
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All in all it could have been neangirls taking advantage of weak homosapience boys. I saw it in "Quest for Fire".
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Joking, right? The sapiens males raped the neanderthal females. It's rape culture, unchanged to this day.
I recommend you read up a bit on genetics of Neanderthal and modern man, and especially research on mitochondrial DNA (which only pass through the maternal line) and Y-chromosome alleles (which only pass through the paternal line).
In short, what you would expect to find if your WAG was correct would be extant Neanderthal mitochondrial lines, but little to no Y-chromosome contamination. That's not what we find.
Due to scarcity of uncontaminated Neanderthal DNA, most of it coming from a single cave in Croatia
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Re: And all because... (Score:2)
I know it's supposed to be funny, but I'll bore the socks off people by noting we have only found one hybrid who had a homo sapien father. Every other archaeological specimen we know of has a Neanderthal father.
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On what planet do you live?
We found thousands of hybrids and hundred thousands of genes that got exchanged from one species to the other. E.g. "red hair" genes and "pain tolerance" jumped from neanderthaliens to sapiense sapiense.
Bottom line they looked like us anyway with just minor differences, depicting them like hairy apes is out of fashion since 50 years.
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As best as I recall, only four hybridisation events with Neanderthals, and two with Denisovans, have ever been found. Fewer than a dozen skeletons that are 25%+ Neanderthal have been found. Only a few hundred, certainly not a few thousand, skeletons have been found in total between 25,000-55,000 BCE, the only years that matter for hybridisation.
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Since about ten years we have in the news every month or every second month findings reported about this or that gene being transferred from Neanderthals to modern humans ... so I doubt it is all based on two or three findings. Basically every news article is referring to many examinations, not just a single one.
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I wonder how much of it was politics. Marriage has been used as a tool for brokering peace and trade deals since time immemorial. Women were often the spoils of war too, eliminating your enemies by murdering them and then out-breeding them.
Fun times.
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Well, humans tend to want what is best in life -- which, according to a wise man, is "To crush your enemies. See them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women."
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Unhousebroken cretin alert.
Bring it On! (Score:2)
It's a slippery slope, but..... (Score:1)
....it looks like the original strain came out of Africa.....then mated with neanderthals creating a stronger, smarter hybrid. They also crossed with a cousin of the Neanderthal called the Denisovans and created another hybrid that was also smarter and better than the original strain.
Fast forward a few tens of thousands of years and we call the originals "Blacks", the Neanderthal hybrid 'Whites" and the Denisovan hybrid "Asians".
It's a lot more complicated than that, of course....but it does make sense.
Re: It's a slippery slope, but..... (Score:3)
No, homo sapiens met Denisovans in Indonesia, on the path out of Africa.
This conveyed superior capacity for low temperatures and low oxygen.
Humans only met Neanderthals 55,000-60,000 years ago.
Many hybrids, such as those in the Red Deer Cave, went extinct.
There is no superiority. Stronger immune systems are why Europeans suffer from far more severe autoimmune disorders, conditions barely known in Africa.
It's always a trade-off. We are all specialists, adapted to local needs, as always happens with evolution
Re: It's a slippery slope, but..... (Score:1)
Higher intellect is a superiority.
The neanderthal dna didnt just give the whites better immune systems. It also gave them bigger, more complex brains.
Thus, the Bell Curve.
QED
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Higher intellect is a superiority.
No, not necessarily. There is always a trade-off, and some of them are that the computing power on top of your shoulders take up space, weight, has a very high energy need, and increase the risk of death during birth.
Only when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages to the point of providing more viable offspring will evolution select for a trait, including intelligence.
It seems inevitable that there have been many cases of a higher intellect being selected against, including stillbirths, and little clev
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Don't be ridiculous. A nation of high IQ white people will absolutely wipe the floor with a nation of black dummies.
See, the problem with that theory is that it's untestable, as it requires a nation of high IQ white people. Not a nation of people who ride obesity scooters at Wal-Mart and complain that chip bags and soda bottles are hard to open.
Let me guess, you're black.
Blond, blue-eyed, and aware that I'm no better than other groups. Any genetic advantages I have are coupled with similar genetic disadvantages, and only work in my favour for a specific environment[*] that no longer is relevant in the modern world.
[*]: Cold climate low light env
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The sickle cell disease that's common in Africa might not qualify as an autoimmune disease, but it's the result of a similar tradeoff.
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No. Sickle cell disease isn't an immune disorder. The red blood cells do it to themselves, and then physically clog up the small blood vessels.
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Sickle cell is a genetic defect. It can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on where you live and how strongly it's expressed.
Being resistant to disease is generally an advantage. Even the younger crowd of cancer patients have generally lived long enough to spawn the next generation. They're already past the natural human expiration date.
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Agreed. But it's not an immune disease, except in an extremely indirect way.
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You need to rethink your geography. Also the Neanderthals and Denisovians were as human as the Cro-Magnon, artistic depictions to the contrary notwithstanding. There's also no evidence that one group was smarter than the others, but Cro-Magnons did tend to live in larger groups, so they coud exchange ideas more readily. They also had a shoulder that was more adapted to throwing, so they didn't need to get in as close to kill a prey. This was less dangerous.
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Cro-Magnon doesn't exist as a recognized group any more.
I go by the fossils, tools and FTDNA maps. Geography isn't much use when they travelled by boats after 1 million years before present. It has also changed due to ice sheets melting.
Indonesia and China consistently show the earliest incursions from Africa by homo sapiens and the earliest hybridisation events.
That's the way it is.
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Stronger immune systems are why Europeans suffer from far more severe autoimmune disorders, conditions barely known in Africa.
There is compelling evidence that one cause of increasing rates of autoimmune disorders at more Northern latitudes is lower sunlight exposure and consequent Vitamin D deficiency; Vitamin D supplementation reduces rates of auto-immune disease significantly.
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Then provide citations from one or more scientific journals that prove him wrong. That shouldn't be at all difficult for someone as on top of the facts as you, right?
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The burden is upon the original claimant to show there is support for his ideas. Let him/her do so, otherwise there is no point in wasting any time on it.
Ahhh... (Score:2)
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Explains why (Score:3)
she decided to marry me.
Despite the juvenile comments so far... (Score:3)
You may now continue with the school-yard level jokes....
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It's been known for a while that interbreeding with Neanderthals gave Europeans various genetic benefits. It'd stand to reason that'd include immune system benefits.
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No, it demonstrates the value of a bit extra fur to entice the other sex.
Interbreeding, not 'having sex' (Score:5, Insightful)
'Having sex' didn't give people protection, that is just poor use of language. The offspring from Interbreeding would have the benefit greater genetic diversity.
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I prefer the explanation that sexually-transmitted retroviruses modified Human DNA to make us super-mutants. Either that or their coupling affected the morphogenetic field.
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Having sex
Homo sapiens as well as their distant primate relatives had frequent sex, both during a female's period of fertility as well as outside of it. The physiology of the species hides the females estrus cycle and they are receptive to the act of sex when not fertile as well as when they are. This has important implications for sociological bonding within groups. So I think it's accurate to say that they were 'having sex' both recreationally as well as for the purpose of procreation (if they even gave a thought t
That's pretty (Score:2)
Is this Neanderthal genes only? (Score:2)
Denisovans branched off from Neanderthals, so if they're not on the list, we would be able to date when the mutations arose in Neanderthals.
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Denisovans branched off from Neanderthals
This is an incorrect or at least incomplete description.
The common ancestors of all of us (commonly assumed to be h. Heidelbergensis) branched into the ancestors of both Neanderthals and Denisovans on one side, and our ancestors on the other. Then the ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans branched a second time. Before that branch, there were no Neanderthals or Denisovans.
One of the three "species" is not the offshoot of any of the other, but geographically separated cousins (with occasional mixing) e
"Humans having sex with Neanderthals" (Score:3)
I keep finding this a weird thing to say; obviously, us and Neanderthals procreated with great success. Therefore we have been the same species, we just followed different migratory paths at different times and later merged again (probably with all kinds of conflicts because that's human nature). "Humans having sex with Neanderthals" thus makes no sense. It's as odd as saying "humans having sex with Caucasians". It makes no sense because we are are the same species. We may not all be Neanderthals like we're not all Caucasian or Asian but we probably all are Congoid. And we definitely are all humans. And so were Neanderthals. Let's stop this weird display phrenology and just call Neanderthals what they were: an interesting group of pretty plain humans.
(Or am I missing something here?)
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Boy. Forgive my English, but it's just that I'm one of the first generation of humans that's in the process merging with the native English people that followed a different migratory path and now dominate the culture of our planet:p If feel as if this may be very well be the final big merger of human families on this planet, though.
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You're missing that "species" is arbitrary, but conceptually unavoidable.
Species problem [wikipedia.org]
There is no objective physical indicator for delineating a species transition. Science will never offer you one, and never will be able to.
Of more concern is having a proposed mechanism to differentiate yourself meaningfully not simply from Neanderthals, but from animals in general.
Are you a Philosophical (as contrasted from Methodological) Naturalist (broadly, "atheist")? We
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Neanderthals, homo sapiens and Denisovans certainly were all members of the same species, but through geographical isolations of several thousand years, they have developped into seperate races.
Race is an outmoded concept, and they were by definition the same species if they could interbreed, so one finally has to accept that they were just humans with different groups of genes.
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That is not quite correct. The definition of species is complex and at times a little subjective. There are many pairs of species that *can* interbreed with a certain amount of success, but don't normally do so in the wild. Consider: bison/cattle, lion/tiger.
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Race is an outmoded concept, and they were by definition the same species if they could interbreed, so one finally has to accept that they were just humans with different groups of genes.
The ability to interbreed does not necessarily make them a single species. The concept of strict sexual reproductive isolation is a limiting case for the definition of species for sexual species (it is useless for asexual ones). When breeding sterility between populations exists it definitely indicates different species.
But H.s.sapiens and H.s. neanderthalensis (and the Denisovans) are considered sub-species currently.
Hybrid vigor (Score:3)
It has been long known that breeding (having kids) with those distantly related to you is likely to produce healthier offspring [quora.com]. So: if you want healthy kids: choose a partner who has a different ancestry to you -- domeone of a different race is an easy way of doing it. Having said that what I have said is simplistic, not everyone has equally ''good'' genes, so choosing someone who is: healthy, strong, intelligent, ... is also good -- these are the characteristics that many find attractive anyway. The mating game is largely about producing healthy kids - even if we do not realise it.
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The optimum degree of inter-relatedness, as measured by fertility, is one equivalent to being third cousins, see for example this [sciencedaily.com].
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That is not exactly true. Hybrid vigour is something you mostly see in deeply inbred populations. When we breed different rabbit breeds together to create hybrid vigour we are breeding two inbred rabbits that are still very very genetically similar together to fix the issues of the inbreeding. You don't see the same vigour in healthy populations, and outbreeding can produce some very bad results when it is between two very different animals. Look around, there's a reason that mules, or sheep goat hybrids ha
Wait what? (Score:2)
If we're descended from Neanderthals why would we need to breed with them to gain their genes?
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We are not. About 700,000-600,000 years ago, there was a common ancestor.
But truth be known, what really happened back then was that some of us were a bit more furry than others of us. A great controversy sprung up about the meaning of fur. Eventually it was decided that the furry ones and the less furry ones would separate into two groups to preserve civility.
Cats, realizing their chance had come at last, cozied up to the less furry ones knowing they secretly desired fur. They also cozied up to the furry o
Humans: ANYTHING THAT MOVES! (Score:2)
Humans are, collectively, Captain Jack Harkness!
Momentarily correct misreading (Score:2)
I momentarily read the article title as, "Humans Having Sex With Neanderthals Gave Us Protection Against Ancient Academics". This is plausible on so many levels that I rather think someone should write that article.
Doesn't Always Work (Score:2)
And humans having sex with monkeys gave us AIDs.
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> There's no such thing as "white genes"
This article is pretty much a solid counterargument against that.
There are in fact genes that are associated with various racial and ethnic populations. They give rise to genetic diseases associated with various races and ethnicities. They also limit who you can get an organ or bone marrow translplant from.
A little bit of spit can tell us EXACTLY what your racial and ethnic makeup is.
Value judgements are another matter entirely.
"white genes" are very real.
Re: A virus may cause change in sexual orientation (Score:2)
Ahhh, no.
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Of course we exchange DNA with viruses. That's how mammals acquired the placenta.
Yes, sexual orientation is something you're born with. It's acquired via hormones and other chemical signals at around 6 months into the pregnancy. Nothing to do with viruses.
How do we know this? Viruses are species-specific. Homosexuality exists in all mammals at around the same percentage (and some fish, reptiles and birds). Obviously, you want a cause that applies to all mammals (since that has to be a common mechanism) and
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those with a high amount of Neanderthal ancestry also seemed to have died without procreating.
Note sure I believe you..
In generation one, John h.sapiens and Mary h.neanderthal have a baby, that child is 50% h.neanderthal.
That 50% hybrid goes on to give birth to a baby fathered by a 100% h.sapiens, the resulting baby is 25% h.neanderthal.
Within a few generations the h.neanderthal DNA is in the single digits.
How do you come to the conclusion that humans with high percentage h.neanderthal DNA died without procreating? Because it's fairly obvious that to me that many of them did successfully procreate.
A
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those with a high amount of Neanderthal ancestry also seemed to have died without procreating.
But at least they were a shoo-in for Supreme Court confirmation.
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How is this news going to be received by the #metoo movement?
As an aside; how are we supposed to read that? Pound me too?