Left handed vs right handed

Question: why do right handed people always assume everyone else is right handed?! (As you can probably tell, I'm a lefter!) But seriously, what is wrong with being left handed, its not like we -yes, I am speaking for every single left handed person in the world- chose to write with our left hand, although to be honest that is probably getting into a bit of a nature/nurture debate! But anyway, my point being, I don't think we should be judged based on how our brains developed....ok before I start ranting (ok, before I continue ranting...) let us look at the science of it all!


So studies suggest that 70%-90% of the worlds population is right handed, surely that makes left handed people more unique, that is a good thing right? So while researching possible reasons for the development of left handedness, so many theories were presented. For example, a slightly scary -in my opinion- theory is the of the 'vanishing-twin'. The thought that there was the left handed person was originally part of an identical twin pair but the right handed fetus failed to develop. Although this theory was 'disbunked' by scientists, it makes me feel a little uneasy! Perhaps more scientifically accurate research discovered specific alleles of at 'least one of the three single-nucleotide polymorphisms ....' was linked to left handedness. Although I didn't understood part of this -the end part to be exact- it shows that there are biological reasons for someone's preferred orientation! 


Like it or not though, left handed people are severely discriminated against in society, perhaps not on purpose but still! Think of all the products designed that  pose problems for left handed people to overcome: a computer mouse, a kitchen knife, a watch, a smudgy pen (when writing a left handed person will more than likely smudge the word they have just written as their hand moves across the page), cameras, then there are sports like baseball, pool, the list goes on and on. 


In a book entitled 'Right hand-Left Hand' by Chris Mcmanus of the University College London, it is explained that the number of left handed people is increasing and also that left handers as a group produce an above average level of high achievers. McManus explains that the brain of a left handed person is structured differently in a way that increases the range of abilities possible.  Along these lines, in 2006 a U.S study by Lafayette College and John Hopkins University concluded that for college educated people, left handers earned 10-15% more than their right handed counterparts. (A result in my opinion!).


So they say 1 in 10  people is left handed, should we penalise this 1 person for being different? Personally since I occasionally am that person, I think not. In my immediate family, it is 1 in 2 people that are left handed, sure it is strange odds, but why is that a bad thing? So many amazing people in history have been left handed: Albert Einstein, Bruce Willis, Leonardo Da Vinci, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama...the list goes on and on.  Sure it wasn't being left handed that made these people what they are today, but you have to ask yourself, does it really have that much of an impact considering how big a deal some people make of it?