The French Revolution is Attacking the American Revolution
California Insurance Commissioner Orders Health Insurance to Pay for Minors’ Transgender Mastectomies
California Bill to Force M.D. Participation in Assisted Suicide
Equality Act’s Attack on Religious Liberty, Medical Conscience
Not Identifying Sex on Birth Certificates Pushed in New England Journal of Medicine
The New England Journal of Medicine continues its hard swing to the woke left. Now, it has published an advocacy article that would remove sex designation as an identifiable factor on birth certificates. From, “Failed Assignments: Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates”: Assigning sex at birth also doesn’t capture the diversity of people’s experiences. About 6 in 1000 people identify as transgender, meaning that their gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. Others are nonbinary, meaning they don’t exclusively identify as a man or a woman, or gender nonconforming, meaning their behavior or appearance doesn’t align with social expectations for their assigned sex. The idea is to move sex designation “below the line,” which allows for general statistical compilation of vital statistics, but not an identifiable designation of the particular individual about whom the birth certificate was created. The point is to promote a particular view of social justice: Moving sex designations below the line would be in keeping with legal developments deemphasizing sex distinctions. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has held, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, only a few legal contexts relying on sex designations remain. In these contexts, using information from birth certificates is not the best way to categorize people. The authors also want sex designations removed from important documents such as passports: Passports and state identification cards relying on sex assigned at birth for identification pose another challenge. These documents are usually issued or renewed when the holder is an adolescent or an adult, however, so moving sex designations below the line of demarcation on birth certificates would permit applicants to identify their gender without medical verification. Governments could also remove gender designations from identification cards altogether and focus more on identifiable physical features and updated photographs. This change would accommodate nonbinary people and reduce the burdens associated with amending documents. Articles like this certainly have their place in debating transgenderism. But when they appear in the most influential medical journal in the world, it calls into question the editors’ ability to dispassionately choose which medical papers to publish. I mean, if a reputable study reached conclusions that were scientifically sound but cut against the grain of transgender ideology, do you think it would ever make the pages of the NEJM? Not a chance! Publishing ideological advocacy in what is supposed to be a journal that primarily publishes objective scientific information contributes to the growing public distrust of the science sector. That doesn’t help people with gender dysphoria specifically, or contribute to the betterment of society overall.
Time to Recognize Data Uncertainty in COVID Debates
Lancet Medical Journal Goes All In for Progressive Politics
Ideology in Science is Destroying Trust
Science Journals Have Become Intensely Political
I have related here on several occasions how intensely political supposedly objective science and medical journals have become. The New England Journal of Medicine pushes progressive politics all of the time, as just one example. So does Science, which for example, has endorsed the “nature rights” movement. Nature joined the crowd too in publishing an hysterical jeremiad against President Trump by Jeff Tollefson, its D.C.-based reporter. But if you read the lengthy attack, its most bitter complaints are about intensely believed political and policy differences, not actual examples of Trump being somehow “anti-science.” For example, construes every Trump action on COVID in the most negative light possible. He also attacks Trump’s immigration policy. From, “How Trump Damaged Science–and Why It Could Take Decades to Recover”: Trump has also eroded America’s position on the global stage through isolationist policies and rhetoric. By closing the nation’s doors to many visitors and non-European immigrants, he has made the United States less inviting to foreign students and researchers. And by demonizing international associations such as the World Health Organization, Trump has weakened America’s ability to respond to global crises and isolated the country’s science. It’s kind of hard to “demonize” the WHO. The organization lied blatantly about COVID and was clearly in the back pocket of the CCP’s propaganda campaign on the issue. Trump’s instituting policies to reflect that reality is not anti-science. Nor are immigration policies, with which one can agree or disagree. Of course, the unforgivable sin was pulling out of the phony Paris Climate Accord: The Trump administration formally filed the paperwork to exit the Paris agreement last year, and the US withdrawal will become official on 4 November, one day after the presidential election. Most nations have vowed to press forward even without the United States, and the European Union has already helped to fill the leadership void by pressing nations to bolster their efforts, which China did on 22 September when it announced that it aims to be carbon neutral by 2060. Oooh! By 2060! Few of us will be alive then to ensure they fulfill their promise. And never mind that the USA has been among the most successful countries in the world at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions because of our bounteous use of natural gas. Science, medical, and bioethics journals have been assimilated into the progressive ideological infrastructure. Keep that in mind when they publish “studies” and policy positions — all touted by the propaganda wing of the infrastructure, a.k.a, the MSM — that push ideology as if it were objective science.