CharonY

Not only that, they took away body autonomy specifically from half of the population. I think RBG stated that there would be no equal rights without reproductive rights.

For the way you described it, the answer is no. mRNA cannot simply hop into our genomes. However, there are mechanisms with which especially viral genetic material can be integrated into our genomes via a variety of means, some of which are derived from the viruses themselves, other due to some mechanisms that eventually got into our genomes during our evolutionary history (such as retrotransposons). There have been studies suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infections might result in some integration based on in vitro studies but follow-up suggested that it is either extremely rare or not happening. For vaccines it is important to remember that much less is introduced into your body and only a small part of the viral genome at that. I.e. even if it was true that infection with SARS-CoV-2 could introduce some genetic material into our cells, the likelihood with the vaccine is actually much lower. I.e. if you are worried about long-term effects, it would make more sense about getting infected with viruses, rather than getting vaccines against them.

Scientific papers only identify effects found in their respective cohort (sounds trivial but is an important distinction). And the overall recommendation based on a range of studies is therefore that it is safe (which may vary a bit based on the criteria of different health agencies). It does not make the claim pseudoscientific, but is rather a simplification for broader communication. I.e. because it is not precise enough for a paper, it does not mean that it is pseudoscientific. If that was the criterion, virtually all statements outside of scientific papers, including on this forum would be considered pseudoscience. I also do not think that anyone confused the recommendation of a health website with a scientific paper nor that is what JC was referring to. Edit: I will add that the evidence level for puberty blocker is not quite as high as for some other treatments (as their use is rare), and since it involves children, it does has some unique ethical issues surrounding consent (which is also why children-specific treatments are difficult to develop). There, added some qualifiers. Is it now semi-pseudoscientific?

It is a simplified statement, but not so much that I would disagree with it. If you take a look at the lit, it shows that after discontinuing suppressors hormonal levels start progressing as through normal puberty. In fact it, is the general consensus of most health professionals. Or conversely, I do not see studies that found irreversible effects of puberty blockers. A little sidebar here: In biology as well as medical sciences all claims require some level of qualifications. SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are very safe. Yet there are rare cases of issues. Should the CDC and other sources claiming that SARS-CoV-2 is safe deemed pseudoscience now? Same with puberty blockers. They suppress the onset of puberty and stopping reverses the process. But we do not know whether that delay itself could have any effects down the road. Heck, even "normal" developmental processes should have qualifiers when you want to be very accurate (because as I have said so many times, in biology there is no strict normality, just stochastic processes with varying degrees of likelihood). However, that is not what you would tell laypersons, as that would just confuse everyone. Thus, in terms of normal health communication it seems to follow what is generally understood with regard to puberty blockers. I also think it a bit weird that you automatically assume that this claim is wrong, without looking at what consensus is among health professionals. I.e. while you imply bias on my side, you do not have any evidence other than your interpretation of two sentences. From there you make a rather big claim of pseudoscience. Meanwhile, you could take a look at other sites that provide information for laypersons. Such as the Mayo clinic and others. There you find things like: And so on. So you would need to extend your claim to well-known health providers as part of as pseudoscientific cabal. I can also provide some literature, but I am honestly not sure whether it warrants the effort. You will be surprised to know that papers have a different target audience and that you use more than one sentence to make a point. Also, reviewers read the whole paper rather than take out a snipped and interpret it to death.

Jesus, that is quite a stretch and most of it is misunderstanding what is written there. The scientific evidence is that for the puberty process, the effects of puberty blockers is reversible. I.e. folks undergo puberty following the same trajectory once use of blockers are stopped. The other statement is not a contradiction but rather states that we do not have sufficient data (as the treatment is not in use for that long) to be sure whether something is going to happen years down the line. This is a potential worry as changes in development could have unknown long-term effects, but these required to be studied and have to weighed against the immediate detrimental effects (e.g. suicide attempts and other mental health issues). It is recommended for folks during use of puberty blockers to have sufficient calcium, Vitamind D and have their BMI monitored.

Yes, cyanobacteria are clearly bacteria and not plants. Plants and animals had a common ancestor roughly 1.5 billion years ago. Arthropods appeared about 500-600 million years ago, the order of Mantodea is about 145 million years old.

In the third study you linked to, they looked at puberty suppressors and gender-affirming hormones. In that group, kids around puberty (i.e. at the lower range) received suppressors, whereas the older ones received gender-affirming hormones (as it is not practice to provide them to per-pubteral patients). The other studies focused more on pubertal suppression. Edit: crossposted with a couple of other posts.

Here, I would ask whether there is any evidence that mental health is different in California than elsewhere. But the cited studies had US (nationwide) cohorts, as well as from the Netherlands. But the decision from Sweden highlights that the situation is not settled. Some advocate counselling, for example. However, it will take another couple of years before we can have data to indicate which approach is better or worse.

What about the opposite forcing them through a change in their bodies that just does not fit with their brains? It is a well-established fact that transgender people are at a much higher risk of suicide. They basically have two choices. Pretend what what they don't feel, in order to conform. This potentially can reduce harassment (not sure whether there is data on that), but it increases risk of self-harm. Or they can undergo social transition, which results in short-term benefits in terms of mental health, but can lead to harassment, which in the longer term again increases self-harm risk. What you seem to fail to understand is that puberty blockers and gender-affirming procedures are recommended by medical professionals, because they improve overall health. Let's follow the data a bit. There is a significant body of evidence showing that kids taking puberty blockers are at lower risk of suicide and other forms of self harm (see e.g. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-1725 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-2958 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/cpp0000288) and improved well-being. Now, it does not mean that it is a one-size fits-all situation, but in contrast to the imagined example, the data at least indicates that it is more likely to be detrimental than harmful. There might be better ways out there, but clearly just let them ride it out currently has the worst outcome in terms of suicide and other mental health challenges. So why do we build homes, eat warm meals regularly take insulin, wear glasses and so on? All of that effects our biology in various ways.

I think there is a bit of an issue with the scope of the problem and our desire to use specific narratives. A specific case of abuse, especially involving known names just feels more emotionally engaging and interesting. However, domestic abuse is a widespread issue and IMO the best way to tackle them is to look and talk about population-wide data and patterns.

I thin you are right. Kids are seeming less confused about that then us older folks. I suspect that this is why in the USA there is this huge homophobic and transphobic backlash in terms books with LGBTQ themes or even characters at school.

From I understood from a cursory reading is that the jury basically finds Heard's claims in the op-ed to be false (i.e. they do not believe that she was a victim of abuse the way outlined in the article) and the counterclaim was a bit more specific but it reads like they don't believe that she faked abuse in a particular context. It is one of the reasons why I think that this prominent case is not a great starting point to talk about domestic abuse in general and abuse of men in particular. I think the OP wanted to argue that the claim of abuse is a form of abuse in itself, but did it in a bit of a roundabout way. I think that is a rather complicated issue as I think a lot of us have certain notions how domestic abuse "should" look like, but I suspect that there is a lot more to it, if we started digging in literature a bit. The classic domestic abuse hinges on material power differential, and since the husband traditionally has the earning power, they are considered more likely to be the abuser. But since then other patterns of abuse have been found and I would suspect that power differentials can be quite difficult to quantify. In this particular context both are public figures and certain common patterns of abuse (including isolation from social networks) did not seem to happen. Just because one is more famous than the other does not mean that they have direct power over the other. In fact, one could interpret the situation between them as an attempt to assert power. I don't think that mutual abuse is impossible as such, as both parties might engage in power struggles, even if coming from a less powerful (but still sufficiently independent) position. But again, I these are all just speculations.

At least part of the data on that website is based on EDGAR and the methodology is outlined here: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/methodology

Fundamentally the question boils down to whether consciousness is binary or a quantitative trait. Considering the range of cognitive abilities of many animals, I am inclined to believe that it is more of a letter and that we are not that unique in that regard. But I think we have already a lot threads discussing this issue?

! Moderator Note Considering that OP was escorted from the premises, there is no further need to debunk the misconceptions/falsehoods outlined by OP in this thread.

It appears that I have not linked to all of the data, which could clear up a few things. The survey also asked explicitly whether vaccines include secret chips to monitor and control behaviour (11% true, 14% not sure/possibly). Which is just a bit lower than the question involving Gates. 19% believe that COVID vaccines have killed many people but it is covered up, with further 25% thinking that it is at least possible. Much of it seems related to public distrust in the government and media, the same trend that is also happening in the US. https://abacusdata.ca/trust-and-disinformation-in-canada/ https://abacusdata.ca/conspiracy-theories-canada-3/

I think with comedy it highly depends on the craft and also we (as we the society) have also deal with the fact that things are not easily forgotten as they used to. Fundamentally comedy is all about context, and context changes. Comedians often try to walk right up to the edge, but where the edge is, will change over time. This used to be much less of an issue when shows where either not widely broadcasted and/or were discussed about but then forgotten again within a few years. With the internet and social media, all utterances are there forever (or close to it). A related issue which folks increasingly have difficulty with to separate the art from the artist. Again, I think the offensive part is highly dependent on how well the joke is constructed. However, I agree that deriding those disagreeing is a bit weak. After all, jokes are not universal and they may bomb with different audiences. As comedian they have the choice to try to appeal to a more specific group and/or adjust for broader consumption. But complaining that their jokes do not have mass appeal or that there are folks who just don't get it, does not show a lot of craftsmanship, in my mind. It is of course more annoying if folks take things out of context, but then they are unlikely to be the target audience, anyway.

The question wasn't whether tracking is feasible though (especially as folks are getting tracked voluntarily, though) but rather whether Bill Gates is using microchips to track and change human behaviour. The background there is that the Gates foundation has supported vaccination efforts (but is not building cell phones or other tracking devices, afaik).

A big challenge is that so many folks are infected at any given time that we get tons of lineages and sub-lineages at a rate where new vaccines might not keep up. It is possible that over time there will be few main lineages sticking around, which would be more similar to what is happening with influenza. But right now we are still in mostly unchartered territory. It also depends a lot on the potential of immune evasion. I.e. how many mutations can the virus undergo to evade recognition, but still remain infectious.

Asked and answered. The last sentence is just stupid. Also regarding natural immunity: Note that breakthrough infections refers to vaccinated individuals who get infected. In other words, the highest neutralization titers was found in individuals who were vaccinated and got infected with Omicron. Suryawanshi, R.K., Chen, I.P., Ma, T. et al. Limited cross-variant immunity from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron without vaccination. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04865-0 You need to learn to follow evidence to come to a conclusion, not the other way round.

Just to take a break from US crazyness and considering that quite a few folks here actually are Canadians (or live in Canada) I thought it is worthwhile to look at Canadian crazyness. While overall higher competency and not having a professional grifter as the leader, Canada fared better through the pandemic (a bit higher than world average in terms of death rates, for example), we have encountered a fair bit of conspiracy theories among the population when it came to COVID-19, which we had (perhaps unfairly) associated mostly with the US. The question whether vaccines contained tracking chip from Bill Gates was a question that came up too frequently for comfort, for example. A recent poll on Canadian beliefs on conspiracy theories is a bit worrying: https://abacusdata.ca/conspiracy-theories-canada/ There, pollster found that over 40% of the responders believe that big events are controlled by small secret groups that work against folks and that much of our lives is controlled by secret plots. Moreover 37% appear to believe in the replacement theory where native born Canadians (I kind of assume that it ironically does not include First Nations) are going to be replaced with immigrants. 13% think that Gates is using microchips for tracking with an additional 21% think that it is at least possible. These beliefs are most common among PPC voters (the far right party in Canada) with close to 70% agreeing to some of the conspiracy theories, followed by CPC voters (conservative party, ~50%) and with most other parties around 30-40% agreeing. These contrarian beliefs are also associated with vaccination hesitancy (which has been explored in a number of studies, though perhaps often with more focus on the US). While these beliefs are still considered fringe I do see a real risk of a general shift as we are seeing in the USA, if they become weaponized e.g. by media or other (semi-)traditional outlets. So what are you thoughts? Do you think that there better in measures in Canada to keep it in check? Or is it simply a worldwide, likely social media driven trend? And if so, is there a way to combat it, or is that going to be the new normal?

That is seriously backwards reasoning. You cannot just assume that something is true and selective search for evidence of it. I mean you can, but you will end up with false assumptions and conspiracy theories. In most cases this is just sad, but in an ongoing pandemic you are part of the legion of folks who are endangering others. It is rather sad, really.

Considering that you do not seem to understand the studies you linked yourself, using a more accessible source is a good idea.

Bipedalism is not that uniques. There are bipedal dinosaurs, and their descendants. It is rare among mammals, though some at least can be transiently bipedal. From there having few species (including humans) specializing in locomotion using their hind legs is not that unique. One of the rarer qualities is probably the lack of a tail as counterbalance. With regard to brain size, it is not that great of an indicator, as in total size, we are eclipsed by many larger animals and using brain to body ratios typically favours smaller species. In neither measure are we on top of the rankings.

Eh, there have been a lot of issues in Canada, too and at multiple points the conservatives did object a fair bit with regard to things like vaccination mandates and certain provinces (especially conservative ones) had big clashes with their health authorities regarding health messaging (or lack thereof). While in Canada the overall situation is still saner, I am not entirely convinced that it is not only starting to move on that trajectory. The politicians are less pants-on-crazy (yet) but there are definitely fan clubs springing up who are hot for the type of stupid found south of the border. The question is only whether the parties are willing to cash in on that. In the US after the last president left, there were movements in getting some things done and I believe that for some measures there were bipartisan votes.