Tag: biology

Scientists Fear “Mirror Life” Synthetically Produced in the Lab Could Create a Dangerous New Form of Biology

Scientists are warning that creating “mirror life,” a radical new concept in synthetic biology, could potentially have dangerous repercussions if such organisms escaped the lab, where they may cause irreversible damage to humans and the world around us.

The concerns were detailed in a recent report that warned that mirror cells—artificially constructed living systems assembled from reversed molecular building blocks—might pose “unprecedented and irreversible harm” if they were ever created.

The concept, initially born out of an ambitious laboratory challenge, now has scientists and ethicists warning that the pursuit of such creations could represent one of the most dangerous frontiers in biology, which experts say should prompt global restrictions before further experiments are conducted.

What Is Mirror Life?

When it comes to life on Earth, all organisms share a fundamental and rather peculiar property: what scientists call chirality, or “handedness.”

DNA and proteins are assembled from molecules that fit together in a consistent orientation, much like right and left-handed gloves. With this in mind, a “mirror” cell would essentially flip these orientations, with its DNA and proteins becoming versions of our own, albeit reversed as though being viewed in a mirror.

In theory, a mirror cell would function much like a normal one, in that it grows, reproduces, and essentially thrives in the same ways our cells would do. However, since its molecular structure would be functionally alien to the biology of other living things on our planet, scientists warn that there could be grave consequences if it were ever created.

“The first mirror bacterium would likely be a fragile microbe exhibiting metabolic defects, which would limit its growth and durability outside the laboratory,” the authors of the recent report write. “Once created, however, mirror bacteria could be readily engineered to become more robust by using standard techniques to deliver mirror versions of existing bacterial genes.”

“This could confer new capabilities or even transform them into 1 Summary mirrored versions of robust existing bacteria,” the report states.

Why Scientists Are Concerned

At the outset, the premise for creating mirror life seemed promising. Since our immune systems wouldn’t recognize these cells, one might assume that they could one day be used for medical applications such as medicines that wouldn’t trigger harmful immune responses.

However, it is this same quality that experts are now warning could make them so dangerous.

Imagine, for instance, a mirror bacterium that was essentially invisible to our immune systems. Such an organism could feasibly infect the human body, where it could grow undetected, allowing it to spread rapidly throughout the body without it recognizing anything was amiss.

Going beyond the worrying possibility of such “stealth infections,” mirror life could also have devastating implications for our environment. If ever freed into the wild, mirror bacteria would be able to thrive with no natural predators, which may allow them to outcompete ordinary microbial organisms, eventually leading to their infestation of ecosystems where their proliferation could advance unchecked.

Overall, mirror life would represent a global invasive threat, and if they were to begin adapting to the environment, they could potentially infect not only humans but also plants and animals throughout ecosystems worldwide.

“It therefore appears plausible,” the report states, “even likely, that sufficiently robust mirror bacteria could spread through the environment unchecked by natural biological controls and act as dangerous opportunistic pathogens in an unprecedentedly wide range of other multicellular organisms, including humans.”

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North Carolina Democrat Governor Josh Stein VETOES Common Sense Bill Affirming Only TWO Genders — Chooses Radical Woke Ideology Over Basic Biology

North Carolina’s Democrat Governor Josh Stein has VETOED a bill that simply affirms what every sane American already knows: that there are only two genders — male and female.

The House Bill 805, passed by the state legislature, sought to “to officially recognize two sexes in North Carolina, to prevent the sexual exploitation of women and minors, to limit the use of state funding, to modify the law related to birth certificates, to modify the law related to civil remedies for gender transition procedures on non-minors, to allow students with religious objections to be excused from certain classroom discussions or activities, and to allow parent access to library books and to provide for restrictions on school sleeping quarters.”

But instead of standing with science and sanity, Governor Stein caved to the radical transgender lobby and vetoed the legislation on Thursday.

Stein said,

“The initial version of House Bill 805 protected people from being exploited on pornographic websites against their will. I strongly support that policy, which is a continuation of my work to protect children from sex abuse, modernize our sex crime statutes to address artificial intelligence, and eliminate the largest backlog of untested rape kits in the country. Instead of preventing sexual exploitation, the General Assembly chooses to engage in divisive, job-killing culture wars.

North Carolina has been down this road before, and it is a dead end. My faith teaches me that we are all children of God, no matter our differences, and that it is wrong to target vulnerable people, as this legislation does. I stand ready to work with the legislature when it gets serious about protecting people, instead of mean-spirited attempts to further divide us by marginalizing vulnerable North Carolinians.”

In addition to vetoing HB 805, Gov. Stein struck down three more bills targeting DEI initiatives: Senate Bill 227 (banning DEI in K–12 schools), Senate Bill 558 (eliminating DEI in public higher education), and House Bill 171 (prohibiting DEI positions and programs in state and local government).

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The Ideological Subversion of Biology

Biology faces a grave threat from “progressive” politics that are changing the way our work is done, delimiting areas of biology that are taboo and will not be funded by the government or published in scientific journals, stipulating what words biologists must avoid in their writing, and decreeing how biology is taught to students and communicated to other scientists and the public through the technical and popular press. We wrote this article not to argue that biology is dead, but to show how ideology is poisoning it. The science that has brought us so much progress and understanding—from the structure of DNA to the green revolution and the design of COVID-19 vaccines—is endangered by political dogma strangling our essential tradition of open research and scientific communication. And because much of what we discuss occurs within academic science, where many scientists are too cowed to speak their minds, the public is largely unfamiliar with these issues. Sadly, by the time they become apparent to everyone, it might be too late.

We’re all familiar with the culture wars that pit progressive Leftists against centrists and those on the Right. In the past, those skirmishes dealt with politics and sociocultural issues and in academia were restricted largely to the humanities. But—apart from the “sociobiology wars” of the seventies and our perennial battles against creationism—we biologists always thought that our field would avoid such struggles. After all, scientific truth would surely be immune to attack or distortion by political ideology, and most of us were too busy working in the lab to engage in partisan squabbles.

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Justices Alito, Thomas blast SCOTUS for passing on censorship of ‘only two genders’ student

When the Supreme Court put the onus on states to set their own abortion policies with 2022’s Dobbs ruling, it unexpectedly subjected pro-life activists and their legislative allies to an onslaught of abortion-expansion proposals that made it into even red states’ laws, with a pro-life research group concluding last week that abortions are rising.

By passing on a case that sought to protect student expression that questions gender ideology from censorship in public schools, SCOTUS may similarly send free speech, gender-critical, religious freedom, conservative and pro-life advocates scrambling at the state and school district levels to protect nondisruptive speech at odds with progressive shibboleths.

The high court Tuesday turned away pleas from those advocates and Republican state attorneys general to hear and reverse the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Liam Morrison, upholding his Massachusetts middle school’s ban on wearing shirts that read “there are only two genders” and, after his first punishment, “there are only censored genders.” 

First Circuit Chief Judge David Barron – previously a Justice Department lawyer known for secretly advising the president who later nominated him that Barack Obama could legally kill Americans by drone strike – had portrayed the issue as a matter of judicial deference.

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Transgender Brain Studies are Fatally Flawed

Earlier this week, City Journal published the tragic story of Yarden Silveira, a young detransitioner—someone who pursues hormonal and/or surgical “sex change” procedures but then seeks to reverse course—whose life ended abruptly after suffering severe complications from a gender-related genital surgery. What led Yarden to adopt a transgender identity in the first place? In 2014, after encountering the growing wave of pro-trans narratives in popular culture, Yarden told his family that he believed he had a “female brain.” Though initially uncertain, his mother was ultimately convinced by scientific papers that suggested that her son could have a female brain trapped in a male body, and that this mismatch caused him unimaginable distress.

“A trans woman (such as myself) was born with a male body, but she has always had her female brain. Literally born with a female brain,” Yarden wrote in 2016.

This belief was widespread back then—and it still is. On January 31, Wisconsin Public Radio featured an interview with a mother, Carri, concerned about President Trump’s new executive order banning federally funded medical and surgical “sex change” procedures for minors. Carri spoke about her daughter, who identified as transgender at 15 and was allowed to medically transition. She said, “Those hormones really helped match his brain with his body which, to me, that’s just the basic level of care we can provide individuals that identify as trans.”

The power of this narrative in persuading people to pursue, or to allow their children to pursue, irreversible medical procedures cannot be overstated. But the notion that males can have “female brains,” and vice versa, rests on a flawed interpretation of “brain sex” studies that in no way demonstrate or even suggest a definitive biological basis for “gender identity.” Little effort has been made to correct this misleading assertion.

The theory is advanced for relatively straightforward reasons. Civil rights lawyers, activists, and researchers contend that people who identify as transgender possess a “brain sex” misaligned with their physical body, thereby establishing a biological basis for “gender identity” akin to immutable traits like race. This framing carries significant legal weight, as U.S. civil rights law offers strong protections for characteristics considered “innate” or rooted in biology.

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Crazed Biden Judge Signals She May Block Trump’s EO on Transgender Troops, Says the Assertion That Only Two Genders Exists is “Not Biologically Correct”

A federal judge on Tuesday signaled she would side with a group of transgender soldiers who sued to block President Trump’s executive order on transgender troops.

Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, grilled DOJ lawyers on Tuesday and said that Trump’s executive order asserting there are only two genders is “not biologically correct.”

“With the DOD policy expected to be finalized over the coming week, Reyes said she would hold off on issuing an order but had largely made up her mind about the legality of the order, at one point remarking that “smarter people on the D.C. Circuit would have to tell me I’m wrong” about the policy. She added that the central premise of the executive order — that only two genders exist — is “not biologically correct.”” – ABC News reported.

Last month President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively.

This order directs the Secretary of Defense to ensure that military service is “reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty” and “promptly issue directives for DoD to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage.” The standards for our military troops are deemed “inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

Judge Reyes also grilled lawyers on the use of pronouns and gender ideology.

“If you were in a foxhole, you wouldn’t care about these individuals’ gender ideology, right?” the judge asked DOJ lawyers.

The judge did not issue a ruling on Tuesday.

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Trans advocate Roxy Tickle wins discrimination case after being banned from women-only app Giggle in Australian court

An Australian male has won his case against the female founder of women’s only app Giggle for Girls after she said the male, who identifies as a woman, was not permitted on the app due to his being male. A judge has awarded the male, who goes by Roxanne Tickle, $10,000 in compensation for being kicked off the platform. Giggle founder Sall Grover has vowed to continue fighting, and the decision can be appealed. 

She wasn’t surprised by the ruling, writing “Unfortunately, we got the judgement we anticipated. The fight for women’s rights continues.”

The court determined that Tickle, in the case called Tickle v. Giggle, has been “indirectly discriminated against” in being disallowed from accessing Giggle. “The indirect discrimination cases succeeded because Ms Tickle was excluded from the use of the Giggle app because she did not look sufficiently female according to the respondents,” said Justice Robert Bromwich. 

He said that Giggle could not be an app for women only and had to accept men who identify as women, thought he attempted to differentiate discrimination by gender identity from discrimination based on sex. Tickle had sought $20,000, but Bromwich only awarded half of that, $10,000. Tickle had been blocked from the app in 2021 despite his birth certificate having been changed to reflect his gender identity. Tickle claimed that “Up until this instance, everybody has treated me as a woman.”

Tickle had sought the excessive damages after claiming that Grover had been, essentially, too vocal about the case, and Tickle, on Twitter, later renamed X. In a clip posted to X, Tickle can be seen explaining the transformation from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman. On the Australian show Insight, Tickle was asked “Roxy, you’re a transgender woman from regional New South Wales. You played hockey for 10 years when you were 16-years-old, but you stopped when you 26. Why?”

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Olympic Committee Chairman Complains There is ‘No Scientifically Solid System’ to Identify Men From Women

The head of the International Olympic Committee has complained that there is “no scientifically solid system” of identifying a man from a woman.

IOC Chairman Thomas Bach made the comments after being asked about recent controversy surrounding a female boxing match in which one of the fighters had abnormally elevated testosterone levels.

“We have said from the very beginning, if somebody is presenting us a scientifically solid system how to identify men and women, we are the first ones to do it,” Bach said. “We do not like this uncertainty. We do not like it for the overall situation for nobody.

“So, we would be more than pleased to look into it,” he continued. “But what is not possible is that somebody is saying, you know, ‘this is not a woman’ just by looking at somebody or by falling prey to a defamation campaign by not a credible organization.” 

Bach’s remarks come amid controversy at the Paris games surrounding two allegedly female boxers, Imane Khelif of Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, were at the center of these debates.

Both athletes were reportedly born as biological women and were cleared to compete in the Olympics. However, they had previously been excluded from other competitions due to their high testosterone levels.

On Friday evening, Khelif took the gold medal in women’s boxing after defeating China’s Yang Liu, a victory that will inevitably spark further debate about fairness in women’s sports.

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Top Cancer Charity Apologizes for Using ‘Cervix’ to Describe Female Body Part Instead of Trans-Inclusive Term ‘Front Hole’

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) has come under fire for yielding to the forces of political correctness, issuing an apology for using the term “cervix” in its health guidelines aimed at LGBTQ+ community members who are biologically female, according to a report by True North.

This move reflects a concerning trend of medical institutions caving to the pressures of ‘woke’ culture, sacrificing clarity and accuracy in health communications for the sake of political correctness.

“Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer. Almost all cervical cancer cases are due to HPV infection. HPV is spread through sexual contact including sexual intercourse, genital skin-to-skin contact and oral sex, regardless of gender or sexual orientation… If you have a cervix and have ever had sexual contact with anyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, you should start having regular Pap tests by the time you’re 25,” the website reads.

The charity mentioned the word “cervix” eight times on its website, including a disclaimer explaining their choice of language.

The disclaimer indicated that while the term “cervix” is medically accurate, it might not resonate with or be embraced by all readers, acknowledging that terms like “front hole” might be preferred by some.

“We recognize that many trans men and non-binary people may have mixed feelings about or feel distanced from words like “cervix.” You may prefer other words, such as “front hole.” We recognize the limitations of the words we’ve used while also acknowledging the need for simplicity. Another reason we use words like “cervix” is to normalize the reality that men can have these body parts too,” the disclaimer reads.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a cervical cancer trust was also under fire for disgustingly suggesting that people call vaginas “bonus holes” to avoid offending transgender people.

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, based in the UK, suggested the language in 2020 — but it just went viral after it was noticed by people and posted to Twitter.

“Bonus hole – an alternative word for the vagina. It is important to check which words someone would prefer to use,” the glossary on the trust’s website states.

British gender-critical writer Julie Burchill accused LGBT activists of erasing women by adopting terms such as “bonus hole” and “front hole” as trans-friendly alternatives to “vagina.”

“Both ‘bonus hole’ and ‘front hole’ are recommended as trans-friendly alternatives to vagina. Trans ideologues have long tried to erase or appropriate any word that is specific to females – from woman to mother and now vagina. And they have gained a foothold in our schools and in our media. Now gynaecological-health providers are swallowing the stupid pills, too,” Burchill wrote in a 2023 essay, according to True North.

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Win For Reality: UK’s National Health Service Constitution to Declare ‘Sex is Biological’

In a marked rejection of transgender ideology and a win for women’s rights activists, the constitution of Britain’s National Health Service will publicly declare that sex is a biological reality that must inform how patients are treated.

Following the move by the National Health Service to prohibit the prescription of life-altering puberty blockers to children, another major pillar of wokist medicinal thought, that sex is a fluid concept, looks to be dismantled as the NHS’ constitution will state: “We are defining sex as biological sex.”

In practice, the update to the governing document of the socialised healthcare system will mean that so-called transgender women will be barred from female-only hospital wards, The Telegraph reports.

At present, there is no recognition of sex as a biological fact when determining where patients were placed, resulting in some female patients being forced to share a room with biological males who claim to be transgender women.

The new constitution will state that NHS patients will “not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite biological sex”. Previously, the document said that patients would be placed in the ward of the sex they identified as.

In response to objections raised by female patients over being seen by a transgender nurse or doctor, the constitution will also allow patients to request to be cared for by a healthcare professional of the same sex.

The changes have come at the direction of government ministers, who are tasked with updating the NHS constitution at least once every ten years. The document was last updated in 2015. However, in addition to the input from ministers, a two-month public consultation will be conducted to allow members of the public and from the healthcare industry to submit further suggestions for changes to the constitution.

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