Tag: science

FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: “COSTLY” SOCIAL DISTANCING MANDATE “WASN’T BASED ON CLEAR SCIENCE”

Amid the always-fearmongering, always-pessimistic, always-more-control-demanded, (and almost always wrong) daily headlines from Dr. Fauci, Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb dared to speak optimistically about the way forward on Friday:

“We now know that the vaccines dramatically reduce your chance of both contracting COVID and becoming symptomatic to the point where you are going to have a bad outcome; we also know it reduces asymptomatic disease and reduces transmission… we are seeing that in the data.“

The Pfizer board member does hedge a little by suggesting those who are high risk should still take precautions.

By many measures, March was supposed to be a “difficult month” but as the vaccine campaign continues uninterrupted, April and May will “look much more clear.”

“…people can be more liberal… people will be taking off their masks because we are going to see prevalence decline around the country and people who’ve been vaccinated can go out with more confidence.”

Then Gottlieb dropped some serious truth bombs (which were mysteriously edited out of CNBC’s clip above) saying that within a few weeks, it could be “obvious” that masks may be safely removed, and even more significantly, following CDC’s flip-flopping and confusing rules this week on distancing in schools:

“This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we’ve employed in response to COVID… and it really wasn’t based on clear science… we should have readjucated this much earlier.“

Keep reading

Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble Human Embryos

For decades, science has been trying to unlock the mysteries of how a single cell becomes a fully formed human being and what goes wrong to cause genetic diseases, miscarriages and infertility.

Now, scientists have created living entities in their labs that resemble human embryos; the results of two new experiments are the most complete such “model embryos” developed to date.

The goal of the experiments is to gain important insights into early human development and find new ways to prevent birth defects and miscarriages and treat fertility problems.

But the research, which was published in two separate papers Wednesday in the journal Nature Portfolio, raises sensitive moral and ethical concerns.

“I’m sure it makes anyone who is morally serious nervous when people start creating structures in a petri dish that are this close to being early human beings,” says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a bioethicist at Georgetown University.

Keep reading

‘Follow the Science’ With Dr. Fauci

No matter what we are told by the “experts,” science is constantly evolving and is rarely ever as settled as those in power want us to believe. Doctors are often forced to make consequential decisions and recommendations based on partial or incomplete sets of data and information. Perhaps no one knows this better than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

According to Fauci, it is now safe for schools to reopen. All it took was the passing of President Biden’s “COVID relief bill,” which will likely be signed into law this week. “As we now have the relief bill signed at $1.9 trillion — a lot of that is going into addressing COVID-19 including help to the schools to allow them to more safely bring the kids back,” Fauci said on Monday. Considering that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 95 percent of the money appropriated from the bill to fund schools will not be spent this year, there was no reason for Fauci to present its passing as a prerequisite for reopening schools — unless of course we fool ourselves into believing that he is motivated by science, and not by whatever the Biden administration tells him to say.

Keep reading

Biden Wars Against Biological Sex And Due Process With Two New Executive Orders

Days after corporate media outlets said Joe Biden is “rolling back the culture war,” the president continued his war on biological sex and due process on Monday with the introduction of two executive orders that seek to dismantle Trump-era protections in the name of “advancing gender equity and equality” and promoting it as “a matter of human rights, justice, and fairness.”

Biden’s first order mandates the creation of a gender policy council, disguising issues such as promoting access to abortions and pushing gender- and race-driven agendas as a way to “advance gender equity and equality, with sensitivity to the experiences of those who suffer discrimination based on multiple factors, including membership in an underserved community.”

“We are very inclusive in our definition of gender,” council co-chair Jennifer Klein said in a White House briefing Monday. “We intend to address all sorts of discrimination and fight for equal rights for people, whether that’s LGBTQ+ people, women, girls, men.”

In addition to a commitment to fight “systemic bias and discrimination, including sexual harassment,” the council also plans to address women in the workforce, economic disparities including wage gaps, and “the caregiving needs of American families,” specifically examining “policies to advance equity for Black, indigenous and Latina women and girls of color.”

“It is, therefore, the policy of my Administration to establish and pursue a comprehensive approach to ensure that the Federal Government is working to advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity, in advancing domestic and foreign policy — including by promoting workplace diversity, fairness, and inclusion across the Federal workforce and military,” the order states.

In his second order, Biden instructs the Department of Education to review the Trump administration and former education secretary Betsy DeVos’s due process expansions on college campuses, which gave students accused of sexual misconduct a chance to receive a fair trial, investigation, and evaluation. The president hopes to reinstate at least some Obama-era policies that overhaul Title IX and potentially withhold or cut funding from schools that don’t comply with broader sexual harassment definitions and lowered evidence standards for victims, as he previously promised on the campaign trail.

Keep reading

SUNY Geneseo Suspends Education Student for Saying ‘A Man Is A Man, A Woman Is A Woman’

State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo has suspended an education student from required teaching programs after he expressed his views on biology in a social media post. In one video, the student says that “a man is a man,” and “a woman is a woman.” The university states that the student’s conservative social media posts call into question his ability to “maintain a classroom environment protecting the mental and emotional well-being of all of [his] students.”

Education student Owen Stevens received an email from SUNY Geneseo, informing him that he was suspended from his field teaching programs after his classmates saw his Instagram videos, according to a report by Daily Wire.

“A man is a man, a woman is a woman. A man is not a woman, and a woman is not a man,” said Stevens in one of the videos in question. “A man cannot become a woman, and a woman cannot become a man.”

“If I’m a man, and I think I’m a woman, I’m still a man. If I’m a woman who thinks I’m a man, I’m still a woman,” the student added. “Regardless of what you feel on the inside, is irrelevant to your biological status. It doesn’t change the biology.”

Keep reading

Amid protests against racism, scientists move to strip offensive names from journals, prizes, and more

For Earyn McGee, terminology matters.

McGee, a herpetologist, studies the habitat and behavior of Yarrow’s spiny lizard, a reptile native to the southwestern United States. The University of Arizona graduate student and her colleagues regularly pack their things—boots, pens, notebooks, trail mix—and set off into the nearby Chiricahua Mountains. At their field site, they start an activity with a name that evokes a racist past: noosing.

“Noosing” is a long-standing term used by herpetologists for catching lizards. But for McGee, a Black scientist, the term is unnerving, calling to mind horrific lynchings of Black people by white people in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Being the only Black person out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of white people talking about noosing things is unsettling,” she says. McGee has urged her colleagues to change the parlance to “lassoing,” which she says also more accurately describes how herpetologists catch lizards with lengths of thread.

McGee isn’t alone in reconsidering scientific language. Researchers are pushing to rid science of words and names they see as offensive or glorifying people who held racist views.

Keep reading

Scientists clone the first U.S. endangered species

Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.

The slinky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born Dec. 10 and announced Thursday, is cute as a button. But watch out — unlike the domestic ferret foster mom who carried her into the world, she’s wild at heart.

“You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the next day,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret recovery coordinator Pete Gober said Thursday. “She’s holding her own.”

Elizabeth Ann was born and is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. She’s a genetic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and whose remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.

Keep reading