Motoneurons of neonatal rodents show synchronous activity that modulates the development of the neuromuscular system. However, the characteristics of the activity of human neonatal motoneurons are largely unknown. Using a noninvasive neural interface, we identified the discharge timings of individual spinal motoneurons in human newborns. We found highly synchronized activities of motoneurons of the tibialis anterior muscle, which were associated with fast leg movements. Although neonates motor units exhibited discharge rates similar to those of adults, their synchronization was significantly greater than in adults. Moreover, neonatal motor units showed coherent oscillations in the delta band, which is directly translated into force generation. These results suggest that motoneuron synchronization in human neonates might be an important mechanism for controlling fast limb movements, such as those of primitive reflexes. In addition to help revealing mechanisms of development, the proposed neural interface might monitor children at risk of developing motor disorders.

More here:
Spinal motoneurons of the human newborn are highly synchronized during leg movements - Science Advances

Over the past few years, November 19 has become known by some social organisations as Mens Day in India.

Mens Day, which originated in 1999, was created to talk about what it means to be a good male role model. However, over the last few years, it has morphed into an excuse to highlight male issues, including how laws designed to protect womens rights supposedly harass innocent men.

For example, theAll India Mens Welfare Association uses derogatory language against women on its website to justify its celebration of Mens Day. They quote data from the Government of Indias National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to mislead the public. They say that suicides among married men nearly doubled between 2005 and 2015, while suicides among married women during this time grew at a lower rate. To them, this is proof that women are causing men to die by suicide.

However, global research indicates that men die by suicide at a higher rate than women. No study has found that mens suicides are due to mental or physical harassment by women, as proclaimed by some mens rights groups.

Similarly, there is no data to support the claim that boys and young men drop out of school due to girls or women in their lives, another popular claim among mens rights activists in India. Rather, reasons cited for dropping out are mostly due to financial constraints caused by alcoholic fathers, lack of an enabling environment at home due to constant friction among parents and family members. Many are forced to drop out to support their families.

Mens Day is also a reason for many mens rights activists to air their grievances against protections to women regarding domestic violence, specifically Section 498 A of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA). Within a short time of these laws coming into force, advocate Dharmendra Chavan, an advocate from Nasik, formed the Purush Hakka Sanrakshan Samiti (Committee for the Protection of Rights of Men), proclaiming that 95% of the cases of harassment filed by women were false.

Also Read: What Mens Rights Activists Get Wrong About Their Own Cause

Purush Hakka Sanrakhsan Samiti members were invited by Mumbai-based organisations working for womens rights including my organisation, Men Against Violence and Abuse to share any data to prove their allegations about the legal misuse, but they were unable to do so.

Gender-neutral laws would be effective when men, women and transgender persons have equal opportunities at all levels of education, occupations, marital choices, professional mobility, reproduction, sexuality and property. In reality, Indian culture and society is still male-dominated. Women in India currently spend up to352 minutes per day on domestic work, 577% more than men (52 minutes), according to data provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. India ranked 112th in the World Economic Forums Global Gender Gap Index 2019-20.

What is the deep-rooted cause to celebrate Mens Day?

CelebratingWomens Dayhas a historical genesis over decades, as women around the world began to take to the streets to raise their voices against violation of their human rights. What is the deep-rooted cause to celebrateMens Day?

A reference is made to Jerome T. Singh from the University of West Indies, who decided to observe Mens Day on November 19 in 1999 to commemorate his fathers birthday, as he wanted to emulate his father as an excellent male role model. However, the idea of celebrating an annual international Mens Dayhas not been sustained nor received any validation by any international body.

Also Read: How Men Can Help Stop Violence Against Women

In a world where men are systematically entitled to power and privilege, celebrating one day asMens Dayseems farcical, especially as most men use it to further malign women.

If Mens Day is to exist, I would like to see onein which men self-introspect and discuss how to deconstruct and redefine masculinity. We can use the day to reflect on howmen are trapped in rigid gender roles, like that of a provider, an all-achiever, and a winner. Men are not taught to accept rejection and failures, and they are not taught how to express emotions like anxiety and vulnerability. Once that happens, India may finally be able to address the roots of the situation and build a healthy society for all.

Harish Sadani is a leading gender rights activist who has pioneered efforts in India as co-founder of Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), where he works with young men and boys to prevent violence on women.

Continued here:
The Reality Demystifying the Uproar Around Mens Day - The Wire

It is so curious how right-wing, Trumpers see mask-wearing mandate for public health as tyranny but cant wait to force women to bear babies, even if her own life is at stake, even if a 15-year old girl was raped by a relative.

But Amy Coney Barrett wants to go further than banning abortion even non-surgically using medication and denying a womans right to make her own health, reproduction, and family decisions.

She has indicated her inclination to ban contraceptives, fertility procedures like IVF, and Im betting would oppose any medical research that involved stem cells from fetal material (the breakthrough drug cocktail that Trump took for COVID-19 came from fetal material).

And what is next?

Women being prosecuted if they miscarry? Women being forced to isolate, prevented from traveling across state lines when pregnant, as some states have already tried to legislate? Thats what is at the heart of personhood essentially giving a fetus more rights than its mother (and who should decide what that fetus wants? Well the government!)

The U.S. Constitution guarantees religious freedom but specifically bars the establishment of religion what is known as separation of church and state.

That means that Barrett is free to follow her own conscience and religious beliefs for her own life if she opposes abortion, but it does not give her, or the government, the right to impose her religious beliefs on someone else. If government mandated mask-wearing is tyranny, what is denying a womans right to control her own body, her own destiny, to have the same ability for self-determination and fulfillment as a man?

It makes the woman a slave of the state, chattel, a broodmare, but not a full, equal citizen, not a full human being, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued so many years ago.

State actions, like New York State codifying the principles of Roe v. Wade into state law, will not be enough to protect a womans dignity, equality, or liberty if the activist regressive justices on the Supreme Court create a new principle of personhood the notion that a fetus has all the rights of a living sentient being even if it is only a cluster of cells.

What, you cant hear the fetus say whether it wants to live in pain with a prognosis of a very early death? Well, The government will decide on behalf of the fetus.

Wow, makes those mask-wearing mandates make the Nanny State look ridiculous; this is (still) the Daddy State.

Roe v Wade should not have been decided based on the premise of privacy and property, but on the 14th amendments guarantee of Equal Protection. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs (R.I.P.) argument for gender equality stemmed from the same argument for racial equality.

Since RBG first used this argument in 1973, things have improved for women, it is true, but as this latest stolen lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court shows, it is fragile. Barrett said that Roe is not settled law, because it has always been controversial, thus broadcasting her intent to vote to overturn it at her earliest opportunity.

But consider this: a government that can ban abortion can also mandate abortion (think China).

But its not just Equal Protection between women and men. Striking down Roe altogether or giving states the ability to impose extraordinary barriers that effectively overturn a womans right to choose means that women in some states, and women in certain economic and social strata will have more rights than others by their sheer ability to travel to obtain an abortion. It is the same as why the Supreme Court realized that Marriage Equality needed to be federal and not left up to individual states.

Someone tweeted back at me during the Senate confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, who insists she is an originalist and only interprets law based on the original intent of the Founding Fathers (as if that can be divined) that abortion is not in the Constitution.

Well, the framework for the entire nation contains only 4,500 words and none of them are freedom, God or women (but it does contain the words Post Offices and Post Roads).

Indeed, the newly formed states were so wary of a new tyranny that a Bill of Rights had to be added (originally 12), and even that was forged in compromise and had to be amended and added to multiple times. Originalism is the biggest judicial fraud ever concocted.

Trumps Supreme Court-packing with ultra-conservative, undemocratic justices who conveniently divine what the founding Fathers were thinking according to their own political sensibilities and expediencies and who is occupying the Oval Office, means that the Equal Rights Amendment is more important than ever.

When Democrats take back the Senate, the House and the White House, they need to pass a law extending the validity of the state votes on the ERA, since Virginia just became the 38th state, and the last one needed to ratify, and then adopt it into the Constitution.

But this is all the more reason a Blue wave must sweep Joe Biden into the White House with overwhelming margins and the Democrats in control of the Senate, so that through law-making, versus judicial fiat, we restore health care, environmental protection, voting rights, womens rights, civil rights and equal protection under the law. And yes, if necessary, expand the court to restore balance and justice.

Women, who came out by the millions the day after Trumps inauguration, again took the streets of Washington and other cities in the final days before Election Day. Its not hyperbole to say everything is on the line, one said.

See the article here:
Viewpoint: Rightwing packing on Supreme Court means ERA more crucial than ever to protect Women's Rights - Blog - The Island Now

Like other mammals, humans reproduce sexually. A womans body supports a baby as it grows. For these reasons men and women have different reproductive organs.

In men the main reproductive organs are the testes. The two oval-shaped testes sit behind the penis in a pouch called the scrotum. The testes make the male sex cells, called sperm. Sperm are too tiny to see without a microscope. They are shaped like tadpoles with long tails.

The sperm travel through a tube toward the penis. They mix with other fluids to form a liquid called semen. During sexual intercourse a small amount of semen passes through the tip of the penis into the womans body. This semen contains between 200 and 300 million sperm. The sperm then travel toward the womans sex cell, or egg.

In women the main reproductive organs are the ovaries. The two almond-shaped ovaries sit inside the lower belly. When a girl is born her ovaries contain up to 500,000 egg cells. Two tubes, called fallopian tubes, connect the ovaries to the uterus. The uterus is a muscular organ that holds a growing baby.

Beginning when a girl is about 12 years old, one ovary releases an egg once a month. This process is called ovulation. The egg travels from the ovary through the fallopian tube to the uterus. If the egg does not meet a sperm cell on its journey, it dies. The egg and some blood then pass out of the uterus and through the vagina, a muscular tube that leads out of the body.

Sperm enter the womans body through the vagina. The sperm swim up through the uterus and into the fallopian tubes. If an egg is in one of the fallopian tubes, the sperm try to join with it. Only one sperm can enter, or fertilize, the egg. The rest of the sperm die.

Once the egg is fertilized, pregnancy (or gestation) begins. The fertilized egg moves into the uterus. As it travels it starts to divide into many more cells. After about five or six days these cells burrow into the wall of the uterus. There the cells begin to develop into a baby. At first the developing baby is called an embryo. After about eight weeks the baby is called a fetus.

In the uterus the baby grows inside a pouch called the amniotic sac. The amniotic sac is filled with clear liquid. The liquid protects the baby and lets it move around. A bundle of blood vessels, called the umbilical cord, connects the babys belly to the placenta. The placenta is a structure that lines part of the uterus. The placenta brings nourishment from the mothers body to the baby. It also takes away wastes from the baby.

After about nine months of development the baby is ready to leave the womans body. The bottom end of the uterus, called the cervix, expands to create a wide opening into the vagina. The muscles of the uterus contract, or tighten, to push the baby downward. The baby moves slowly through the vagina and out of the mothers body.

When the baby is born the umbilical cord and the placenta also leave the mothers body. The newborn baby is cut free from the cord and the placenta. After several days the stump of the cord dries up and falls off the babys belly. It leaves behind an indentation called a navel, or belly button.

Read the original post:
Homework Help - Britannica Kids

Postoperative hormonal suppression had a statistically significant effect on reducing endometriosis recurrence and improving pain, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the journal Human Reproduction Update.

As surgeons, our primary goal is to make patients feel better and we often accomplish this by surgically treating endometriosis, said co-author Ally Murji, MD, MPH, an associate professor of ob/gyn at the University of Toronto and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada. However, it is especially disheartening, despite our best surgical efforts, when disease recurs and patients relapse.

The authors sought to evaluate whether postoperative hormonal suppression decreases disease recurrence, compared with placebo/expectant management.

MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL and Web of Science databases were searched from inception to March 2020 for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and prospective observational cohort studies of premenopausal women undergoing conservative surgery and initiating hormonal suppression within 6 weeks postoperatively with one of the following medical therapies: combined hormonal contraceptives, progestins, levonorgesterel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) and gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists.

The review consisted of 17 studies (13 RCTs and 4 cohort studies), totaling 2,137 patients: 1,189 receiving postoperative suppression and 948 controls.

The mean follow-up ranged from 12 to 36 months, with outcomes assessed at a median of 18 months postoperatively.

Among 14 studies (11 RCTs, 3 cohort studies; 1,766 patients total), there was a significantly decreased risk of endometriosis recurrence in patients receiving postoperative hormonal suppression compared with expectant management/placebo: relative risk (RR) 0.41; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.26 to 0.65.

However, when we limited the analysis to only RCTs, we found that the risk of postoperative endometriosis recurrence was consistently decreased with hormonal suppression, Dr. Murji told Contemporary OB/GYN.

In addition, among seven studies (6 RCTs, 1 cohort study; 652 patients total), patients receiving postoperative hormonal suppression achieved significantly lower pain scores compared with controls: standard mean difference (SMD) -0.49; 95% CI: -0.91 to -0.07.

Our review provides new evidence that postoperative hormonal suppression decreases endometriosis recurrence and pain, Dr. Murji said. This contradicts the last Cochrane review on the topic.

Furthermore, although there was significant heterogeneity in the studies included in the review, I am confident in the results, he said. We found that there is only a 4% probability that any future RCT would contradictour findings.

Dr. Murji was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. As few as eight women would need to be treated with postoperative hormonal suppression for at least 6 months to prevent one endometriosis recurrence, he said.

Dr. Murji said it is essential that clinicians educate their patients that endometriosis is a chronic condition and that surgery is not a panacea. Extensive patient counseling before surgery is necessary to educate patients and manage their expectations, according to Dr. Murji. For patients not seeking to conceive immediately after surgery, I offer hormonal suppression, he said. The plan for postsurgical prevention is also formalized preoperatively.

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic-related surgical delays, there is increased opportunity to help patients find the ideal medical treatment option that aligns with their individual needs so as to bridge patients to their surgery and thereafter, he said.

Dr. Murji and his colleagues have found that hormonal contraceptives, progestins, the LNG-IUS and a GnRH agonists are all consistently effective in decreasing pain and disease recurrence.

In particular, the LNG-IUS, which can be inserted under laparoscopic visualization at the time of surgery, avoids some of the issues related to discomfort/placement and provides excellent long-term suppression, Dr. Murji said.

__

Dr. Murji serves on the speakers bureau/advisory boards of Abbvie, Allergan, Bayer, Hologic, and Pfizer.

__

See more here:
Effect on endometriosis recurrence with postoperative hormonal suppression - Contemporary Obgyn

Talking about sex is almosttaboo in Rwanda. The age of sexual debut is dropping below 15 and adolescents report high levels of coercion in their first sexual experiences.

The majority of new HIV infections are in young girls and teen pregnancy rates are rising.

Studies show that these trends are driven primarily by absence of candid conversations about sexual and reproductive health and relationships with adolescents.

Leveraging on the current digital boom in the country, a local group is using a chatbot to break that silence.

A chatbot simply is software that allows humans and computers to talk to each other as if it is two humans chatting.

The technology was developed by a local NGO known as the Rwanda Womens Network (RWN) and a Canadian market research firm, Rival Technologies in partnership with Proteknn Foundation for Innovation and Learning, also a Canadian Foundation.

Via Facebook Messenger, young adolescents from remote areas are using a chatbot dubbed IrindeBot to learn about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and relationships.

Users can also initiate a conversation via Menya Wirinde (learn so you can protect yourself) Facebook page or replying to the page posts.

For the past six months, the technology was tested and proved promising for scaling up.

The bot is targeting at-risk youth and their parents or caregivers for frank conversations about sex and relationships, developers say.

Developers opted for Facebook because of popularity especially in the youth, including in rural communities. According to StatCounter, a database of global internet statistics, Facebook owns 56 per cent of social media market share in Rwanda.

Today, over 5,000 users have talked to the bot of whom about 1,200 have gone through the full two hours of content and quizzes.

How it works

The chatbot works in Kinyarwanda or English, text or audio, depending on user preference. First users search for IrindeBot on Facebook. Click on Send Message and type anything like Hi, the chatbot replies instantly with an option to choose a language.

From there, you trade brief introductions (you must be 13 years old or older) before diving into a more serious, honest and private chat.

Using a combination of simple text, audio, mini dramas and image selection, IrindeBot is also accessible to users with low literacy. Unlike most media platforms such as radio, the chatbot allows for a two-way interaction with fun, according to Gisle Umutoniwase, the coordinator IrindeBot project.

The technology has some downsides, however. IrindeBot is not powered by artificial intelligence, so you can only select buttons and enter a limited amount of text (only when asked). But it allows a user to upload comments and questions and receive a response from a trained, human associate.

Also, you cant go back and change your responses and weak connectivity can block the conversation.

Overcoming pertinent issues

Topics about sexuality in many Rwandan households are frowned upon, says Mary Balikungeri, founder and director of RWN.

We are trying to find innovative ways to engage young people on the issues of SRHRs in a fun way to learn and share and not feel judged at all, Balikungeri said.

IrindeBot is providing straight-up answers to the most sensitive questions about sex, gender-based violence, love and reproduction. Balikungeri observed that it is helping parents realise the importance of dialoging about sex and not as taboo but as part of peoples health.

The initiative sheds light on how digital technology may be useful to tackle emerging issues.

Traditional social norms, lack of access to accurate information and poverty are some of the reasons behind growing numbers of teen mothers, premature marriages and high HIV infections among young people.

These issues led us to think about how to shape accurate information that is tailored and friendly to adolescents, said Andrew Ndahiro, a gender activist and deputy director at RWN.

Backers of the technology plan to scale it up to more target groups such as the privileged class of young people on Instagram. They are also expanding to other countries including Kenya, Brazil and India.

In order to cater for those who dont have access to mobile phones, RWN had young people in communities and provided them with shareable smartphones.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com

Go here to read the rest:
Software helping break the silence about sex in Rwanda - The New Times

Who were David Starr Jordan and Louis Agassiz?

David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) was a prominent ichthyologist and Stanfords first president. He made important contributions to the university, including leadership during an early financial crisis and the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. But he was also a leader in the American eugenics movement, which promoted controlled reproduction based on heritage.

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) was a renowned scholar of natural history who also promoted polygenism, which holds that human racial groups have different ancestral origins and are unequal. He was a mentor to Jordan but has no significant association with the university.

What is the origin of this issue?

The university received requests from the faculty of the Department of Psychology, which is located in Jordan Hall, and the Stanford Eugenics History Project, a group founded by Stanford undergraduate Ben Maldonado, asking that the building be renamed. The Psychology faculty also requested the removal of the statue of Agassiz from the buildings front faade.

How was the committee selected?

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne appointed the Advisory Committee on Renaming Jordan Hall and Removing the Statue of Louis Agassiz in July and charged it with delivering recommendations before the beginning of fall quarter. Committee members were charged to represent the best interests of the entire university and be open to multiple perspectives. They were not selected to represent any particular constituencies, but rather to consider issues impartially.

What analysis was conducted?

The committee met weekly, engaging in extensive research, from July 17 through Sept. 11, 2020. To make its own independent assessment of the strength and clarity of historical evidence, the committee reviewed relevant historical material and verified information by consulting primary materials. It focused principally and substantially on Jordans own writings, examining both published and unpublished materials.

The committee followed principles developed in 2018 to consider the renaming of campus features generally. The principles include such considerations as the strength and clarity of the historical evidence, the persons role in the universitys history, the centrality of a persons offensive behavior to the persons life as a whole and the university communitys identification with the named feature. Then it applied those principles to the requests concerning Jordan and Agassiz and forwarded recommendations to President Tessier-Lavigne.

What outreach was conducted?

The committee solicited extensive feedback in order to inform its deliberations and recommendations.

It hosted a Zoom open town hall, which had 206 attendees and more than 20 speakers, and a separate town hall for alumni, with 100 attendees and 18 speakers. It engaged in specific outreach to those who had majored in biology and psychology, the principal departments that have occupied Jordan Hall in the past century; met with biology and psychology faculty and others working in genetics and bioethics; and consulted with several historians working at Stanford on related subjects. And it sought and considered written comments from the community, including 52 comments from the Psychology Diversity Committee and more than 200 comments received through [emailprotected].

What decision has been made?

Although renaming decisions fall under the presidents authority, he brought the recommendations to the Board of Trustees for additional approval because of the historical importance of Jordan to the university.

Acting on that request, the board approved the removal of the Jordan name from Jordan Hall and from other features named for him. It endorsed the removal of the Agassiz statue from its current location and the committees recommendation to pursue educational projects to help make Jordans complex history better known.

What are the next steps regarding the features named for Jordan?

Debra Satz, whose responsibilities as dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences include the Department of Psychology, will institute a process to determine a new name for Jordan Hall, whether it be an individuals name or a name based on other considerations. Some buildings in the Main Quad are named for individuals, others are named for subjects or disciplines, and some are not named at all. Satz will bring her recommendation to the president and provost.

In the meantime, the university will remove the Jordan Hall lettering from the building as soon as practicable, along with the Agassiz statue, and the building will be referred to by its number in the Main Quad, Building 420.

Tessier-Lavigne will implement the other recommendations from the report, including establishing a process for identifying replacement names for the other features named for Jordan, if needed. The committee noted that Jordan Way, a pathway in the medical center area, has less salience than the other spaces named for Jordan and recommended that its name be changed in the course of normal university planning.

Why will the statue be relocated on campus and not removed from public display?

The committee recommended removing the Agassiz statue from Jordan Hall but retaining it elsewhere on campus because of its particular significance in the Stanford community. A prominent example is the iconic imagery showing the statues head stuck in concrete after being dislodged in the 1906 earthquake. As a result, the statue also has been used as an educational example demonstrating important principles in rock rheology (the study of the strength of Earth materials).

Read the rest here:
Frequently asked questions on Jordan Hall and the statue of Louis Agassiz | Stanford News - Stanford University News

The Regeneron Pharmaceuticals company logo is seen on a building at the company's Westchester campus in Tarrytown, New York, U.S. September 17, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File PhotoNew York: The experimental antibody cocktail which US President Donald Trump received when he tested positive for COVID-19 offers benefits against the novel coronavirus infection, according to a new study in animal models which provides more evidence of the clinical potential of the therapeutic.

While earlier studies had shown that the cocktail of two antibodies targeting the coronavirus spike protein could be used to neutralise the pathogen, scientists from the American biotechnology company Regeneron noted that further research in multiple animal models is needed to test the effectiveness of the formulation.

In the current study, published in the journal Science, the researchers tested REGN-COV2 in rhesus macaques, which manifest mild COVID-19 symptoms, and in golden hamsters, which show symptoms that are much more severe, including rapid weight loss.

According to the scientists, this ability of REGN-COV2 "matches or exceeds the effects recently shown in vaccine efficacy studies using the same animal models."

"These findings highlight the therapeutic potential of (this approach) to both protect from and treat SARS-CoV-2 disease," the researchers noted in the study.

When the macaques were treated with the drug one day after infection, they said there was faster viral clearance than in controls who had not been treated with the cocktail.

In the hamster model, the study noted that the animals treated with the drug two days before infection exhibited a "dramatic protection from weight loss," and decreased viral load in the lungs.

The scientists also reported benefits for hamsters treated one day after infection, as compared to controls.

"In conclusion, our data provide evidence that REGN-COV2 based therapy may offer clinical benefit in both prevention and treatment settings of COVID-19 disease, where it is currently being evaluated," they wrote in the study.

Read the original here:
Regeneron's antibody cocktail may offer protection against Covid-19: Study - ETHealthworld.com

The president has had a life-threatening, infectious disease for over a week, and he and his doctors havent been very transparent about the timeline and course of his affliction. In lieu of detailed disclosures, reporters have to piece together his condition based on the treatments hes been receiving.

Trump was started off on an experimental therapeutic an antibody cocktail and then advanced to another remdesivir. The other biomolecules coursing through Donald Trump's system (and this week's headlines) are corticosteroids, called dexamethasone.

You may have heard of cytokine storms, where the body's immune response to severe COVID-19 bombards healthy cells, making the illness worse. Trump has been given dexamethasone, an immuno-supressant that doctors prescribe to temper that effect. Unlike the other experimental treatments, dexamethasone is common and somewhat easy to access. However, it is rarely administered to a patient with a case as (self-)reportedly mild as Donald Trumps. In an interview with New York Magazine's Intelligencer, the co-author of a recent study testing dexamethasone elaborates:

That lack of evidence is concerning as Trump heads into a critical point in the course of his illness. COVID-19 is known for being a bit of a roller coaster, with intermittent fevers, mysterious symptoms, and rapid declines. Abraar Karan, a physician with experience treating patients with COVID-19, told Monique Brouillette at Scientific American that some people have turned corners and left the hospital, only to come back feeling much sicker, with even worse oxygen levels and possibly other harm to the bodys organs.

It is theoretically possible that the early steroid treatment may ward off a dangerous auto-inflammatory reaction. But beyond the inherent risks of immuno-supression, corticosteroids may also cause behavioral side effects in the President. Trump's cognitive and behavioral state has been a point of concern for years. Potent steroids such as dexamethasone are known to increase appetite, decrease restful sleep, and bring about heightened "maniacal" energy states.

As the nation enters the weekend, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is rolling out a 25th amendment commission, Trump is boasting a miraculous recovery with a Fox News doctor, and the rest of us continue to wait and learn how biology will run its course. For better or worse, the side effects our president experiences may prove to have historical consequences. To my knowledge, roid rage has never been a factor in nuclear geopolitics.

Read more here:
What will dexamethasone do to President Trump? - Massive Science

On the November ballot, Washington voters will decide if public schools should be required to teach comprehensive sexual health multiple times during a students K-12 education.

Supporters say the bill will give all Washington students equal access to sex ed, protect students from sexual abuse and harassment, and help them make healthier decisions.

Opponents say its so much more than that, arguing the bill doesnt provide enough local and parental control and teaches young students graphic information about sex. However, the lessons taught in kindergarten through third grade only require social-emotional learning, according to the bill. Nothing about sex is taught.

So what will really change if Referendum 90 passes this November? The Spokesman-Review looked at current sex ed materials throughout the Spokane area, as well as bill requirements and OSPI guidelines.

Heres what you need to know.

Background

The controversial sexual health education bill passed both chambers of the state Legislature in March with only Democratic votes. Gov. Jay Inslee signed it into law later that month.

Referendum 90 was put on the ballot after a grassroots effort gathered a record number of signatures to put the referendum on the ballot. More than 266,000 signatures more than twice the minimum required were filed with the Secretary of States office. The referendum will ask voters if they approve or reject the bill that requires age-appropriate sexual health education to be taught to students multiple times from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Voters will be asked to vote yes if they support the sex ed bill as passed, or no if they want to see it repealed.

What will it actually change?

If Referendum 90 passes and the law is affirmed, the biggest change will be that every school in Washington will now have to provide sexual health education.

With the new law, school districts still have the opportunity to decide their own curriculum, and parents still have the opportunity to opt their children out, according to the bill.

Current law mandates HIV/AIDS prevention education but allows school districts to decide if they want to provide sexual health education.

Most school districts already teach some form of sex ed, even if it is not considered comprehensive, as defined in the new law.

Currently, state law doesnt require public schools to teach sex ed. But if they do teach it the curriculum must include:

If Referendum 90 passes, the only addition to that list is: Affirmative consent and recognizing and responding safely and effectively when violence, or a risk of violence, is or may be present with strategies that include bystander training.

Affirmative consent means a conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity as a requirement before sexual activity, as defined in the bill.

In addition to consent, the new law will require sex ed to be taught in multiple grade bands: once in kindergarten through third grade, once in grades 4-5, twice in grades 6-8 and twice in grades 9-12 .

Students in kindergarten through Grade 3 must have social-emotional learning that is consistent with standards set by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, according to the bill. In OSPI guidelines, social-emotional learning teaches how to identify and express feelings, how to achieve goals and how to act responsibly when interacting with others, among other guidelines.

If school districts decide their own curriculum, they must ensure it meets all requirements as laid out in the law, and they must allow parental and community input.

We dont have a final say, said Laurie Dils, OSPI sexual health education program supervisor.

For some districts nothing will change based on the outcome of the November election, as their curriculum meets the proposed requirements. This means the district is already teaching social-emotional learning and consent in K-3. Other schools will have to rethink their curriculum phasing it in over the next three years.

Spokane Public Schools

Spokane Public Schools will be unaffected by the new law, if it passes, as their curriculum currently meets the new standard, according to Heather Bybee, the districts director of secondary curriculum.

Spokane students in kindergarten, first and second grades receive instruction in what the district calls personal safety. These early lessons focus on informing trusted adults of suspicious activity, both online and in the real world. One instructional animated video features a brightly colored robot named Clicky rapping a message to kids, encouraging them to say no to strangers who offer them gifts or ask to take them somewhere.

Students begin receiving instruction about gender identities and sexual orientation in fourth grade under a new set of materials adopted by the Spokane School Board of Directors in June. Instruction includes another animated video featuring various anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables comprising whats called a love salad, with definitions not only for gay and lesbian orientations but also pansexual and asexual people.

There are currently no requirements for teaching about gender identities and sexual orientation at any grade level, Dils said, and that will remain the case if Referendum 90 passes.

Students in fourth and fifth grades are also asked to examine stereotypes about genders, and how the media both social media and traditional entertainment like movies, TV and advertising enforce those beliefs. In fifth grade, students are introduced to the topic of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and the ways in which the virus is and isnt transmitted.

Sixth-graders learn about the differences between romantic and nonromantic relationships through scenarios.

Seventh-graders receive instruction on making positive health choices, including whether to have sex. The stages of pregnancy are first discussed. Instructors also review what health services are available to minors, including abortion services, with and without parental consent.

During a 15-day curriculum for eighth-graders, students are instructed about consent for sexual activity. Classroom discussion includes statistics on teenage access to pornography, and how the images and videos are distorted presentations of reality that perpetuate troubling gender stereotypes.

Abstinence is taught as the only method to eliminate the threat of sexual transmitted diseases, but eighth graders also receive instruction on what methods of contraception are available. During high school health courses (grades nine and up), students can choose whether to participate in a hands-on demonstration of properly using a condom, or they can opt out and order the written-out steps instead.

High school students watch a video called Big Status Update that dramatizes a teen pregnancy and its many demands through messages and status updates on the screen of a smartphone.

Central Valley

The Central Valley School District will likely only need to make minor changes to its curriculum if Referendum 90 passes, based on the 2018 OSPI survey and copies of the lessons obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

The biggest changes in Central Valley will likely be the frequency at which sex education is taught and the addition of consent and bystander training.

In kindergarten through third grade, Central Valley teaches a social-emotional learning program called Second Steps, according to communications director Marla Nunberg.

Similar to OSPIs guidelines, the lessons often focus on dealing with emotions and taking care of mental health, Nunberg said. This is something that has been important during the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.

Human-growth and development lessons start in fourth grade, when students learn about puberty. Boys and girls are separated for their lessons and are shown videos on the physical and emotional changes that occur during puberty. Students are also taught how to make healthy choices, such as exercising and eating well.

In middle school, students are taught specific ways sexually transmitted diseases and HIV are transmitted, as well as the stages of pregnancy and the ways to reduce the risk of pregnancy and STDs. Middle schoolers are also taught responsible behaviors and practices, and how they influence relationships.

In high school, students learn how to further protect themselves from STDs and HIV, and the importance of making educated decisions when having sex.

Mead

The Mead School District will likely only need to make minor changes to its curriculum, including the frequency at which sex ed is taught and the addition of consent and bystander training.

The district may also need to start teaching social-emotional learning in kindergarten through third grade, but Dils said most teachers already teach some form of that, even if its not a specific curriculum.

We would need to review the exact requirements and definitions in the new law, if passed, to ensure we are in alignment, wrote Todd Zeidler, district public information officer, in an email.

Mead currently provides sexual health education once per year in grades 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, Zeidler said.

In fifth grade, students are taught the basics of puberty as well as HIV/AIDS transmission. Lessons also focus on decision-making and self-esteem. Teachers encourage students to wait until they are older to have sexual intercourse.

In sixth grade, students begin learning about human reproduction. Seventh grade focuses on making responsible decisions and preventing STDs.

In eighth grade, students learn about the importance of healthy relationships and receive a list of local resources and what they offer, such as contraceptives or testing.

Ninth grade lessons focus on human sexuality and the reproductive system, the effects of healthy relationships, prevention resources and how to protect yourself from criminal sexual behavior.

Liberty

The Liberty School District may have to make a few changes to its curriculum, according to OSPI available data as well as documents obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

The school district currently teaches the KNOW curriculum, the states HIV/STD prevention curriculum, at least once in all grade bands. It also teaches a curriculum called Always Growing and Changing in later grade levels.

The use of the KNOW curriculum meets the requirements of the AIDS Omnibus Act, but it does not meet all of the requirements for the new law, Dils said.

Because it addresses only HIV/AIDS prevention, it is not a comprehensive sexual health curriculum, Dils wrote in an email.

Superintendent Brett Baum said the district is in the process of reviewing its materials and will be updating them if the new law is enacted.

Deer Park

The Deer Park School Districts curriculum does not meet the comprehensive sex ed requirements, Superintendent Travis Hanson said. It currently only teaches the states required HIV/AIDS prevention with students in Grades 5 through 12 using the KNOW curriculum.

The district was in the process of reviewing its current curriculum and adopting a more comprehensive one last year, Hanson said. However, once the Legislature began looking into a statewide mandate, Deer Parks process paused.

If Referendum 90 does not pass, Hanson said the district will revisit the adoption process.

Opponents

Multiple organizations, coalitions and committees formed to oppose the comprehensive sex ed bill, arguing that it allows for too much state control and includes graphic curriculum.

Mindie Wirth, chair of Reject Referendum 90 Campaign, led the movement to get the measure on the ballot.

This issue has drawn bipartisan support as many people across Washington State grow increasing frustrated with the ongoing overreach into our daily lives by Olympia, Wirth, of Bothell, wrote in an email. Many individuals have stated that they have never been active on a political issue until getting involved in Referendum 90.

Anniece Barker at A Voice for Washington Children said she was concerned about the bill when she realized most of her friends and family didnt even know it existed.

When Barker, who is from Spokane, started to tell people about it, she said they were stunned.

Her biggest concern is a lack of parental and district control in decisions. Parents can still opt their children out and districts still have the opportunity to choose their own curriculum, but for Barker, it is not enough.

For the state to come in and say they know better than parents about what is age appropriate, that in itself is inappropriate, Barker said.

Barker said she is not against sex ed.

Curriculum really isnt the point about it, she said. Its about giving parents the right to decide whats right for their child.

Kim Wendt, co-founder of Informed Parents of Washington, said the bill does not allow enough choices for school districts. She said the state allows districts to choose a curriculum, but that curriculum must be comprehensive, something she called a radical philosophy.

There is no real choice here, Wendt said.

For Wendt and Jennifer Heine-Withee, president of the Southwest Washington Parents Rights in Education, the biggest concern is the curriculum that is being taught. Although the bill states the K-3 requirement is only for social-emotional learning, Heine-Withee said she is worried including Grades K-3 in this bill will allow school districts to teach sexual health education to younger grades.

You put a door there, and theres going to be teachers going through it, she said.

Wirth said school districts should be focusing on other programs instead of sexual health education, such as improving literacy and graduation rates.

At a time when state and local budgets are facing massive deficits which threatened funding for basic programs, schools cannot afford to add an expensive new requirement, or design their own curriculum that meets those same state standards, Wirth wrote in an email.

Supporters of the bill say it allows for more parental and local control than before and gives students across the state equal access to sex ed.

A coalition called Approve 90 formed this summer in support of the referendum. It includes parents, teachers and larger organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the Washington State Public Health Association and the Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The coalition and its supporters argue that comprehensive sexual health education will make kids safer by making them less likely to take part in risky sexual behavior and by improving health equity across the state.

Erin Williams Heuter, of Lutheran Community Services Northwest in Spokane, said she believes comprehensive sex ed protects children from sexual abuse and harassment.

Survivors of sexual assault often experience shame and guilt, which leads to them struggling to talk about it, Williams Heuter said. Being able to speak about sex in general more comfortably will likely prevent sexual abuse.

We want to make sure all kids have a safe person to talk to, she said. It really makes everybody safer.

Mandy Manning, 2018 National Teacher of the Year and Spokane teacher, said in her experience, kids actually want sex ed taught in their schools.

She said teaching consent, which is the biggest change with the new bill, will make more students safer.

How great for teenagers to know that they are the ones who get to be in control, she said.

Courtney Normand of Planned Parenthood said there is still plenty of flexibility with the new law. Parents can opt out their children from the courses, and districts can decide their own curriculum.

Including K-3 in the bill has been controversial, but Normand said its important for kids to have social-emotional learning at an early age as it can lead to less abuse or harassment.

Dr. Matt Thompson, a pediatrician with the Kids Clinic in Spokane, said the bill is necessary to provide children with accurate information about their health and their safety.

This allows students to have accurate information and make better decisions, and to be more aware of consequences of their actions, he said.

Spokesman-Review reporter Kip Hill contributed to this report.

Laurel Demkovich's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspapers managing editor.

Original post:
What would comprehensive sex ed look like in Spokane-area public schools? Here's what might change if R-90 passes this November - The Spokesman-Review

Many tactics can help people with PCOS get pregnant, from losing weight if necessary to surgery to certain medications.

Image Credit: Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/DigitalVision/GettyImages

Polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS is one of the most common causes of infertility among people with ovaries, according to the Office of Women's Health (OWH).

In fact, PCOS is the most common hormone-related issue in women having difficulty conceiving, says David Diaz, MD, reproductive endocrinologist and fertility expert at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.

The condition affects between 6 and 12 percent of those with childbearing reproductive organs in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But it is possible to get pregnant with PCOS. Here's what you need to know about PCOS and fertility and what treatments are available.

Polycystic ovary syndrome is derived from the Greek words poly, which means "many" and kystis, meaning, "bladder, pouch," Dr. Diaz explains. Hence, the name implies that an organ in this case, the ovaries has "many cysts."

Due to an imbalance of hormones, the eggs in the ovaries of people with PCOS either don't develop normally or aren't released as they should be. As a result, small cysts develop on the ovaries. But having cysts on the ovaries doesn't necessarily mean that you have PCOS, Dr. Diaz says. PCOS is only diagnosed with the presence of ovary cysts along with other symptoms.

"In treating PCOS, it is best not to use a cookie-cutter approach since no two patients are alike."

For people with PCOS, it's common for doctors to find more than 15 to 20 sacs that are eggs in development on each ovary (compared to the normal six to seven typically found), Dr. Diaz says.

"This means there is no lack of eggs, but that they are simply stunted in their growth process," Dr. Diaz notes.

How PCOS Affects Fertility

The exact cause of PCOS is not known, but it's thought to be a combination of different factors, including genetics, that lead to insulin resistance the body's inability to use the hormone insulin properly and a change in hormone regulation, which will ultimately interfere with normal ovulation (the process of an egg being released from the ovaries).

Many people don't get diagnosed with PCOS until they are trying to get pregnant and are unable to conceive.

PCOS is different for everyone, Dr. Diaz says. For instance, some people will be more sensitive to hormone changes, which could make their symptoms more severe.

Although PCOS varies from one person to another, common symptoms, per the OWH, include:

What's difficult about PCOS symptoms is that they are often linked together as well, so the symptoms can become a vicious loop.

For example, Dr. Diaz explains that the menstrual cycle is regulated by the ovaries, which are in turn regulated by hormones. Any abnormality due to high insulin levels and insulin resistance disturbs the normal release of the hormones needed for ovulation, which then throws off the menstrual cycle.

High insulin levels also activate the formation of androgen hormones, which in turn, also stop normal ovulation from occurring. And finally, the high rates of obesity in PCOS patients results in excessive levels of androgens and estrogen, which will stop the hormones needed to regulate ovulation.

How Do You Know if You Have PCOS?

Diagnosing PCOS can be tricky, since it's different for everyone. There is no one single test that can show you have it. Instead, clinicians look for clues that can point to the root causes of your symptoms, Dr. Diaz says.

Doctors typically look for signs of PCOS using a combination of blood tests, physical examination and a pelvic ultrasound.

PCOS Treatment Options if You're Trying to Conceive

While there is no one cure for PCOS, treatment is possible, Dr. Diaz says.

"PCOS is a multi-factorial condition, meaning there are many different organ systems involved," he explains. "Familiarity with hormonal function and a clear understanding of the endocrine system are paramount in designing a treatment plan. In treating PCOS, it is best not to use a cookie-cutter approach since no two patients are alike."

Individuals with PCOS should work with their doctors to come up with a treatment plan that addresses their own specific needs. Dr. Diaz says. However, the following treatments are often used for people with PCOS looking to get pregnant.

Weight loss has positive effects on PCOS symptoms, from regulating periods to improving hair growth and acne. It can also help your chances of getting pregnant, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

In fact, weight loss is often the first treatment recommended for people with PCOS who have weight to lose. About 40 to 60 percent of people with PCOS are considered to have overweight or obesity, per a December 2019 article in Clinical Medicine Insights Reproductive Health.

Compared to taking birth-control pills, lifestyle modifications aimed at weight-loss improved ovulation rates for people with PCOS, per a November 2015 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

However, because of the complexities of losing weight with PCOS (the hormone imbalances typical of condition may make losing weight difficult, for instance), it's also recommended that all factors be considered for infertility. If the person who wishes to get pregnant is on the older side, for example, it may be best to focus on reproductive assistance techniques first instead of weight loss.

Weight loss can be achieved through a variety of lifestyle modifications with PCOS, but incorporating exercise into your daily routine is associated with improved fertility, per the Clinical Medicine Insights Reproductive Health article.

Aim to get 150 minutes every week of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity activity, combined with two non-consecutive days of muscle strengthening activities, per guidelines published in July 2018 in Fertility and Sterility.

If you want to lose weight, try to get 250 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise or 150 minutes of vigorous exercise, along with strength training, per the guidelines.

Because weight loss can be difficult for people with PCOS, some individuals may be a candidate for weight-loss surgery. Bariatric surgery can help people with PCOS both manage their symptoms and improve their fertility and chances of getting pregnant, per an October 2016 overview in the European Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.

However, there are risks involved with surgery, including a possible chance of babies who are small for their gestational age, so you should consider the procedure carefully with your doctor.

Medications for PCOS aim to regulate your hormones to increase your chances of ovulating on your own or help your body maintain your blood sugar levels. They can help both manage symptoms and increase your chances of conceiving.

For instance, insulin-sensitizing drugs like Metformin can help your body use insulin more effectively and help restore ovulation, per the UK's National Health Service.

Doctors may use clomiphene to induce ovulation, letrozole, which can help balance estrogen levels (which can also help your body naturally ovulate) and if necessary, thyroxine may be prescribed for hormone regulation, Dr. Diaz says.

Some people may also have hyperplasia, which is excessive tissue in the uterus that can often be treated with progestin. This hormone can be given in a variety of ways, including oral medications and creams, according to ACOG.

Hyperplasia can occur with PCOS because as your body prepares to ovulate, the lining of the uterus thickens in preparation for a possible pregnancy. If pregnancy isn't achieved, the lining is shed. If ovulation does not occur or if the hormones necessary to complete the process are not at adequate levels, the lining is not shed. Overtime, this process may cause the uterine lining to build up.

There is a potential link between stress and PCOS, so managing your stress levels may be helpful in minimizing symptoms and improving fertility, per a January 2018 study in the Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences.

Reproductive Assistance Technologies

Dr. Diaz points out that if there are other barriers to getting pregnant, such as a partner's low sperm count, blocked fallopian tubes or recurrent miscarriages, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) may also be an option.

If you are having trouble getting pregnant, visit your doctor or a fertility specialist who will screen you for possible reasons, including PCOS. Getting a diagnosis enables you and your doctor to work on a treatment plan that can help you conceive.

See the original post:
What You Should Know About PCOS and Fertility - LIVESTRONG.COM

On September 14, a host ofcivil rights groups filed acomplaintwith the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General containing allegations by whistleblower Dawn Wooten that immigrant women were forced to have hysterectomies at the ICE detention center in Ocilla, Georgia, where she worked as a nurse. Wooten said that all of the operations were performed by a gynecologist who she referred to as the uterus collector in the complaint. In response, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and more than 160 Democrats demanded that the Department of Human Services launch aninvestigation.

In the letter demanding the investigation, the politicians wrote: These reports hearken back to a dark time in U.S. history in which 32 states passed eugenic-sterilization laws, resulting in the sterilization of between 60 and 70 thousand people in the early 1900s.

The letter is misleading in that it implies that such practices ended during the early 20th century. In truth, the United States has a longand continuingpractice of forcibly sterilizing women of color. For instance, thousands of Native American women had forced hysterectomies in the 1960s and 70s through a federal program with the Indian Health Service. And in North Carolina, more than 7,600 people were sterilized in a state-sanctioned program that did not end until1977.

The organization California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ) fights for survivors of forced sterilization while also leading efforts to end this government-mandated practice. Here, Executive Director Laura Jimnez explains the ways that the scientific theory of eugenics, which advocates selective reproduction in order to improve the human species, advances policies that prey on Black and Brown bodies. She also emphasizes that there is a need for a mass national reeducation in order to protect reproductivehealth.

Colorlines: While horrible, what is happening at the ICE detention centers is not surprising given this countrys history of forced sterilizations of women of color. Why do you think so many, including media outlets, have reacted withshock?

Laura Jimnez: So much of it has to do with this part of our history not being taught in schools. We talk about racism in official wayslike racism and slaverybut not the other ways that systemic racism has affected multiple communities in the United States over the past 500 years. Thats why people dont really understand medical racism and these occurrences come as a completeshock.

CL: Do you think this incident, which has been widely reported, could finally let people know that thishappens?

LJ: I compare it to the issue weve been struggling with around state violence against Black people. How many times have we seen a Black person [attacked] by an agent of the state? [Rodney King in 1991 was the first time to see it on camera]and in 29 years, its happened over and over again.So I dont think this will be the one. We are talking about Black and brown bodies having medical violence used against them. These are bodies that dont matter to the media and government. Also, until we start learning about eugenics in school, people will continue to notknow.

CL: Discuss how eugenics connects to what happened in the ICE detentioncenter.

LJ: The practice of eugenic science was not limited to the early 1900s like we read about. Eugenics is integrated insidiously into different systems. There are all of these theories as to what kinds of people are fit to reproduce. And Black and Brown people are not, according to the mentality of the dominant culture, deemed fit to reproduce. So there are all of these ways to stop population growth that is a part of eugenics. Forced sterilization is one of the more egregious ways we see thishappen.

These were immigrant bodies that this happened to in this particular case. And right now there is a president who talks about people from outside of the country in particular ways that [suggest] they are not fit to reproduce. Black, Brown, disabled, trans, queer, poor bodies [are the bodies being targeted] not only in medicine but in immigration policy and how people are sentenced in certain crimes. Everything needs to be seen in this context ofeugenics.

Its also important to note in this case that the whistleblower is a Black woman living in rural Georgia. So we are not just talking about Black and Brown women who had violence committed against them, but this Black woman who is a potentialtarget.

CL: What work does California Latinas for Reproductive Justice do around forced sterilizations? And how did the organization become involved in thisarea?

LJ: A lot of our work has been education around this issue. About five years ago, we worked with the producer and director of the film No Ms Bbes [about Mexican people who underwent forced hysterectomies in a Los Angeles hospital in the late 1960s and 70s]. When the documentary was released, we went to screenings to talk about reproductive justice and this act of forced sterilization. Then three years ago, we started working with a coalition of folks to co-sponsor a bill, the Eugenics Sterilization Compensation Program, to compensate survivors ofeugenics.

We modeled our legislation after Virginia and North Carolina. Both have laws for compensation for survivors. The California legislature has not passed our bill yet, but we are very passionate about this issue. What does it mean to take away someones basic right to be a parent? The country is not going to take this kind of crime seriously until someone is forced to takeaccountability.

CL: Beyond legislative change, what can people do to help stopthis?

LJ: We need to become aware of what is happening. Share resources where you can learn what eugenics science looked like in the past and looks like now. Read the books Killing the Black Body (Dorothy Roberts) and Fertile Matters (Elena Gutirrez). A number of organizations are working on this, look at what they do. For this particular case, Project South has been leading. They filed the complaint and uncovered the information. The main thing is to learn about it if you dont know and teach otherpeople.

Ayana Byrd is a Philadelphia-based writer who covers reproductive justice and the intersection of racism and beautyculture.

Link:
Reproductive Justice Activist Laura Jimnez on America's History of Forced Sterilizations - Colorlines

Its uncontroversial among biologists that many species have two, distinct biological sexes. Theyre distinguished by the way that they package their DNA into gametes, the sex cells that merge to make a new organism. Males produce small gametes, and females produce large gametes. Male and female gametes are very different in structure, as well as in size. This is familiar from human sperm and eggs, and the same is true in worms, flies, fish, molluscs, trees, grasses and so forth.

Different species, though, manifest the two sexes in different ways. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, a common laboratory organism, has two forms not male and female, but male and hermaphrodite. Hermaphroditic individuals are male as larvae, when they make and store sperm. Later they become female, losing the ability to make sperm but acquiring the ability to make eggs, which they can fertilise with the stored sperm.

This biological definition of sex has been swept up into debates over the status of transgender people in society. Some philosophers and gender theorists define a woman as a biologically female human being. Others strongly disagree. Im addressing those who reject the very idea that there are two biological sexes. Instead, they argue, there are many biological sexes, or a continuum of biological sexes.

Theres no need to reject how biologists define the sexes to defend the view that trans women are women. When we look across the diversity of life, sex takes stranger forms than anyone has dreamt of for humans. The biological definition of sex takes all this in its stride. It does so despite the fact that there are no more than two biological sexes in any species youre likely to have heard of. To many people, that might seem to have conservative implications, or to fly in the face of the diversity we see in actual human beings. I will make clear why it does not.

I call this the biological definition of sex because its the one biologists use when studying sex that is, the process by which organisms use their DNA to make offspring. Many philosophers and gender theorists will protest at making the creation of offspring foundational to how we define sex or distinguish different sexes. Theyre surely right that sex as a social phenomenon is much richer than that. But the use of DNA to make offspring is a central topic in biology, and understanding and explaining the diversity of reproductive systems is an important scientific task. Gender theorists are understandably worried about how the biology of sex will be applied or misapplied to humans. What they might not appreciate is why biologists use this definition when classifying the mind-stretching forms of reproduction observed in limpets, worms, fish, lizards, voles and other organisms and they might not understand the difficulties that arise if you try to use another definition.

Many people assume that if there are only two sexes, that means everyone must fall into one of them. But the biological definition of sex doesnt imply that at all. As well as simultaneous hermaphrodites, which are both male and female, sequential hermaphrodites are first one sex and then the other. There are also individual organisms that are neither male nor female. The biological definition of sex is not based on an essential quality that every organism is born with, but on two distinct strategies that organisms use to propagate their genes. They are not born with the ability to use these strategies they acquire that ability as they grow up, a process which produces endless variation between individuals. The biology of sex tries to classify and explain these many systems for combining DNA to make new organisms. That can be done without assigning every individual to a sex, and we will see that trying to do so quickly leads to asking questions that have no biological meaning.

While the biological definition of sex is needed to understand the diversity of life, that doesnt mean its the best definition for ensuring fair competition in sport or adequate access to healthcare. We cant expect sporting codes, medical systems and family law to adopt a definition simply because biologists find it useful. Conversely, most institutional definitions of sex break down immediately in biology, because other species contradict human assumptions about sex. The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses a chromosomal definition of sex XY for males and XX for females. Many reptiles, such as the terrifying saltwater crocodiles of northern Australia, dont have any sex chromosomes, but a male saltie has no trouble telling if the crocodile that has entered his territory is a male. Even among mammals, at least five species are known that dont have male sex chromosomes, but they develop into males just fine. Gender theorists have extensively criticised the chromosomal definition of human sexes. But however well or badly that definition works for humans, its an abject failure when you look at sex across the diversity of life.

The same is true of phenotypic sex, the familiar idea that sex is defined by the typical physical characteristics (phenotypes) of males and females. Obviously, this approach will produce completely different definitions of male and female for humans, for worms, for trees and so forth. Incubating eggs inside your body, for example, is a female characteristic in humans but a male one in seahorses. That doesnt mean that human institutions cant use the phenotypic definition. But it isnt useful when studying the common patterns in the genetics, evolution and so forth of female humans, female seahorses and female worms.

Understanding the complex ways in which chromosomes and phenotypes relate to biological sex will make clear why the biological definition of sex shouldnt be the battleground for philosophers and gender theorists who disagree about the definition of woman. There might be very good reasons not to define woman in this way, but not because the definition itself is poor biology.

Why did sexes evolve in the first place? Biologists define sex as a step towards answering this question. Not all species have biological sexes, and biology seeks to explain why some do and others dont. The fact that no species has evolved more than two biological sexes is also a puzzle. It would be quite straightforward to engineer a species that has three, but none has evolved naturally.

Many species reproduce asexually, with each individual using its own DNA to create offspring. But other species, including our own, combine DNA from more than one organism. Thats sexual reproduction, where two sex cells gametes merge to make a new individual. In some species, these two gametes are identical; many species of yeast, for example, make new individuals from two, identical gametes. They reproduce sexually, but they have no sexes, or, if you prefer, they have only one sex. But in species that make two different kinds of gamete and where one gamete of each kind is needed to make a new organism there are two sexes. Each sex makes one of the two kinds of gamete.

In complex multicellular organisms, such as plants and animals, these two kinds of gamete are very different. One is a large, complex cell, what wed typically call an egg. Its similar to the eggs produced by asexual species, which can develop into a new organism all on their own. Many species of insect and some lizards, snakes and sharks can reproduce using just an egg cell. The other kind of gamete is a much smaller cell that contains very little beyond some DNA and some machinery to get that DNA to the larger gamete. We are familiar with these two kinds of gametes from human eggs and sperm.

Theres no obvious reason why complex multicellular organisms need to have two kinds of gamete, or why these two kinds are so different in size and structure. Its perfectly possible to make three or more different kinds of gamete, or gametes that vary continuously, just as people vary continuously in height. One question that biologists seek to answer, then, is why those forms of sexual reproduction arent observed in complex organisms such as animals and plants.

Earthworms are hermaphrodites: one part of the worm produces sperm and another part produces eggs

When a species produces two different kinds of gamete, biologists call this anisogamy, meaning not-equal-gametes. Some anisogamic species have separate sexes, like humans do, where each individual can produce only one kind of gamete. Other anisogamic species are hermaphrodites, where each individual produces both kinds of gamete. Because they produce two kinds of gametes, hermaphroditic species still have two biological sexes they simply combine them in one organism. When a biologist tells you that earthworms are hermaphrodites, they mean that one part of the worm produces sperm and another part produces eggs.

Some single-celled and very simple multicellular organisms have evolved something called mating types. These are gametes that are identical in size and structure, but in which the genome of each gamete contains genetic markers that affect which other gametes it can combine with. Typically, gametes with the same genetic marker cant recombine with one another. Some species have many hundreds of these mating types, and newspapers often report research into this phenomenon under headlines such as: Scientists discover species with hundreds of sexes! But, formally, biologists refer to these as mating types, and reserve the term sexes for gametes that are different in size and structure.

Why distinguish between these two phenomena? One reason is that the evolution of anisogamy gametes that differ in size and structure explains the later evolution of sex chromosomes, sex-associated physical characteristics and much more. But the existence of mating types doesnt have these dramatic knock-on evolutionary effects. Another reason to keep the distinction is that anisogamy and mating types are thought to have evolved via different evolutionary processes. One theory is that anisogamy appeared when mating-type genome markers somehow became linked to genes that controlled the size of the gamete, or mutated in some way that affected gamete size. These differences in gamete size would then kickstart the evolution of sexes.

The evolution of sex seems to be strongly associated with multicellularity, so the obvious place to look for a shift from mating types to sexes is in organisms that sit at the multicellular boundary such as algae, which sometimes exist as single-celled organisms, and sometimes as colonies of cells. And indeed, there are species of algae where gametes are just a little bit anisogamous, blurring the distinction between mating types and sexes. Theres much we dont know about how sex evolved, and how it might have evolved differently across species. But the point is that sexes and mating types are very different phenomena, with different causes and consequences.

The fact that sex evolved in some species but not others tells us something important about how biologists think about sex. Many cultures take the difference between male and female to be something fundamental, and label other natural phenomena such as the Sun and the Moon as male or female. But for biologists, the separation between male and female is no more fundamental or universal than photosynthesis or being warm-blooded. Some species have evolved these things, and some havent. They exist when they do only because of the local advantages they afforded in evolutionary competition.

So why did some species evolve two, distinct sexes? To answer this question, we need to forget about creatures with complex sex organs and mating behaviours. These evolved later. Instead, think of an organism that releases its gametes into the sea, such as coral, or into the air, such as fungal spores. Next, consider that there are two goals that any gamete must achieve if its to reproduce sexually. The first is finding and recombining with another gamete. The second is producing a new individual with enough resources to survive. One widely accepted idea, then, is that the evolution of sexes reflects a trade-off between these goals. Because no organism has infinite resources, organisms can either produce many small gametes, making it more likely that some of them will find a partner, or produce fewer but larger gametes, making it more likely that the resulting individual will have what it needs to survive and thrive.

Since the 1970s, this idea has been used to model how anisogamic species might have evolved from species with only one kind of gamete. As mutations introduce differences in gamete size, two winning strategies emerge. One is to produce a large number of small gametes too small to create viable offspring unless they recombine with a larger, well-provisioned gamete. The other winning strategy is to produce a few, large, well-resourced gametes that can create viable offspring, no matter how small the recombinant they end up merging with. Intermediate approaches, such as producing a moderate number of moderately well-provisioned gametes, dont do well. Organisms that try to follow the middle way end up with gametes less likely to find a partner than smaller gametes, and more likely to have insufficient resources than larger gametes. When the two successful complementary strategies have evolved, fresh evolutionary pressures make the gametes even more distinct from one another. For example, it can be advantageous for the small gametes to become more mobile, or for the large, immobile gametes to send signals to the mobile ones.

Once anisogamy has evolved, it shapes many other aspects of reproductive biology. Most species of limpet shellfish that you see on rocks at the beach are sequential hermaphrodites. When young and small they are male, and when mature and large they become female. This is believed to be because small limpets dont have sufficient resources to produce large female gametes, but theyre capable of producing the smaller male ones. In some other species, successful males can arrest their growth and remain small (and male) for their entire life.

Chromosomes arent male or female because these bits of DNA define biological sex. Its the other way around

Sequential hermaphroditism occurs in the opposite direction too. Australian snorkellers love to spot the large blue males of the eastern blue groper, but its rare to see more than one. Most groper are smaller, brown females. They are all born female and become sexually mature after a few years, when 20 or 30 cm in length. At around 50 cm, they change sex and acquire other male characteristics, such as being blue. Unlike the limpet, the main problem facing a male groper is controlling a territory on the reef, so becoming male when youre small is a losing strategy.

Biology aims to understand the extraordinary diversity of ways in which organisms reproduce themselves, as well as to identify common patterns, and to explain why they occur. In general, organisms become sexually mature when they reach an optimal size for reproduction. This optimal size is often different for the two sexes, because the two sexes represent divergent strategies for reproduction. The limpet and the groper are two of many examples. In constructing these explanations, biological sex is defined as the production of one type of viable anisogamous gamete. If we defined sex in some other way, it would be hard to see the common patterns across the diversity of life, and hard to explain them.

So-called sex chromosomes, such as the XX and XY chromosome pairs seen in humans, are often brandished as something thats fundamental to sex. Its partly the inadequacy of this definition that drives scepticism about the existence of two, discrete biological sexes. Molecular genetics is likely to require a shift from binary sex to quantum sex, with a dozen or more genes each conferring a small percentage likelihood of male or female sex that is still further dependent on micro- and macroenvironmental interactions, writes the gender scholar Vernon Rosario.

But any biologist already knows that theres more to sex determination than chromosomes and genes, and that male and female sex chromosomes are neither necessary nor sufficient to make organisms male and female. Several species of mammal, all rodents of one kind or another, have completely lost the male Y chromosome, but these rats and voles all produce perfectly normal, fertile males. Other groups of species, such as crocodiles and many fish, have neither sex chromosomes nor any other genes that determine sex. Yet they still have two, discrete biological sexes. The Australian saltwater crocodile, whom we met before, lays eggs that are very likely to develop into gigantic, highly territorial males if incubated between 30 and 33 degrees Celsius. At other temperatures, genetically identical eggs develop into much smaller females.

The reality is that chromosomes arent called male or female because these bits of DNA define biological sex. Its the other way around in some species that reproduce using two discrete sexes, those sexes are associated with different bits of DNA. But in other species this association is either absent or unreliable. Medical institutions use a chromosomal definition of sex because they judge, rightly or wrongly, that this is a reliable way of categorising humans. But humans really arent the best place to start when trying to understand sex across the diversity of life.

So much for genes. But perhaps sex could be defined by the physical characteristics that organisms develop, which then add up to constitute an organisms sex? An organism with more female than male characteristics would be more female than male and vice-versa. Thats a reasonable way to think about sex, and this idea of phenotypic sex is widely used. But if we apply the biological definition of sex, some of the individuals who are in the middle as far as sex-associated characteristics go are bona fide members of one biological sex. Others are not clearly members of either biological sex.

Nothing in the biological definition of sex requires that every organism be a member of one sex or the other. That might seem surprising, but it follows naturally from defining each sex by the ability to do one thing: to make eggs or to make sperm. Some organisms can do both, while some cant do either. Consider the sex-switching species described above: what sex are they when theyre halfway through switching? What sex are they if something goes wrong, perhaps due to hormone-mimicking chemicals from decaying plastic waste? Once we see the development of sex as a process and one that can be disrupted it is inevitable that there will be many individual organisms that arent clearly of either sex. But that doesnt mean that there are many biological sexes, or that biological sex is a continuum. There remain just two, distinct ways in which organisms contribute genetic material to their offspring.

Whats more, the physical characteristics of an organism can be labelled as male or female only if there is already a definition of sex. Whats so male about a groper being blue as opposed to brown? Many male organisms are brown. Whats so female about incubating eggs in a womb? After all, in many pipefish and seahorse species the male incubates the eggs in his brood pouch. What makes this part of the hermaphroditic earthworm male and that part female? Gender studies scholars have noticed this logical discrepancy, and some have gone on to argue that the sexes must therefore be defined in terms of gender. But from a biological perspective, what makes an observable physical characteristic male or female is not its association with gender, but its association with something more tangible: the production of one or other of the two kinds of gamete.

This explains why the existence of individuals with combinations of male and female characteristics doesnt show that biological sex is a continuum. These organisms have a combination of characteristics associated with one biological sex and characteristics associated with the other biological sex. They do not have some part of the ability to make small gametes combined with some part of the ability to make large gametes. Their phenotypic sex might be intermediate, but their biological sex is not. Being fully biologically male and fully biologically female hermaphroditic can be an effective evolutionary strategy, and we have encountered several hermaphroditic species already. But making both kinds of gametes incompletely would be an evolutionary dead-end.

Like phenotypic characteristics, sex chromosomes can be more or less reliably associated with biological sex. The eastern three-lined skink, an Australian lizard, has sex chromosomes, and under some circumstances XY skinks become male and XX skinks become female, just as in humans. But in cold nests, every skink becomes male, whatever their chromosomes. By becomes male, biologists mean that they grow up to produce small gametes sperm.

No animal is conceived with the ability to make sperm or eggs (or both). This ability has to grow

This effect of temperature on sex is not surprising, as many reptile species produce genetically identical offspring whose sex is determined by incubation temperature. Whats more surprising is that varying the size of the egg yolk in this species of skink can produce both sexes with the wrong sex chromosomes: XX males and XY females. The skink seems to have three mechanisms for determining sex chromosomes, temperature and hormones in the yolk. This is not a mere quirk of nature. The skink is one of many species that actively control the sex of their offspring, responding to environmental cues that predict whether male or female offspring have better chances of surviving and reproducing.

If all species were like the skink, we probably wouldnt label sex chromosomes as male or female. After all, we dont think of extreme nest temperatures as female and intermediate temperatures as male, merely because they produce male and female crocodiles or male and female geckos. We think of sex chromosomes as male or female because we focus on species where they are reliably associated with the production of male or female gametes.

Sex chromosomes play much the same role in sex determination as nest temperatures and hormones. Theyre simply mechanisms that organisms use to turn genes on and off in offspring so that they develop a biological sex. No animal is conceived with the ability to make sperm or eggs (or both). This ability has to grow, through a cascade of interactions between genes and environments. In some species, once an individual acquires a sex, it remains that sex for the rest of its life. In others, individuals can switch sex one or more times. But in every case, the underlying mechanisms are designed to grow organisms that make either male or female gametes (or both). The other changes the body undergoes as it becomes male, female or hermaphroditic are designed to fit the reproductive strategies that this species has evolved.

These mechanisms by which organisms develop or switch biological sex are complex, and many factors can interfere with them. So they produce a lot of phenotypic diversity. Sometimes, organisms grow up able to make fertile gametes, but otherwise atypical for their biological sex. Sometimes, they grow up unable to make fertile gametes of either kind. This is usually an accident, but sometimes by design. In bees, eggs that arent fertilised develop into males, so male bees have half as many chromosomes as female bees. Meanwhile, all fertilised eggs start to develop into females, but most of them never complete their sexual development. The queen sends chemical signals that block the development of the worker bees ovaries at an early stage. So worker bees are female in the extended sense that they would develop into fertile females if they werent actively prevented from doing so. Occasionally, worker bees manage to evade these controls and lay their own eggs. They are not popular with beekeepers, who select against these mutant strains.

The diversity of outcomes in individual sexual development doesnt mean that there are many biological sexes or that biological sex is a continuum. Whatever the merits of those views for chromosomal sex or phenotypic sex, they are not true of biological sex. A good way to grasp this is to imagine a species that really does have three biological sexes. Biotechnologists have proposed curing mitochondrial diseases by removing the nucleus from an egg with healthy mitochondrial DNA, and inserting a new nucleus containing the nuclear DNA from an unhealthy egg and the nuclear DNA from a sperm. The resulting child would have three genetic parents.

Now imagine if there was a whole species like this, where three different kinds of gametes combined to make a new individual a sperm, an egg and a third, mitochondrial gamete. This species would have three biological sexes. Something like this has actually been observed in slime moulds, an amoeba that can, but need not, get its mitochondria from a third parent. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut imagined an even more complex system in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969): There were five sexes on Tralfamadore, each of them performing a step necessary in the creation of a new individual. But the first question a biologist would ask is: why havent these organisms been replaced by mutants that dispense with some of the sexes? Having even two sexes imposes many extra costs the simplest is just finding a mate and these costs increase as the number of sexes required for mating rises. Mutants with fewer sexes would leave more offspring and would rapidly replace the existing Tralfamadorians. Something like this likely explains why two-sex systems predominate on Earth.

We can also imagine a species where biological sex really does form a continuum. Recall that some algae have slightly anisogamous gametes, much closer together than sperm and eggs. We can imagine a more complex organism using this system, with some slightly smaller gametes and some slightly larger ones. Successful reproduction might require two gametes that, when added together, are big enough but not too big. But the sexually reproducing plants and animals that actually exist all have just two, very different kinds of gamete male and female. Theyre not merely different in size, theyre fundamentally different in structure. This is the result of competition between organisms to leave the greatest number of genetic descendants. In complex multicellular organisms such as plants and animals, we know of only three successful reproductive strategies: two biological sexes in different individuals, two biological sexes combined in hermaphroditic individuals, and asexual reproduction. Some species use one of these strategies, some use more than one.

Human beings have come up with many ways to classify the diversity of individual outcomes from human sexual development. People who want to apply the biological definition of sex to humans should recognise that its ill-suited to do what many human institutions want, which is to sort every individual into one category or another. What sex are worker bees? They are sterile workers whose genome was designed by natural selection to terminate ovary development on receipt of a signal from the queen bee. They share much of the biology of fertile female bees but if someone wants to know Are worker bees really female?, theyre asking a question that biology simply cant answer.

Nor is being a sterile worker a third biological sex alongside male and female. This is easier to see in ants, where there is more than one sterile caste. Workers, soldiers, queens and male flying ants each have specialised bodies and behaviour, but there are not four biological sexes of ant. Workers and soldiers are both female in an extended sense, but not in the full-blown sense that queen ants are female. There is a human imperative to give everything a sex, as mentioned above, but biology doesnt share it.

The biological definition of sex wasnt designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or settle healthcare disputes

Juvenile organisms and postmenopausal human females also cant produce either kind of gamete. Juveniles are assigned to the sex they have started to grow into. But once again, this is more complicated than it seems when we focus only on humans. In almost all mammals, sexual differentiation is initiated by a region of the Y chromosome, so a mammalian egg can become either male or female. In birds, its the other way around the egg carries the sex-determining W chromosome, so sperm can become either male or female. After fertilisation, therefore, we can say that an individual mammal or bird has a sex in the sense that it has started to grow the ability to produce either male or female gametes. With a crocodile or a turtle, though, wed have to wait until nest temperature had its sex-determining effect. But that doesnt mean that we need to create a third biological sex for crocodile eggs!

More importantly, nothing guarantees that any of these organisms, including those with sex chromosomes, will continue to grow to the point where they can actually produce male or female gametes. Any number of things can interfere. From a biological point of view, there is nothing mysterious about the fact that organisms have to grow into a biological sex, that it takes them a while to get there, and that some individuals develop in unusual or idiosyncratic ways. This is a problem only if a definition of sex must sort every individual organism into one sex or another. Biology doesnt need to do that.

In human populations, there are plenty of individuals whose sex is hard to determine. Biologists arent blind to this. The definition of biological sex is designed to classify the human reproductive system and all the others in a way that helps us to understand and explain the diversity of life. Its not designed to exhaustively classify every human being, or every living thing. Trying to do so quickly leads to questions that have no biological meaning.

Human societies cant delegate to biology the job of defining sex as a social institution. The biological definition of sex wasnt designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. Theorists who want to use the biological definition of sex in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare. The fact that its needed in biology isnt good enough. On the other hand, whatever its shortcomings as an institutional definition, the concept of biological sex remains essential to understand the diversity of life. It shouldnt be discarded or distorted because of arguments about its use in law, sport or medicine. That would be a tragic mistake.

The authors research is supported by the Australian Research Council and the John Templeton Foundation. He would also like to thank Nicole Vincent, Jussi Lehtonen, Stefan Gawronski and Joshua Christie for their feedback on earlier drafts.

View post:
Sex is real - aeon.co

Theory September 22, 2020 Raju Das

Given the enormous problems that humanity is facing, it is reasonable to expect to see a future society that is radically different from, and superior to, the current one, that is a society which is genuinely democratic in the economic and non-economic spheres of life. And to produce a better society, we need better ideas, even if ideas are surely not enough. Furthermore, to learn good ideas, it is important to ask good questions. In this context, one might consider students in colleges and universities more specifically. Their active participation in the learning process is crucial to their intellectual success. Such participation can come in many forms, one of which is asking the educators probing questions. So for both intellectual and practical reasons, it is important that students ask good questions.

The question is: what sorts of questions should students ask their educators? A few of these questions are presented below.

Where exactly do you stand on the question of private property in the means of production (e.g. land, mines, factories, labs, knowledge)?

Do you think that the means of production should be collectively controlled by men and women of different races and nationalities who perform the manual and/or mental labour to produce the things/services that society needs for its reproduction?

What is the main form of social division in the current society? Is that division based on property or something else? What intellectual rationale do you provide for your view, and what political conclusions do you draw from them?

Do you think that the means of production are to be used to meet human needs rather than to produce profit?

Do you think that the means of production are to be used, and society should be run, in ways that are ecologically sustainable and that counter the tendencies toward geographically uneven development within and across countries, as well as those tendencies toward social-cultural oppression, curtailment of democratic rights, imperialism/neo-colonialism, war, and fascism?

It is admirable that professors talk about specially oppressed groups such as women (even if they are often middle class type women) and racialized minorities (often from middle class background). But when it comes to class relations (broadly, the relations of exploitation of the property-less by the propertied), why is there almost always a quasi-silence, or evasion?

Why is it that if some smart student raises the dirty c word (class), he/she is accused of classism, and many other bad things (too rigid, economistic, etc.)?

Is it not true that the majority of the worlds men and women are those who have little/no property and who therefore must work for a wage and/or as petty producers?

Are the worlds major problems not dominantly rooted in the economic and political relation between those who control property and those (the majority) who do not?

While in nearly every academic social science and humanities course there are loads of readings and discussions on this and that identity, this or that problem of this or that part of society, including the environment and its animals/birds, and its many inanimate objects, why is it that the problem behind the problems the problem of class and capitalism-as-a-form-of-class receives the least amount of emphasis? Why are topics of courses so narrowly construed? Must the courses in social sciences and humanities not be about the totality of society to a significant extent?

How do you see societys institutions?

Can these institutions help us produce a new society, which is beyond the rule of money and capital? And if not, why not, and what is to be done about this?

Is the state fundamentally neutral in relation to the basic classes, i.e. in relation to those who control productive resources and those who do not? Is its fundamental role not to preserve the existing property relations by the use of force and/or the threat of force?

A university should be a place for all sorts of perspectives. Professors can be from the right or center, etc. It is important to respect academic freedom. But do students not have the right to know where their professors stand, intellectually? They do. Students might therefore ask many questions to their educators:

Do you believe that society is a harmonious place, that what has been happening traditionally should be allowed to continue, that people should look after themselves, that one is free to die because of the lack of means of subsistence, and that everything should be left to the hidden hand of the market (the ideas of the right)?

Do you believe that things should be more or less left to the market but when market failures occur, governments should intervene, and that governments should also, to some extent, look after the poor and the marginalized (the liberal ideas)?

If governments should intervene, what is the outer limit of such intervention? Can you imagine political regulation of capitalism (by the state and workers unions) beyond social democracy, or is social democracy (combination of social democracy and individual-level action) the outer limit of your politics?

More specifically: what is your preferred form of social arrangement?

Do you imagine a society that is a slightly better capitalism (i.e. a capitalism, where there is slightly more economic and geographical equality, and where there is much less oppression of women and racialized and other minorities, and where there is much less ecological damage)?

Or do you imagine a society that is fundamentally different from the existing one, a future society that is beyond the rule of capital, where there is economic and political democracy, and where productive resources are controlled by common people? And what intellectual rationale can you provide for your preference?

And if society has to change in fundamental ways, which social group is the most important agent in such a project?

Academic honesty demands that professors clearly state their stance on these questions, so one can relate their stance to all the things that they say in the classroom.

What sorts of philosophical views do you hold?

Do you think that there are things in the world (e.g. stock market, built environment, forests, factories, etc.) that are independent of how we think about them; that things are more or less not social-mental constructions?

What do you make of the idea that men and women must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before they can engage in politics, science, art, religion, watch movies on Netflix, and give lectures, and that therefore material conditions in life the totality of such things including our interaction with nature, social production of things we need and the unequal relations within which such production happens are the primary explanation of things happening in our lives, even while material conditions are affected by other aspects of society?

Why do you often assume that social processes happen on the head of a pin? Why indeed is university instruction often so geographically parochial? Why is there not enough critical geographical imagination?

With respect to the latter point: why is it that in so many college and university courses, social processes in certain regions of the world (for example, Western Europe and North America) are often no matter how implicitly taken as the norm, while there is little conscious attempt to take a multi-scalar internationalist approach, the idea that social processes happen at local, regional, national and international scales, with the international scale world market having a causal primacy; that what happens in Western societies is deeply connected to what happens in the global periphery (where, by the way, most of the worlds people live), and vice versa, and that there is geographical unevenness in nearly everything that human beings experience as a product of the interaction between universal (a-spatial) mechanisms and place-specific mechanisms?

Philosophically speaking, ones social position does have an impact on ones ideas: social being sets limits on ones consciousness (including ones conception of ones self and others). Given that often professors are middle class men and women from cities, it is important to ask: to what extent is their instruction shaped by this fact, that is by (urban) middle class concerns? To what extent do academic courses on society really deal with the lives of common men and women from rural and urban areas?

Academia is full of critical this and critical that (e.g. critical sociology, critical human geography, critical business studies, etc). What does critique mean to you and why are the philosophical and social-theoretical reasons for critique? Why is critique often confined to critique of special oppression rather than critique of the total society or social totality capitalism? And when there is any critique of capitalism, why is it that critique is often confined to the (rather mild) critique of neoliberalism (a specific form of capitalism) rather than capitalism as such? Is the scope of your critique confined to the critique of those aspects of society which, in your own view, can be changed (a little)? What do you make of the idea that at this current stage of human society, changing the parts requires changing the whole?

These are not merely political questions. They are deeply theoretical (explanatory) questions: to explain anything in the world, one has to examine the issues surrounding control over property, the state, nature of peoples collective agency as it is rooted in relations of production and exchange, and so on. To be able to explain the world, one has to agree that there are objectively-existing structures of relations and processes, whose contingent reproduction is then influenced by how people think and act, and that things in our life are not creations of thought, although ideas can play an important role in social change. In explaining anything immigration, fishing, global warming, deforestation, body, conditions of indigenous people, pandemics, etc. one has to relate them to the wider totality of which they are parts. But then, do educators believe in the idea of a totality? Most do not.

Often society is divided by professors into numerous groups (e.g. women, refugees, mad people, people in jail, heterosexual people, etc.), without the recognition that they can be interrelated in terms of the conditions under which they live their lives; that each of these groups is connected to the overall social-material (class) character of society of which they are a part, and that the criterion that is used to define each of these groups is rooted in the ways in which society operates and reproduces itself through its relations of production and exchange and through the political system and cultural mechanisms of producing consent to the system. In other words, there is little recognition of the fact that by studying a given group (or indeed a given place), one can say something about the totality of which the group (or the place) is a part. Perhaps underlying this sectoral and parochial approach is the political principle that the society as a whole cannot be changed and that only this or that small part of it can be changed, and only in relatively small ameliorative ways.

To understand anything properly, one has to have a theory, because it is theory that helps one connect the different parts of society to another, and to produce a coherent picture of society. But do most educators even believe in the need for theory? Many are just keen on their students to go and see the world for themselves. Alas, without a theory, one will see many things without really seeing anything (much).

Students must therefore demand that they be taught rigorous theory of society as a whole and theory of specific parts of society (e.g. child poverty or womens oppression), as well as theory of theorizing (i.e. philosophy, including ontology and epistemology). They must demand that a large part of every course they take must deal with critical issues surrounding the materiality of capitalist society that we live in and its politics, and the philosophical issues of materialism and dialectics.

They have got every right to know where their professors stand theoretically and politically. They have the right to demand that the courses they take equip them with the theoretical tools which would prompt them to ask the type of questions posed above. Students must demand that the scope of pedagogical diversity be expanded beyond identity politics and decolonization; the scope of courses, readings, lectures and classroom discussions must be widened so the kind of questions that are posed above can be addressed in a collegial atmosphere. Society is dominated by relations and processes of capitalist production and exchange which necessarily lead to imperialism, so the dominant emphasis in the academic courses should be on the capitalist character of society, which reproduces itself partly by feeding into divisions based on gender, race, sexual orientation and so on, and partly through various retrograde cultural mechanisms. Academic courses should help students critically theorize the totality of capitalist society in its five major dimensions (economic, political, cultural, ecological and geographical), and to empirically study it, both from the standpoint of describing and explaining it and thus finding an order in society, and radically transcending it.

Students must reject the idea that the education systems main roles are to: a) provide technical and organizational skills to students so they can increase production and surplus (profit, interest, rent, etc.) for the business class, and b) provide ideas that dissuade the majority from demanding control over production and the surplus, as well as control over the communal affairs of society (currently managed by politicians and officials wedded to the interest of the rich). The basic purpose of knowing is to know what is happening and why, so one can take action to create a different future. Technical and other such skills are important. All forms of society need to expand production. But production happens, and can only happen, within certain historically-specific relations of production, and these relations are currently unequal, exploitative and oppressive. So there is a need to explore the character of these relations.

Academia appears to be other than what it is, just as society dominated by capital does; thus there is a contradiction between what is real and what appears to be real. Our teachers/professors usually do not encourage us to ask difficult questions which might reveal the contradiction. But educators must be educated. Educators with a sense of humility should like to be educated by their students. Students must assume the role of educators on a regular basis. An inversion in roles is needed on a regular basis, so education becomes an act of collaboration. This is especially at the graduate (Masters and doctoral) level.

Students must take responsibility for their own education. They could, for example, form reading groups and read certain books/articles/blogs and discuss certain topics on their own. The rationale for this would be that such readings and topics are excluded or are only given lip service in a classroom. Another major source of education is, of course, students intent to change the society, and, where possible, their actual participation in the process of change both on campus and off-campus. An important part of this politics must be a demand that no person remains unemployed and that everyone receives an appropriate compensation, and that the commodification and creeping corporate control over education and its bureaucratization as well as mixing of religion and religion-based politics and education, must stop at once. Education is a human need, and it must be met without the mediation of the market or government interference. The fact that, after years of education, which often lands many students in huge debt, the majority of students will remain un- or under-employed, this material fact does adversely impact their learning process. After all, one has to eat, drink, have shelter, clothing and medicine and access to transportation, etc. before one can fruitfully engage in the learning process. The demand for a satisfactory education and the demand for improved material conditions are closely linked.

There is no illusion that when students begin to take responsibility for their education partly by organizing their own reading group meetings, some members of the academic community will criticize them for engaging in intellectual activities that do not conform to the norm. When that happens, one should know that one is doing something right, so just ignore the criticisms and invite the critics to the meetings. It is possible, and indeed necessary, for students to educate themselves partly outside of the normal classroom and to connect the two spheres to see the relation between their learning and their passionate intent grounded in reason and evidence, to see a fundamentally different world. And, as and when students take partial responsibility for their education, there are teachers who will join them as their friends and co-learners. It is true that many will not support such activities. But then who says that the appropriateness of an action necessarily depends on how many people accept the idea of such an action?

This article also published on the Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal website.

Raju J Das teaches radical political economy, international development, state-society relations, and social struggles at York University, Toronto. Das is on the editorial board of Science & Society and the editorial advisory board of Dialectical Anthropology. His most recent book, published in 2017, is Marxist Class Theory for a skeptical world (Brill, Leiden).

See the article here:
What Questions Must Students Ask Their Educators, and Why? - The Bullet - Socialist Project

A bear stands in a field of hemlock parsley at Eagle Beach two years ago before the bears demolished most of the plants. (Courtesy Photo / Doug Jones)

Species of the carrot family (formerly named Umbelliferae, now Apiaceae) are still called umbellifers informally, referring to the structure of the flat-topped inflorescence, called an umbel. The nominate example of this family is the domestic carrot, which typically has a thick, straight, tapered taproot containing of about 15% carbohydrates, some vitamins and minerals and a lot of water,according to one source. Carrots were originally domesticated in Asia, over 1,000 years ago. Parsley, parsnip and celery are other familiar members of the family. They have many wild relatives, of which perhaps seven genera are said to occur in the Juneau area.

The roots of these species are sometimes described as taproots and sometimes as clusters of fleshy roots; and sometimes the same species is described has having both kinds of root systems. Frustrated by the vagueness and possibly conflicting descriptions, I dug up a few specimens of four fairly common species to see for myself. Because I dont know how long or how vertical a root must be, in order to be called a taproot, here I will just mention there being a main root, if a thick one occurs at the base of the stem. Thick and fleshy roots, in general, are storage organs for these plants, a source of energy for growth and reproduction.

[Wild Shots: See reader-submitted photos of Mother Nature in Alaska]

Out on local beaches and gravelly meadows, we find beach lovage (Ligusticum scoticum). The roots of beach lovage are a popular bear food, as seen recently in the meadow near the Boy Scout Camp. In the big meadow at Eagle Beach this year, lovage plants had been common but were almost entirely demolished by hungry bears. The roots were gone, leaving a few reddish leaf stalks near the hole. Elsewhere in North America, other lovage species are sometimes called bear-root in Native languages, reflecting harvesting by bears. My excavations indicated that lovage usually has a short (about an inch or two just a little snack!) main root, bearing several thick, fleshy side roots, in total perhaps equivalent in size to a small-to-medium carrot.

Those side roots may be likely to break when a bear digs for the main root, leaving fragments that can regenerate; a big, carroty main root might not be able to do that, because the whole thing probably would be dug up. Various Native groups that harvest some of these carrot-family relatives take just the main root, leaving the side roots for future growth. Could it be that short main roots with storage in side roots are somehow an adaptation (in part) to the risks of being dug up a way of surviving, via regenerating fragments, thats not available to strictly single-main-rooted forms?

We have two species of Angelica: sea-coast angelica or seawatch (A. lucida) and, less commonly, kneeling angelica (A. genuflexa). Both are dug up by bears, which eat the roots and sometimes the lower stem and leaf stalks. My little excavations indicated that there is usually a short main root with some fleshy side roots.

Hemlock parsley (Conioselinum pacificum) that I excavated all had a short main root supporting a cluster of fleshy roots, but another local naturalist found one with a long main root. A year or two ago, there were many reports of bears digging up this plant in the Eagle Beach meadow. This year, in the same part of the meadow, I found that, while bears had taken almost every lovage root in part of the meadow, some hemlock parsley was still standing there.

Cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum) has a hefty, sometimes both fat and long, main root, sometimes with side roots, but I have not seen evidence of bears digging up this plant. Ive seen the seeds in bear scats, where they eventually germinate quite well. In addition to domestic livestock, marmots, bears, deer, moose and many other animals in other areas are known to eat the upper, vegetative and floral parts, which one report says provide a decent source of protein. Stems and leaves are reported to be a major food source for bears in Montana. However, Ive not observed vertebrate use of this species here; other local naturalists have documented that the leaves are eaten by marmots; stems and leaves may be eaten occasionally by bears and rarely by mountain goats. That begs a question: why are there so few observations of wildlife use of this very common plant here?

[Trails offer signs of autumns beginning]

The stems and leaves of sweet-cicely (Osmorhiza) are part of bear diets at least in some regions, but the two or three local species are not very common here and Ive not seen signs of vertebrate usage.

Pacific water-parsley (Oenanthe sarmentosa) is suspected of being poisonous, largely by taxonomic association with highly toxic relatives. However, cattle are reported to eat the foliage without ill effects. I found no information about wildlife usage.

Cicuta douglasii (Douglas water-hemlock) is extremely poisonous to grazing livestock and probably bears and moose, too, although I have found no reference to wildlife usage. The roots and base of stem are said to particularly toxic. This is not the same as the species called poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, which reportedly does not grow near Juneau.

Humans eat many of these species, presumably avoiding the most toxic ones; however, some toxins are found in other carrot-relatives be careful of eating these species. Ligusticum roots and leaves have made good human food, although it has been used by certain Native cultures to poison fish. Heracleum flowering stems can be eaten, if peeled; but the juices of this plant contain furanocoumarins that on human skin may be activated by sunlight to produce nasty blisters. Angelica stems and leaf stalks are edible; Conioselinum roots are used by humans in some regions. Roots and leaves of Osmorhiza are said to be edible. Despite rumors of toxicity, Oenanthe roots and stems are eaten by people in some places.

Note: hemlock derives from old English words meaning straw or stalk and plant; in other words, a plant with hollow stems. That has nothing to do with our local tree of the same name. The hemlock tree got its name, supposedly, because of a perceived similarity of the smell of its crushed foliage to the smell of the poison hemlock plant.

Mary F. Willson is a retired professor of ecology. On The Trails is a weekly column that appears in the Juneau Empire every Wednesday.

Go here to see the original:
What's on taproot: Carrots and their wild relatives - Juneau Empire

The United States has long used citizenship status and perceived criminality as a means to determine whether individuals deserve basic human rights. This weeks egregious allegations of mass hysterectomies at an immigrant jail in Georgia are consistent with the long U.S. tradition of state-sanctioned eugenics, medical abuse and forced sterilizations against those whose humanity the state does not recognize or value.

News reports on Monday revealed that gynecologists in an immigrant jail in Georgia have performed high rates of hysterectomies, often without the full awareness of the immigrant women themselves.

According to a complaint filed by Project South, the revelation came from a whistleblower named Dawn Wooten, a Black woman who was a nurse at Georgias Irwin County Detention Center. In the detailed account, Wooten shares not only the pervasive accounts of medical neglect and oversight, but also the ways that immigrant womens bodies have been infiltrated by the state.

Get Truthouts daily edition delivered to your inbox.

In the report, Wooten explains that incarcerated people would be sent to the doctor for medical procedures, including hysterectomies, and they dont know why they went or why theyre going. Often, these women were not given informed consent as the medical procedures were not explained in their native language. At times, these women experienced intimidation and yelling from nurses pressuring them to follow through with unwanted or unnecessary procedures. In one account, a migrant woman simply came to the conclusion that something was not right when incarcerated migrants were being coerced into procedures that werent clearly explained or consistently described by medical staff.

These disturbing reports from Georgia are not surprising within the larger context of human rights abuses in the U.S. Since 2016, the conditions facing migrant people interned by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been a constant source of unrest and public upheaval. The images often depict dilapidated cells, makeshift bedding, and a lack of basic amenities like clean water and food for people jailed by ICE. While the treatment of migrant people on the border and the disregard for the lives and experiences of incarcerated people in this country has long been an issue, this moment has forced the public to grapple with the disparities in justice and liberty in new and disconcerting ways.

The reported resurgence of forced sterilizations at Georgias Irwin County Detention Center a form of violence rooted in white supremacy, xenophobia, patriarchy and the inherently racist tenets of American citizenship are an unfortunate recurrence in this nations short history. In times of contestation, sexual violence and reproductive injustice frequently become the currency of the state.

Many people are colloquially familiar with the story of the Tuskegee Experiments on Black men which began in 1932. It was officially called Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. What many people dont know is that these experiments lasted approximately 40 years even though they were projected for only six months of experimentation. The study originally included roughly 600 Black men mainly from Macon County, Alabama, 201 of whom did not actually have syphilis. The study deceptively enrolled Black men without allowing them informed consent, as researchers told participants that they had bad blood and many were never treated at all.

The United States Public Health Service made the decision not to treat poor Black men for syphilis, but rather to watch them until they died and their bodies examined for ravages of the disease, according to The Washington Post.

The study officially ended in 1972 and has been linked to lower life expectancy among Black men over 45 and a deep distrust between Black communities and Western medicine. The emotional and mental effects of this study remain hidden from popular culture and mainstream news, leaving many Black communities to struggle against these sorts of medical disparities in relative isolation.

Eugenics is often associated with Nazi Germany but, in the early 20th century, the United States adopted these techniques in grand fashion. Our disgusting history with forced sterilizations is linked to a 1927 court decision in Buck v. Bell. The decision gave institutions like prisons and mental facilities the ability to sterilize any person in their custody for any reason deemed necessary to protect the better interests of society. Carrie Buck was determined to be feebleminded so the state took away her ability to reproduce children. This stemmed decades of state institutions using their authority to forcibly sterilize incarcerated people. Its estimated that some 70,000 people were sterilized until the 1970s.

But, Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. As late as 2006 to 2010, California prisons have been found to have enforced the coerced sterilizations on at least 150 incarcerated people, according to PBS. As recently as 2017, a judge in central Tennessee offered shorter jail times to incarcerated people if they consented to sterilization. These procedures are used by prison administrators to disproportionately target and harm Black and Brown women, deeming them unfit for reproduction and marking their wombs as sites of waste and decay.

The United Statess commitment to eugenics, medical abuse and forced sterilizations depicts the complex nature of perceived criminality in this country. By marking certain peoples bodies as inherently evil, anti-patriotic and outside of the community of citizenship, the state casts a veil over the grave human rights infringements and institutional abuses it enacts against nonwhite, non-wealthy, non-male, non-normative people. This is by design, not by happenstance.

In her 1994 essay, Not Just (Any) Body Can Be a Citizen, M. Jacqui Alexander wrote, criminalization functions as a technology of control, and much like other technologies of control becomes an important site for the production and reproduction of state power.

Criminalization is the mechanism by which people are transposed from humans into bodies through the eyes of the state. By criminalizing, ostracizing and excluding Black, Brown, queer, trans, immigrant and disabled people, the state sanctions all manner of macabre violence against those they see as merely bodies, organs, and a collection of pieces and parts.

The state is not invested in the humanity of all people but only in the humanity of a chosen few. Until we recognize and hold that truth to be self-evident, we will be powerless in holding these institutions and systems accountable for the injustices they continue to commit right in front of our faces.

Follow this link:
Forced Sterilization Is Nothing New to Criminalized People in the US - Truthout

By Kristen Rogers, CNN

CNN We humans tend to spread and frolic about wherever we please, a development that has been found to harm animals' environments and health, and therefore ultimately our own. That may be the effect on crickets because of our constant noisemaking from traffic and other activities.

The mating behavior of crickets may be significantly affected by those sounds, according to a study published Monday in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

The reproduction of field crickets is important to the worlds of plants, humans and animals. Because field crickets eat lots of plant materials rich in cellulose, their fecal matter is easily decomposed by bacteria and fungi.

"Their activity, then, greatly accelerates the energy and nutrient flows in an ecosystem and provides plants with a much more abundant reservoir of highly available, essential growth factors," according to a Penn State New Kensington blog post.

Field crickets' diets also help to manage weed growth on both natural and human-made ecosystems. Additionally, crickets are essential food sources for some birds and other animals that have crucial roles in providing our food, timber, medicine and recreation.

"Humans are continually changing the characteristics of environments, including through the production of anthropogenic noise," said study coauthor Sophie Mowles, a senior lecturer in animal and environmental biology at Anglia Ruskin University in England, in a news release.

"As mate choice is a powerful driving force for evolution through sexual selection, disruptions may cause a decline in population viability. And because anthropogenic noise is a very recent evolutionary selection pressure, it is difficult to predict how species may adapt."

Why noise pollution may confuse mating crickets

Male crickets have an innate playlist of songs from which to choose to attract potential mates: The calling song attracts the female, then the courtship, or mating, song induces the female to mate. A fighting chirp sends warnings to other male suitors. And what both sexes need for all these things to happen are highly sensitive organs on their forelegs, so that they can receive sound.

To assess the effects of environmental changes, the researchers paired female crickets with silenced male crickets in ambient noise conditions, artificial white noise settings and recorded traffic noise conditions.

The researchers allowed the males to court the females, and when the males tried to sing their mating tunes, the researchers played artificial courtship songs that ranged from low- to high-quality.

When induced to mate by a high-quality courtship song amid ambient noise, female crickets mounted the males sooner and more often. But when those crickets were subjected to white noise and traffic sounds conditions, the quality of the mating song didn't help the frequency and duration of females mating with males, the study said.

"Traffic noise and the crickets' courtship song do not share similar acoustic frequencies, so rather than masking the courtship song, we think the traffic noise serves as a distraction for the female cricket," said lead author Adam Bent, who led the study as part of his doctoral program at Anglia Ruskin University, in a news statement.

Mating songs are labor-intensive; they require male crickets to expend a lot of energy and therefore hold key details about the males' qualities, the study said so human-made noise may have changed how the females perceived the males when deciding on a mate. This blurring also could affect male crickets' health if they work to produce a more impressive mating song, and therefore those crickets' survival, too.

"At the same time, female crickets may choose to mate with a lower-quality male as they are unable to detect differences in mate quality due to the man-made noise," Bent added, "and this may lead to a reduction or complete loss of offspring viability."

Continue reading here:
In the name of cricket sex, humans need to stop making noise :: WRAL.com - WRAL.com

By Caroline Kelly and Nicole Gaouette, CNN

(CNN) -- President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday to reverse restrictions on abortion access domestically and abroad imposed and expanded by the Trump administration.

The memorandum will "reverse my predecessor's attack on women's health access," Biden told reporters during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office.

He added that the measure "relates to protecting women's health at home and abroad, and it reinstates the changes that were made to Title X and other things making it harder for women to have access to affordable health care as it relates to their reproductive rights."

Biden's move fulfilled a campaign promise to rescind the so-called Mexico City Policy, a ban on US government funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions. The Trump administration reinstated the restriction in 2017 by presidential memorandum and then extended it to cover all applicable US global health funding. That made some $9.5 billion in aid for everything from HIV treatment to clean water projects and child immunizations contingent on groups agreeing not to discuss or perform abortions.

The memorandum also directs the Health and Human Services Department to immediately move to consider rescinding the Trump administration rule blocking health care providers in the federally funded Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions, according to the Biden administration.

Taken together, the actions show an administration receptive to at least the initial requests of advocates eager to codify a new era of abortion protections after the prior administration took restrictions on the procedure to unprecedented levels.

Advocates for abortion restrictions slammed Biden over the announcement, which coincides with the eve of anti-abortion activists holding the annual March for Life event on Friday -- though this year it will be virtual. Former President Donald Trump made history in 2020 by being the first sitting President to participate in the event, which for decades has drawn large crowds of supporters each year to the National Mall.

The moves come as health care providers, reproductive rights groups and progressive lawmakers seek a more permanent end to longstanding barriers to the procedure.

Beyond US borders, the impact of Trump's expanded Mexico City Policy, formally called "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance," has "really been devastating," said Melvine Ouyo, a Nairobi-based reproductive health nurse and former clinic director at Family Health Options Kenya. "So many lives were lost."

The policy, also known as the "global gag rule," has been instituted by Republican administrations since President Ronald Reagan and repealed by Democratic ones. A State Department review published last year of the Trump administration's policy to bar funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions found it has also affected efforts to treat tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS as well as to deliver nutritional assistance, among other programs, and has had significant impact in sub-Saharan Africa.

Advocates and practitioners like Ouyo say the deaths result from the cuts to health care of all kinds for women, including access to contraception, which sends them in search of illegal, often unsafe and deadly abortions.

"This global gag rule has been one of the most detrimental policies to women's lives, especially women coming from marginalized communities," Ouyu told CNN. "Biden really has a lot to do."

Seema Jalan, executive director of the Universal Access Project and Policy at the United Nations Foundation, said advocates see an opportunity for the Biden administration to work with Congress to make broad changes. She cited the Helms Amendment which bars US foreign aid for performing or promoting abortion, not just to foreign non-profits, but to governments, multilateral organizations and US non-profits and the Hyde amendment, which imposes similar restrictions on groups within the US. The policies currently allow for abortions in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the pregnant person's life.

"There's the hard work of the administration working with Congress putting in place permanent solutions to harmful policy: addressing global gag, Helms, Hyde, and other technical fixes that are highly consequential," Jalan said.

Anti-abortion advocates, however, criticized the rollback, arguing it runs counter to Biden's professed efforts to bring the country together.

"Funneling U.S. tax dollars to abortion groups overseas is an abhorrent practice that flies in the face of the 'unity' Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promised to inspire," said SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser.

"Rescinding the Mexico City Policy on the eve of the March for Life is a deeply disturbing move, especially when the President says he wants national unity," March for Life president Jeanne Mancini said Thursday, adding that the government "should work to protect the inherent dignity of all persons, born and unborn."

Biden's memorandum also deals with Title X, a federally-funded program that served about 4 million people a year prior to the abortion referral rule's implementation, according to HHS. The program provides resources including contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and preventive education and testing for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV -- but not abortions.

In 2019, Trump's HHS issued a rule to bar health care providers participating in the program from offering abortion referrals, a policy that opponents argued would hit low-income people, rural residents, communities of color and the uninsured hardest. The rule prompted multiple federal court challenges and was ultimately blocked in federal court. But in July of that year, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the rule to go into effect despite the ongoing challenge against it.

The effects of the rule have been stark. Planned Parenthood which previously covered 40% of Title X's patients and had been involved with the program since it began, according to the organization withdrew from the program soon after the 9th Circuit decision. Additional clinics have dropped out of the program since the rule took effect, leaving six states without Title X providers, according to data from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 1,000 Title X sub-recipients and sites approximately 25% of the 4,000 clinics in the program prior to the rule have withdrawn from the program, per Kaiser.

National Right to Life President Carol Tobias lamented Biden's memorandum on Thursday.

"During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden made it clear that promoting abortion would be a priority in his administration and it would be done at the expense of taxpayers," Tobias, accusing him of dismantling "domestic protections that have saved countless lives -- and put taxpayer money in the pockets of abortionists."

Biden's memorandum, while a significant change of direction, represents just the beginning of advocates' goals of restoring the program.

"We expect some commitment toward repairing the program, rescinding the rule and getting longstanding providers back into the network so that services can be restored in parts of the country that have gone without Title X funding for so long," said Audrey Sandusky, communications director for the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA).

Around 1.5 million people lost access to Title X coverage after the rule was implemented, according to Sandusky. The group counts nearly three-quarters of Title X grantees among its membership of providers and administrators and worked with the Biden transition team and HHS staff on Title X's future, she said.

In light of how some "patients have been in the dark" after they were no longer able to get free or low cost health care from their usual providers, "I would say it would take a long time for providers to regain the trust and confidence that patients have had in them," Sandusky said, as well as "to regain trust in the federal government and to assure providers that they have support that they need from this administration and from Congress."

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson called rolling back the Mexico City Policy and the Title X abortion referral restriction "a great start, one that will increase access and meaningfully impact people's lives, but I'll emphasize again, this is a start."

When asked about conversations between Planned Parenthood and the Biden administration on Title X, McGill Johnson described "very robust, and I would say, exciting conversations not just about the domestic gag rule but also thinking about how more investments can go into access to family planning and contraception, how to be more inclusive, how we can use policy to also engage men, to engage other populations."

"We need to improve and modernize Title X," McGill Johnson said, later adding, "making sure that it meaningfully reflects the sexual and reproductive health care needs of all patients."

Lawmakers, pointing to data that show the policies result in more unsafe abortions, more unwanted pregnancies, more maternal deaths and have a disproportionate impact on Black and brown women, say they are seizing the moment as well.

Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, chair of the House Appropriations Committee that oversees Title X funding, told CNN in an interview Wednesday that while she had not been in contact with the Biden administration on Title X, she's focused on returning the program to its prior form.

"What I'm committed to in Appropriations, because we have jurisdiction over Title X funding, is to work with the administration and the providers, those who were forced out of the program, to make sure that the funding is there for them to get back in," she said. "Or work in that legislative direction, and to ensure there are safeguards to make sure that we can't have what the Trump administration tried to do here."

When asked if she would seek to increase funding in this legislative session, DeLauro replied, "I'm going to take a look at what we have by way of an allocation and so forth and, if I can, I will work to increase the funding."

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is set to re-introduce on Thursday the Global HER Act, which would permanently repeal the Mexico City Policy. She said it was "shameful" that the Trump administration not only implemented it, but expanded it.

"I'm so relieved that President Biden has made rescinding this policy an early priority," Shaheen told CNN. "The data doesn't lie. We know how detrimental this policy has been -- how it likely contributed to increased maternal deaths, unsafe abortions and compromised access to critical care. Rescinding this rule is the start but it is not enough -- there needs to be a permanent fix."

And in the House, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and others will reintroduce a bill to repeal the Helms Amendment. Also in their sights: the Hyde Amendment.

Access to reproductive health care and abortion, if needed, "is central to women's independence, success and bodily autonomy," Schakowsky told CNN. "If you cannot control reproduction for yourself, then you can never really plan your life."

And some lawmakers, along with reproductive rights groups, are pushing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to go further. The Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus is asking Biden to take immediate action on multiple fronts beyond repealing the Mexico City policy and reconsidering the Title X rule, including expanding US foreign assistance support for abortion care, rescinding an executive order that restricts abortion access under the Affordable Care Act, and directing the Health and Human Services Secretary to lift the Food and Drug Administration decision that an over-the-counter medication to safely end early pregnancy cannot be mailed during the pandemic.

Over 90 advocacy groups, including NFPRHA and Planned Parenthood, have presented the Biden administration with a "Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice" calling for such actions and others, such as rescinding the Hyde Amendment.

Marcela Howell, president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda, which is one of the groups, told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers freely discussing abortion access contributed to their goals.

"The reality is that all of us have been fighting stigma around abortion, and if we cannot get the administration and members of Congress to actually use the word abortion care, then that furthers the stigma," she said. "And we believe that it is a safe and legal procedure that women have accessed at various points in their lives and the stigma around it needs to be eliminated."

The-CNN-Wire & 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Go here to see the original:
Biden signs memorandum reversing Trump abortion access restrictions - WDJT

The study focused on 142 North American bird species, including the ash-throated flycatcher shown above. Credits: David Keeling / California Polytechnic State University.

Human-produced noise and light pollution are troublesome to our avian neighbors, according to new research from a team at California Polytechnic State University, published Nov. 11 in Nature.

Using NASA satellite data, the researchers got a birds-eye view of how noise and light negatively affected bird reproduction in North America. The team also discovered that these factors might interact with or even mask birds responses to the effects of climate change.

Bird populations have declined by about 30 percent in the last few decades. Scientists and land managers seeking to understand what caused the decline and reverse the trend had largely overlooked the effects of noise and light pollution, until recent studies suggested that these stressors could harm certain types of birds.

Prior to the launch of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the joint NASA-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite in 2011, high-resolution light pollution data didnt exist on such a large scale. This new study has produced a continent-wide picture utilizing VIIRS data.

Our study provides comprehensive evidence that noise and light can profoundly alter reproduction of birds, even when accounting for other aspects of human activities, said Clint Francis, a biologist at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, one of the lead authors on the study.

The research team looked at a vast collection of data sets including those collected by citizen scientists through the NestWatch Program to assess how light and noise affected the reproductive success of 58,506 nests from 142 bird species across North America.

They considered several factors for each nest, including the time of year when breeding occurred and whether at least one chick fledged or flew from the nest.

Birds reproduction coincides with peak food availability to feed their young, as daylight cues signal to breed around the same time each year.

The researchers found that light pollution causes birds to begin nesting as much as a month earlier than normal in open environments, such as grasslands or wetlands, and 18 days earlier in forested environments.

The consequence could be a mismatch in timing for example, hungry chicks may hatch before their food is readily available. If that happens, these early season nests may be less successful at fledging at least one chick, but the situation is complicated by climate change.

As the planet warms, birds food is available earlier due to warmer weather. Birds that maintain their historical breeding times because their internal clocks are set to changes in daylength may have fewer chicks survive because the food source they rely on already came and went.

We discovered that the birds that advanced the timing of their reproduction in response to increased light pollution actually have better reproductive success, Francis said. A likely interpretation of this response is that light pollution actually allows these birds to catch up to the shift towards earlier availability of food due to climate change.

Many areas of the United States are significantly brighter at night due to human-produced light pollution. This map constructed with VIIRS data shows areas with increased light pollution (yellow and pink) compared to the typical brightness of the night sky (darker blues). Credits: Francis et al.These findings suggest two conclusions about birds responses to climate change. First, at least temporarily, birds in lit conditions may be tracking climate change better than those in dark areas.

Second, when scientists thought birds were adjusting their reproductive timing to climate change, birds may have actually been instead responding to light cues since many studies were done in areas exposed to some light pollution.

When considering noise pollution, results showed that birds that live in forested environments tend to be more sensitive to noise than birds in open environments.

Researchers delved into greater detail in 27 different bird species, looking for physical traits that could explain the variations in species responses to light and noise. A birds ability to see in low light and the pitch of its call were related to species responses to light and noise pollution.

The more light a birds eye is capable of taking in, the more that species moved its breeding time earlier in the year in response to light pollution, and the more that species benefited from light pollution with improved nest success.

Noise pollution delayed nesting for birds whose songs are at a lower frequency and thus more difficult to hear through low-frequency human noise. Mating decisions are made based on the males song, and in some cases, females need to hear the males song to become physically ready to breed.

These trait and environment-specific results have strong implications for managing wild lands. Developers and land managers could use this study to understand how their plans are likely to affect birds. For example, Francis says, Is it a forest bird? If so, it is likely that it is more sensitive to light and noise.

The study is the first step toward a larger goal of developing a sensitivity index for all North American birds. The index would allow managers and conservationists to cross-reference multiple physical traits for one species to assess how factors such as light and noise pollution would affect each species.

Rachel Henry works for NASA.

View post:
Earth News: Noise and light pollution from humans alter bird reproduction - Lake County News

Hum Reprod. 2020 Nov 23:deaa339. doi: 10.1093/humrep/deaa339. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

STUDY QUESTION: Can we use prediction modelling to estimate the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19) related delay in starting IVF or ICSI in different groups of women?

SUMMARY ANSWER: Yes, using a combination of three different models we can predict the impact of delaying access to treatment by 6 and 12 months on the probability of conception leading to live birth in women of different age groups with different categories of infertility.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Increased age and duration of infertility can prejudice the chances of success following IVF, but couples with unexplained infertility have a chance of conceiving naturally without treatment whilst waiting for IVF. The worldwide suspension of IVF could lead to worse outcomes in couples awaiting treatment, but it is unclear to what extent this could affect individual couples based on age and cause of infertility.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: A population based cohort study based on national data from all licensed clinics in the UK obtained from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Register. Linked data from 9589 women who underwent their first IVF or ICSI treatment in 2017 and consented to the use of their data for research were used to predict livebirth numbers.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: Three prediction models were used to estimate the chances of livebirth associated with immediate treatment versus a delay of 6 and 12 months in couples about to embark on IVF or ICSI.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: We estimated that a 6-month delay would reduce livebirths by 0.4%, 2.4%, 5.7%, 9.5% and 11.8% in women aged <30, 30-35, 36-37, 38-39 and 40-42 years, respectively, while corresponding values associated with a delay of 12 months were 0.9%, 4.9%, 11.9%, 18.8% and 22.4%, respectively. In women with known causes of infertility, worst case (best case) predicted chances of livebirth after a delay of 6 months in women aged <30, 30-35, 36-37, 38-39 and 40-42 years varied between 31.6% (35.0%), 29.0% (31.6%), 23.1% (25.2%), 17.2% (19.4%) and 10.3% (12.3%) for tubal infertility and 34.3% (39.2%), 31.6% (35.3%) 25.2%(28.5%) 18.3% (21.3%), and 11.3% (14.1%) for male factor infertility. The corresponding values in those treated immediately were 31.7%, 29.8%, 24.5%, 19.0% and 11.7% for tubal factor and 34.4%, 32.4%, 26.7%, 20.2% and 12.8% in male factor infertility. In women with unexplained infertility the predicted chances of livebirth after a delay of 6 months followed by one complete IVF cycle were 41.0%, 36.6%, 29.4%, 22.4% and 15.1% in women aged <30, 30-35, 36-37, 38-39 and 40-42 years, respectively, compared to 34.9%, 32.5%, 26.9%, 20.7% and 13.2% in similar groups of women treated without any delay. The additional waiting period, which provided more time for spontaneous conception, was predicted to increase the relative number of babies born by 17.5%, 12.6%, 9.1%, 8.4% and 13.8%, in women aged <30, 30-35, 36-37, 38-39 and 40-42 years, respectively. A 12-month delay showed a similar pattern in all subgroups.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: Major sources of uncertainty include the use of prediction models generated in different populations and the need for a number of assumptions. Although the models are validated and the bases for the assumptions are robust, it is impossible to eliminate the possibility of imprecision in our predictions. Therefore, our predicted live birth rates need to be validated in prospective studies to confirm their accuracy.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: A delay in starting IVF reduces success rates in all couples. For the first time, we have shown that while this results in fewer babies in older women and those with a known cause of infertility, it has a less detrimental effect on couples with unexplained infertility, some of whom conceive naturally whilst waiting for treatment. Post COVID 19, clinics planning a phased return to normal clinical services should prioritise older women and those with a known cause of infertility.

STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S): No external funding was received for this study. B.W.M. is supported by an NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship (GNT1082548) and reports consultancy work for ObsEva, Merck, Merck KGaA, Guerbet and iGenomics. SB is Editor-in-Chief of Human Reproduction Open. None of the other authors declare any conflicts of interest.

PMID:33226080 | DOI:10.1093/humrep/deaa339

The rest is here:
Prioritising IVF treatment in the post COVID 19 era: a predictive modelling study based on UK national data - DocWire News