The Lancet, Britain’s oldest medical journal and the second most important one globally, has been edited by Richard Horton for the past 29 years. During that time, the 62-year-old has become embroiled in nuermous controversies – several of which involved him using the journal to promote political viewpoints that aligned with his own.
In a particularly egregious example last year, Horton penned an editorial denouncing then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman for saying that migrants crossing the Channel “possess values which are at odds with our country”. Exactly what business a medical journal had criticising the Home Secretary’s views on immigration was not explained. In fact, Horton went so far as to praise Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, and wrote that “we” must not be afraid to engage in a “war of position” against “populists”. It was embarrassing stuff.
NowThe Lancet appears to have gone one better, with its latest author guidelines throwing science completely out the window. Under the heading “Reporting sex-based and gender-based analyses”, the guidelines state:
In human research, the term “sex” carries multiple definitions. It often refers to an umbrella term for a set of biological attributes associated with physical and physiological features (eg, chromosomal genotype, hormonal levels, internal and external anatomy). It can also signify a sex categorisation, most often designated at birth (“sex assigned at birth”) based on a newborn’s visible external anatomy. The term “gender” generally refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours, and identities of women, men, and gender-diverse people that occur in a historical and cultural context, and might vary across societies and over time.
So a supposedly serious medical journal is peddling the rather dubious distinction between “sex” on the one hand and “gender” on the other. (There are “socially constructed roles, behaviours and identities” associated with different ages, but we don’t have a whole other word to refer to them.) Not only that, but it is claiming sex is something “assigned at birth,” rather than being an inherent property of an individual.
The Lancet’s new definition of ‘sex’ follows similar pronouncements from the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Expert opinion on matters of sex is now firmly on the side of left-wing woo-woo. And it gets worse. The guidelines continue:
Sex and gender are often incorrectly portrayed as binary (female/male or woman/man), concordant, and static. However, these constructs exist along a spectrum that includes additional sex categorisations and gender identities, such as people who are intersex/have differences of sex development (DSD), or identify as non-binary. In any given person, sex and gender might not align, and both can change. Sex and gender are not entirely discrete concepts and their definitions continue to evolve.
So sex is a “spectrum” that can change “in any given person”. If you’re female today, who’s to say you won’t be male tomorrow – or perhaps somewhere in between? This is complete piffle, of course. As Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins note, “sex in all mammals is determined by sex chromosomes; and there are two and only two sexes: male and female”.
The Lancet’s guidelines on sex conclude by explicitly telling authors to use the term “sex assigned at birth” because it is “more accurate and inclusive”. I’m imagining a future Lancet article on Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: “She was the first person who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth to qualify as a doctor in Britain, and she went on to found the first medical school to train people who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth. All in all, she was a truly remarkable person who’d been assigned ‘female’ at birth.”
If this were some obscure Gender Studies periodical, it wouldn’t really matter. But we’re talking about the world’s second most cited medical journal. It’s read by doctors, surgeons, researchers and all the people to whom we’ve entrusted our health. How can they maintain our trust when they can’t seem to tell the difference between a man and a woman?
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All going well if the intention is to undermine trust in this and many other institutions.
Well I just think we’re going to have to resort to putting ‘Penis-owners’ and ‘Vagina-owners’ on toilet/changing room doors because evidently the old, traditional ‘Female/Ladies’ and ‘Male/Men’ is just way to ambiguous these days and is clearly open to interpretation, and with delusional loonies like the woman below ( who doesn’t even know what a woman is ) then we need to be literal to a fault;
”I feel conflicted sometimes when posting these videos.
She’s going to be so embarrassed one day, if she isn’t already, which I think she is. (She showed up the next day just to complain about me speaking with her on camera, even though she approached me to come speak on camera.)
These clips will live on forever, as other people post them.
Evidence of a time when much of the world lost its mind.
She’s going to be so embarrassed that she was sucked into a cult this badly and doesn’t know what a woman is, even though she’s a woman.
It’s just mind-bogglingly stupid and damaging, this whole thing.
But this is a war to protect our kids, and the widespread nature of this insanity has to be shown. The embarrassment these people will feel is unfortunate collateral damage.”
https://x.com/BillboardChris/status/1797494220414185488
Meanwhile, what with Father’s Day round the corner, what to get the man who has everything? Well which man could possibly say no to a ‘Period Bracelet’? Yes, real men wear a piece of tat around their wrist to show they’re totally onboard with ‘riding the crimson wave’, and I think it just reeks of masculinity, personally. Well, it’s a thing in Turdeau’s Canada, apparently;
”People don’t bring their own toilet paper to work, so they shouldn’t have to bring their own pads and tampons.
We changed that. We put free menstrual products in federally-regulated workplaces.
This bracelet is for Menstrual Hygiene Day.”
https://x.com/BillboardChris/status/1795687328440316022
Off this topic but Farage has put his cock on the block !!! What Next
‘Cock block’?
Standing as MP for Clacton & taking charge of Reform
By their logic other mammals can have their gender assigned at birth.
Yes we know that most of our institutions have been hijacked by the Wokerati. The Liberal Progressives, formerly known as communists, know that communism gets a bad press, so they do what they do with everything else and just change the language. They think “Progressive” sounds modern and good. Who could possibly object to “Progress” right?
Except “progressing to what? The answer is more and more government controlling every aspect of people’s lives
They lost trust in 2020, anything after makes no difference to me.
Dropped shopping to Old in laws this morning ! ITV morning guff prog (Cat Deeley) over to quiz they said to win a Merc & Cash , I didn’t catch the link up presenters name but nothing could have prepared me for the They Them Things Appearance , I’ll try & describe – big boned camp bloke buffed to the limit with tiny hot pants full make up doing enough to win Top prize at any Pride event ! Main stream Tele for you trying to normalise the abnormal
Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is determined at conception and noticed at birth or before, and I guess these days in most places sex is legally recorded as part of the process of registering the birth, and I suppose also for hospital records. Sex is not some invented social construct, it’s something provided by God or fate or nature or the universe or whatever you choose to believe in.
“Sex assigned at birth”?
How? Do they hold the baby in front of a Hogwarts Sorting Hat in order to have it’s fate decided?
B*llocks.
Lancet, you need to go the way of News Of The World or Titbits; you have sunk to the same level.