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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Next paid 3 day seminar: ‘GlobaloneyBoiing and how it causes cancer, heart attacks and ugly nurses’
Next one after that: ‘Midazolam, murder, and euthansia and why we need to do it more often – tips and tricks for beginners’
Next one after: ‘Stabbinations, profits and Transhumanism – how to stab effectively and safely’
Followed by: ‘Dance routines in empty hospitals during a scamdemic – intermediate level’
etc
End. The. National. Death. Service.
Next one: The Roman Empire flourished during the Roman Warm Period. How an increase in temperatures leads to colonialism and how you can prevent it by turning down the heating on your wards.
Next one: Don’t clap for carers. How not to contract an STD at work.
Next one: How to tackle the obesity crisis. A beginners guide to fat shaming.
Next one: How to frame a neonatal nurse to cover up failings in your department. An advanced course for senior managers.
More Tax payers hard earned ££,s down the SH1TTER !
Memo from the Prime Minister’s office:
“Steve, important we respond to show that we’re on the side of ordinary working people, so suggest you:
1. Make announcement today that you’re a bit miffed about this
2. Er…think (1) should be enough, so no further action required.
Cheers mate. Rish”
I’ll tell you who needs unconscious bias training – the radicals that organise these conferences and push these insane agendas on everyone. They, more than anyone else, need to examine their biases. In fact they probably need psychotherapy pretty urgently.
Please don’t call it a Diversity Conference. It has nothing to do with Diversity. Our enemies have chosen this language in order to make anyone who opposes their mad, evil ideas seem like they are against “diversity” (whatever that means) – and what nice, right-thinking person could possibly be against that?
We must now always put an Orwellian interpretation on anything coming from those nominally in authority.
I’m completely against diversity when it means giving respect to a minor attracted person & child abusers. When I started in the NHS in the late 1980s they were called paedophiles & mandatory training was for child protection, how to spot grooming behaviours & prevent harm. How the world has changed. I’d be going through a disciplinary if I were still working as there is no way I could stop protecting children by going along with this perverted nonsense.
Patient care should be the focus of healthcare & that includes being aware of signs of abuse rather than facilitating abuse disguised as healthcare.
I’ve spotted a couple in my career & with the right intervention have helped to protect a wife & 2 children.
NHS internal emails and intranet announcements have the writer specify their preferred method of address, such as ‘he/him’.
Benches outside hospitals, a Southeastern Railway locomotive, and the logo of a branch of a high street bank are striped in the rainbow + chevron colours. Perhaps the new banknotes featuring the portrait of the King will be the next to display this sign of the new conformity.
The very fact that Fishy and his ministers are allowing this jamboree to proceed tells us all we need to know about where their priorities lie and whose side they are on.
An NHS waiting list of seven million and a regional health authority is organising a three day talking shop on pronouns? FFS!
Jacqueline Scott, the head nutter for this outfit, should be loudly and publicly sacked and made an example of.
Unfortunately, this crap is all part of the Agenda 2030 ESG criminal enterprise and we all know where Fishy takes his orders from so this shit will simply continue.
NHS motto:
F. the patients we’re on a jamboree.
Some people may well die while this beano plays out.
Beautifully put.
Thank you.
Brilliant, HP!
Thanks Aethelred
What on god’s green earth is this to do with healthcare? Nothing. How many times do you, as the NHS customer, find yourself in the position of being confused what to call someone? Never I should think. So it’s all about brainwashing the healthcare service in idiotic language. And this is a conference for 1,000 people over 3 days which is going to cost money. And who are all these attendees? People taken away from the actual business that the NHS is meant to deliver. It’s a effing disgrace!
This is worse than a disgrace: It’s New Labour authorized fraud. There’s a so-called equalities act which demands that all public services must DIE (note the wording) and hence, hordes of consultant and ‘charitable’ poleeches attach themselves to anything with a budget in order to suck it dry.
Seconded Aethelred
If I called a patient by the wrong name or title, they were usually quick to say what I should have called them. How does that differ from not knowing which pronoun to use? I’m certain that a very quick & firm correction would be made!!
I´m pretty sure that if doctors and nurse were in charge of the health service, we would not see this inversion of clinical priorities.
Given the way doctors and nurses have conducted themselves these last three years, I cannot support that contention.