#the ethics of experimentation

[driftwoodcryptid]

happy halloween! i did my annual re-animator rewatch and once again had to edit the most transgender character to ever exist

[marsskop]

An experimental piece with Carcharodons.

[emporiannee]

i think it would've been funny if tobirama had lived for another decade or two. He's passed on the title of hokage and hiruzen became the new jutsu expert but no one's inherited his spot as konoha's resident unethical mad scientist. until he's got one foot out the door of full shinobi retirement and hiruzen introduces him to this new orphan kid he found named orochimaru and Tobirama, age 60 or whatever thinks 'hmm..........one more student...."

[g1deonthefirst]

wasn't alfred a hedge fund manager? i get where ur coming from re: the class divide post otherwise btw but am somewhat stumped ab this bc he was definitely the one making the most money and likely highly educated as well, and ended up a cav. ig it is STEM/nonSTEM divide?

hi! yes, alfred was a hedge fund manager — he was also augustine's brother and so comes from a similar (presumably very wealthy) background. this exception doesn't really disprove the rule to me: either way, john was disproportionately likely to make people who were highly educated necromancers and people who were not cavaliers. i want to walk through a couple possible reasons for this.

the first possibility is that john (1) believed that people who were more "intelligent" were more likely to be able to understand necromancy and (2) implicitly believed that people who were academically high-achieving like scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. were more "intelligent." clearly, john and the lyctors all seem to think pretty highly of their own intelligence. john in particular went from being a poor māori kid to being an accomplished scientist, and i don't think it's a stretch to say he probably believed he deserved it on the basis of intelligence.

in contrast, both alfred and cristabel have their own talents and intelligence disparaged — john describes alfred as "useless, but a darling" and augustine describes cristabel as "not hav[ing] the intellect you'd ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange." additionally, necromancy is talked about in scientific terms, which lends itself to the idea that you might need some scientific understanding to be good at it. i think it's entirely possible that john consciously decided that some people wouldn't be intelligent enough to hack it and made them the cavaliers, a problematic assumption chiefly in that it equates academic achievement with innate intelligence.

the second possibility, and to me the more likely one, is that john simply made the people closest to him necromancers while making people he wasn't as close to (essentially his friends' friends) non-necromancers. it's pretty clear that the people john made necromancers were people who directly worked on john's original cryogenics project with him, while the cavaliers were all people who got dragged into his cult by those original project members. alfred is a perfect example of this — he's there because he's augustine's brother. other people have made posts about the possibility that john did this to intentionally separate his friends from the people they loved.

but either way, i think this demonstrates who john as a character cared about. john, as a successful scientist, surrounded himself by people who were highly educated and successful, predominantly (as you note anon) people in STEM. people who are disproportionately likely to be white, neurotypical, and cis, or at least disproportionately likely to be able to conform to white/european, neurotypical, cis standards. not only is john not as close to people in his project-turned-cult that aren't as highly educated, but poor people aren't present at all. there are no janitors, no retail workers, no manual laborers, no farmworkers. i don't get the sense that john ever really unpacked his internalized biases or questioned why he primarily values people who are highly educated.

"but," i imagine my hypothetical reader who's somehow made it this far protesting, "of course he's surrounded by highly educated people. he's working on a cryogenics project!" well...precisely. tumblr user sophelstien's scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds essay touches on how this project demonstrates that john is not as progressive as some people assume he is, but what i'll say here is simply that john didn't have to make the people in his cryogenics project the leaders of his new society. and by installing the very people who our society rewards into positions of power, john — consciously or not — shapes the new society he's creating with the old society's inequalities.

[theprissythumbelina]

I got to yell at my students today about the importance of ethics and knowing history, featuring such highlights as "Nazis are bad" and "Deliberately infecting children with hepatitis is wrong".

[gregor-samsung]

A Divina Comédia [The Divine Comedy] (Manoel De Oliveira, 1991)

[nyan-bynary]

Kenjaku is my favorite jjk character bc like, half the shit they do is just "weird girl making dirt soup at recess" behavior but if recess was a 1000 years long and no teachers ever showed up to stop them

[netscapenavigator-official]

Do you think if we took a baby and raised it in an enclosure where everything was identical to life outside except everything was scaled down by 50%, then, at the age of 21, we introduced that person to life outside the enclosure, it would fuck then up?

[akkivee]

reeeeeeeeeiii……….. that can kill people……….

[maslows-pyramid-scheme]

Not to sound like an insufferable vegan, but nobody's ever given me a compelling reason why an animal's life is less valuable than my own

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Mar 5, 2024

The ideological march through the medical institutions was rapid and unexpected. In recent years, we have seen leading paediatric specialists asserting that children who say they are “in the wrong body” must have their feelings immediately affirmed. We have been told that if a boy claims to be a girl, or vice versa, they must be believed and fast-tracked onto a pathway to medicalisation: first puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, and in some cases irreversible surgery.

This worldwide medical scandal has disproportionately impacted gay, autistic, and gender non-conforming children. Where clinicians should have been looking out for the interests of the vulnerable, they have been encouraging them to proceed with experimental treatments. Few people would have imagined that mutilating children to ensure they better conform to gendered stereotypes would one day be considered progressive. But here we are.

Much of the responsibility must lie in the hands of WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), a US-based organisation established in 1979 that is recognised as the leading global authority in this area. WPATH has pushed for the normalisation of the “gender-affirming” approach, and its “Standards of Care” have formed the basis of policies throughout the western world, including in the NHS. 

But in an explosive series of leaked files, the credibility of WPATH might now be irreparably shattered. Whistleblowers have provided author and journalist Michael Shellenberger with videos and messages from the WPATH internal chat system which suggest that the health professionals involved in recommending “gender-affirming” healthcare are aware that it is not scientifically or medically sound. A full report has been written by journalist Mia Hughes for the Environmental Progress think-tank. The title is as chilling as its contents: The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults.

Some of the leaked internal messages are astonishing in their disregard for basic medical and ethical standards. For all that paediatric gender specialists have publicly stated that there is a consensus in favour of the “affirmative” model, and that this approach is safer than a psychotherapeutic alternative, their private conversations would seem to suggest otherwise.

There are messages in The WPATH Files proving that surgeons and therapists are aware that a significant proportion of young people referred to gender clinicians suffer from mental health problems. Some specialists associated with WPATH are proceeding with treatment even for those who cannot realistically consent to it. After all, how could a pre-pubescent or even adolescent child fully grasp the concepts of lifelong sterility and the loss of sexual function? As one author of the WPATH “Standards of Care” acknowledges in a leaked message:

“[It is] out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them. They’ll say they understand, but then they’ll say something else that makes you think, oh, they didn’t really understand that they are going to have facial hair.”

Or what about the endocrinologist who admits that “we’re often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet”? And these are the very patients who have been approved for potentially irreversible procedures.

Even when mental health concerns are severe – the WPATH Files include references to schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder – patients have been allowed to “consent” to surgical procedures. Consider the following example, in which a nurse has contacted a leading member of WPATH to raise concerns about an adult patient with PTSD, major depressive disorder, observed dissociations, and schizoid typical traits. Can such a person possibly consent to treatment? According to one of the authors of WPATH’s “Standards of Care”, the answer is a resounding “yes”:

“I’m missing why you are perplexed… The mere presence of psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria, capacity to consent, and the benefits of starting hormones outweigh the risks… So why the internal struggle as to ‘the right thing to do’?”

Treatments discussed in the leaked files include the removal of genitals, mastectomies, “minimal-depth vagino­plasties (vulvoplasties), phallus-preserving vaginoplasties, and nullification proce­dures”. A gender therapist in California speaks of intervening “on behalf of people who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, cPTSD, homeless, and got at least an orchiectomy” (removal of the testicles).

Those who have raised questions about such extreme procedures have been accused of “gatekeeping”. Even those who have later regretted their surgery have had their concerns trivialised. A Canadian endocrinologist acknowledges evidence from Dutch researchers of post-transitional regret, but says “it’s there, and I don’t think any of that surprises us”. The WPATH Files provide clear evidence that specialists are aware of the risks, but that they simply accept it as inevitable. One doctor is quoted as saying:

“It would be great if every patient could be perfectly cleared prior to every sur­gical intervention, but at the end of the day it is a risk/benefit decision.”

For some time now, it has been assumed that the “affirmative” approach is the only way to prevent patient suicides. But last July, a letter to the Wall Street Journal signed by twenty-one leading professionals involved in the care of gender-diverse youth opposed the view that this form of treatment is optimal, and pointed out that there is no secure evidence that puberty blockers reduce the risk of suicidal ideation. Last month, this was confirmed in a study published in the British Medical Journal based on a group of Finnish adolescents who were being treated for gender dysphoria between 1996 and 2019. So why have experts at WPATH taken a different view, in spite of their awareness of serious side effects and potentially fatal outcomes of the treatment they espouse?

The answer lies in one word: ideology. The new religion of gender identity is entirely faith-based, and so evidence that exposes its inherent dangers is dismissed outright by believers, even those with medical qualifications. The impact of all this is summarised by Mia Hughes in her report on the WPATH Files, in which she argues that the organisation has violated its ethical responsibilities:

“While there is a place in medicine for risky experiments, these can only be justified if there is a reliable, objective diagnosis, no other treatment options are available, and the outcome for a patient or patient group is dire. However, contrary to WPATH’s claims, the best available evidence suggests that gender medicine does not fall into this category.”

Given the fact that so many organisations have relied on WPATH’s “Standards of Care”, these revelations could be a game-changer. The ideological capture of medical institutions has resulted in reckless treatment of some of the most vulnerable in society. Patients need to understand the risks involved, and be able to make informed decisions. If nothing else, there must now be a serious reassessment of the validity of the “gender-affirming” model of healthcare.

Full details of the WPATH files can be found in the report by Mia Hughes for Environmental Progress. You can read it here.

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[crymeariveronceagain]

IF YOU LIKE MY ANALYSIS OF KOTLC, YOU SHOULD READ THIS ARTICLE!!! The author has a BA in Literature and a Master's in Library Sciences!!!! Her article is addressed to adults and takes the tone of legitimate, actual criticism. What she's writing here is the kind of stuff that I do as an English Major at my college. The first things she says are from an adult point of view on the reading of KOTLC. Like, she's coming at it with the same point of view that I went into with my re-reads two years ago. It's very critical and very interesting. The ethical points she raises are things I've noticed Shannon bringing up herself!!!! And the criticism of it not knowing what to do with its huge heavy topics is completely supported by the text!!! STARS ABOVE THIS IS SOME GOOD CLOSE READING!!! I love it so much. I need to hold onto this article forever and ever!!!! COVERT DYSTOPIA ASDLKSAJDLJK LET'S FREAKING GOOO!!!

[blujayonthewing]

I'm really glad elyss came several years before melliwyk, because mel's alignment shift from chaotic neutral to chaotic good sometimes feels a little embarrassing in an 'I can't keep my own feelings to myself for the sake of committing to the bit' sort of way, but the counterpoint to that is that elyss, steadfastly true neutral, just simply Does Not Care about anyone other than her own loved ones or anything outside her own immediate interest no matter how much I sometimes wish she would

[t4t4tclethian]

having a Social Experiment Moment (making plans with a friend who knows nothing about mcyt to show them pearl’s double life smp pov) (they are isolated from cscott interpretation discourse and i want to see what they think of him afterwards from a character analysis standpoint)

[daemonicdasein]

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

Holy bleeping mother of all the gods in heaven, hell, and everywhere else that has ever existed.

Liquid Death really DOES live up to the hype!

I haven't tried the plain water yet, but I splurged a little on a grocery order and bought the Mango Chainsaw, which isn't only mango but has *orange* in it? And it's so freaking GOOD. (If you like the taste of orange and mango, of course.)

This was a special delight because I had found a carbonated black tea with mango thing on sale in the same order, which Sounded really good in theory, because I like black tea and I love mango, but it was in fact Nasty. I'm not sure how they made black tea with a little lemon and mango taste sour and bitter and sharp instead of refreshing and mildly sweet, but they sure did.

This one's lightly sweetened, so that may be a factor, but every sip is a Delight and I am so, SO glad I bought this.

I like water itself well enough, but this is going to make re-hydrating after barely drinking enough in the past 24 hours Quite Nice.

(I don't usually do food reviews, but this genuinely Wow'd me.)