Inconsistency. The behavior of the scientific elite when it comes to evaluating the choices of the right and the left could not be defined in any other way. More than 75 Nobel Prize winners they signed an appeal asking senators to do not ratify the nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr as US Secretary of Health. The reason? His anti-vax and conspiracy line.
As reported by the New York Times, among the authors of the initiative is Richard Roberts, Nobel Prize winner for medicine in 1993. “Entrust the leadership of healthcare to Kennedy It would jeopardize the health of the American people and America’s leadership in health science” we read in the letter reported by the US newspaper. Kennedy “has a lack of credentials” in medicine and science, which is why he cannot lead the department responsible for protecting public health and funding biomedical research. THETrump’s ally’s opposition to “established public health tools” such as vaccines and drinking water fluoridation would represent “a risk to the well-being of the country.”
After a long list on Kennedy’s positions considered controversialranging from vaccines to Covid-19, the Nobel laureates focused on his scathing criticisms of agencies that would fall under his purview such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. And again, Kennedy threatened to fire FDA employees, which he said had declared a “war on public health,” and promised to replace hundreds of NIH employees the day after Trump took office. Fundamentalist but legitimate positions, at least as long as there is freedom of thought.
A crusade against Kennedy, therefore. But where were all these Nobel Prize winners when in 2021 the outgoing President Joe Biden appointed transgender pediatrician Rachel Levine as deputy health minister? Warning: the problem is obviously not the gender of the academic, who became the first trans person in the history of the United States to hold a management position at a federal level. Also because we are talking about a politician with a solid past as Pennsylvania’s health secretary. The real problem is fundamentalist policy carried out at the expense of minors without any scientific basis to support it. Were the members of the scientific elite asleep? Were they on holiday?
The reference is to the strategy implemented for loosen gender transition guidelines for minors. Levine’s thought is known to all: eliminate age limits for surgery on minors. Excerpts from emails from WPATH members recounted how the trans deputy minister’s staff urged them to eliminate the limits proposed by the guidelines. The draft guidelines, published in late 2021, recommended lowering the minimum age to 14 for hormone treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgery, and 17 years for genital surgeries or hysterectomies. The limits were eliminated in the final guidelines, Feminist Post recalls, triggering understandable concerns from experts.
In an email, we read that Levine “was very concerned that having an age limit (especially for surgery) would affect access to care for trans youth and perhaps even adults.” But on what scientific basis was this orientation based? Spoiler: on no scientific basis. Because gender dysphoria is a very delicate topic and the body of minors cannot be treated lightly, also considering what is demonstrated by the latest studies on the topic which have pushed many countries to suspend the administration of puberty blockers and to opt for psychological paths instead surgical. Yet Levine insisted on allowing irreversible operations on the skin of boys and girls. Ideology that beats sciencesimply.
But, let’s repeat, perhaps the anti-Kennedy Nobel Prize winners were taking a nap…
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