By Marc Bekoff
A number of people have asked me to weigh in on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recent announcement that they would like to lift the ban on research on animal-human chimera research. Basically, a chimera “is a single organism composed of cells from different zygotes. This can result in male and female organs, two blood types, or subtle variations in form.” I’m against this sort of research for any number of reasons. Read more →13 posts from August 2016
By Lynn Hall: The wilderness is where I continuously re-establish my present-day safety. Here I reduce my survival to basics: Have I had enough to eat? Where will I find more water? Can I stay warm enough or cool enough? Even in these untamed places—with bears and snakes, lightning, cliffs and exposed ledges—I prove again and again that I am no longer the girl of my past. I reconnect with my most true self who has grown into her strength and confidence. I know my past is behind me. Read more →
By Dennis A. Henigan
The suggestion of politically-motivated violence against public officials is terrifying on its face, but it is certainly nothing new. Indeed, Trump’s comments are a specific application of the “insurrectionist” view of Second Amendment rights that has long been a core tenet of the ideology of the National Rifle Association and the far right. According to that view, the overriding purpose of the Second Amendment is to guarantee the populace the arms it may need to resist government tyranny. Read more →By José Orduña
One convention featured the jingoistic speeches of retired generals, and ex-CIA director Leon Panetta, of protestors chanting “No more war!” being out shouted by people chanting “U-S-A!” The other convention was the Republicans’. As a Mexican immigrant naturalized as a US citizen in 2011, this is the second US general election for which I am eligible to vote. Read more →By Alondra Nelson | As a wide-eyed girl watching Roots, and wondering about mine, I never could have dreamed a future where one day I’d have the surreal experience of having my genealogical results revealed to me before a crowd of African diaspora VIPs and civil rights leaders, and with a prominent actor, Isaiah Washington, as master of ceremonies. Although this experience elicited mixed emotions in me, I can personally attest that new branches on ancestral trees are the undeniable graft of genetic genealogy. Read more →
By Steven Hill
Social Security will always have somewhat of a perception problem among younger Americans. For a certain number, it will always be viewed as “money for old people who get it from the government.” For people of any age who are working and having taxes deducted from their paychecks, Social Security is a benefit for someone else—elderly retirees. But at some point in their life, those people will no longer be able to work, and, like any type of insurance, Social Security will be there to protect them with “wage insurance” from a complete loss of earned income. Social Security is self-insurance in that way, that is, protection against the risks we all face due to old age, disability, or death. That’s a point that must be brought home to every new generation of young Americans. Read more →By Ginny Gilder
Marching into Opening Ceremonies is a big moment for athletes all over the world, a public, and oh-so-welcome acknowledgement of the extraordinary effort and amazing accomplishment required to land in the middle of this global phenomenon. Unquestionably, it’s the right time to extol the assembly of top athletes, to marvel over their histories and imagine what lies directly ahead in the next sixteen days of Olympic competition. But it’s absolutely the wrong time to characterize the efforts these elites have made to reach the top echelons of their various sports as some kind of sacrifice. Read more →By Melinda Chateauvert
Hysteria Alert! We’re heading into another international sporting event, so the predictable, hysterical, and utterly fantastical stories about international sex trafficking are on the rise. We heard this claptrap about “sex tourism” two years ago when Brazil hosted the World Cup, when some NGOs claimed “40,000” women and girls would be involved. Time Magazine’s numbers were moderate compared to the exaggerations made by others. They claimed 250,000 children would be working the streets during the tournament—or one in every sixty-eight adolescent girls in the country. Read more →By Michael Bronski
It is impossible to overestimate the effect of World War II on American culture, and in particular on lesbians and gay men. The United States entered World War II, which had been ongoing since September 1939, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This decisive turning point in U.S. history reordered American social life and mores, public and private space, and virtually all social interactions having to do with gender and sexual behavior. Read more →By Ginny Gilder
The Rio Games mark the end of the twelfth decade of the modern Olympics, an impressive track record, yet far outstripped by the tenure of the original Games, which started in 776 B.C. and lasted nearly twelve centuries. Given the most recent news that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may now consider banning an entire country from participation for cheating, I’m not optimistic they will survive to the end of this century. Read more →By Laura Erickson-Schroth, MD, MA
The most recent show of support for LGBTQ causes in professional sports was the July 21 announcement by the NBA that the men’s All-Star Game would be moved out of North Carolina because of the state’s new anti-LGBTQ law, which includes a section barring transgender people from using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity. I was surprised by the move, especially since the NBA has been slower to warm up to LGBTQ causes than the WNBA (despite being subsidiaries of the same parent organization). The NBA did participate in the Pride March, but, while Sheryl Swoopes, the first out lesbian in the WNBA, made her announcement in 2005, the first openly gay male player, Jason Collins, didn’t come out until 2013. Homophobia remains rampant in men’s sports. Read more →By Alex Dixon
Studies in neuroscience and psychology have shown that the brain is wired to respond quickly to possible threats, and in American culture at least, people may have been socially conditioned to see black male faces as one of these threats. This process can even affect people who consciously shun racial bias in any form, police officers who swear to uphold the law without prejudice, and people of color themselves. Read more →By Suzanne Kamata
On July 27, twenty-six-year-old Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee of Tsukui Yamayuri En, a care facility for the disabled in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, broke into the residential area in the early hours of the morning. After restraining staff members with zip ties, he proceeded to slash the throats of disabled residents, killing nineteen and injuring twenty-six. His motive, according to a letter that he wrote and sent to House of Representatives Speaker Tadamori Oshima, was to relieve exhausted parents and unenthusiastic caregivers of the burden of looking after the disabled. Read more →