Tag Archives: science

Not unlike the floating chairs from WALL-E.

An FDA committee today gave preliminary approval to what would be the nation’s first-ever in-home HIV test. The OraQuick rapid HIV test is already in use at many health clinics. Previous over-the-counter home HIV testing kits required sending a blood sample to a laboratory. The National Minority AIDS Council responds via press release: “Approximately 50,000 individuals in the U.S. are …

This weekend the New York Times published news of yet another study which demonstrates that those who most strongly identify as heterosexual often have secret homosexual desires. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were …

“I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some ‘highly motivated’ individuals.” – Dr. Robert Spitzer, Columbia …

In a fascinating study, researchers say that the number of Wal-Mart locations in any particular region tends to correlate with the number of SPLC-certified hate groups. The number of Wal-Mart stores was second only to the designation of a county as a Metropolitan Statistical Area in statistical significance for predicting the number of hate groups in a county, according to …

Promising news: A new treatment for prostate cancer can rid the disease from nine in ten men without debilitating side effects, a study has found, leading to new hope for tens of thousands of men. It is hoped the new treatment, which involves heating only the tumours with a highly focused ultrasound, will mean men can be treated without an …

“Really, who doesn’t already know? Who among us with the slightest acumen toward self-reflection doesn’t fully understand that the more you wail against something, the more violently outspoken or hateful you are against this or that perceived indiscretion, sexual proclivity, perversion, deviance, expression, delight, taste sensation, the more certain it is that said deliciousness secretly attracts you, turns you on …

Interesting news out of UCLA: Expanding on previous research providing proof-of-principle that human stem cells can be genetically engineered into HIV-fighting cells, a team of UCLA researchers has now demonstrated that these cells can actually attack HIV-infected cells in a living organism. [snip] In a series of tests on the mice’s peripheral blood, plasma and organs conducted two weeks and …

(Via – Andrew Sullivan)

Interesting news out of Britain: A vaccine that can train cancer patients’ own bodies to seek out and destroy tumor cells has been developed by scientists. The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients’ immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer. …

Brent “Obama Is A Skinny Ghetto Crackhead” Bozell is super-angry about that study proving that homophobes are gay. Writing for Townhall with his totally not gay fingers, Bozell says: This isn’t science. It’s psychobabble mumbo-jumbo, where somehow our potty training or our breast-feeding or our spankings have shaped our most deeply held adult beliefs. The same liberals who complained it …

Nothing we didn’t know, but interesting to read. Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates. The study is the first to document the role that both parenting and sexual orientation play in the formation of intense …

BBC Three interviews the guy who last year claimed that a stroke turned him from straight to gay.

Allergy season came early and with a vengeance. “It really is unusually early for patients to be this miserable,” says Derek Johnson, medical director of the Fairfax Allergy, Asthma and Sinus Clinic. “The mild winter has resulted in very high pollen levels in February and early March, when they’re typically very low or negligible.” In fact, he points out that …

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking public comment on a proposed plan to ease the ban on blood donations from gay men. “[T]he increased effectiveness of donor testing for [Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)], [Hepatitis B Virus (HBV)], syphilis and other infectious agents has greatly enhanced blood safety,” the department states in the notice, which will be published …

More news from the conference in Seattle. The first trial in humans of an injectable, once-a-month formulation of an HIV drug has found that drug levels were maintained at a level that should in theory be high enough to protect recipients against infection, and that the drug has so far produced very few side effects. The research was presented at …

From Animals And Homophobia on Slate: Homosexual behavior has been documented in hundreds of animal species, but the same does not hold for gay-bashing. For starters, few animals are exclusively gay. Two female Japanese macaques might have playful sex with each other on Tuesday, then mate with males on Wednesday. Pairs of male elephants sometimes form years-long companionships that include …

It’s the oldest art yet found in this hemisphere: A stick figure man with a giant phallus dubbed “the little horny man” by its discoverers is the oldest rock carving found yet in the Americas, researchers say. These findings might shed new light on when the New World was first settled, scientists added. “The figure is probably linked to some …

Good for them.