To those who still care about science as a process that uses honest data to produce replicable results, the last couple of decades has been disheartening when it comes to everything from so-called “Anthropogenic Climate Change,” to COVID’s origins and treatments, to so-called “transgenderism.” Still, we consoled ourselves that there were certain things so cut-and-dried that they could not yield to politics. For example, how certain diseases affect men and women differently. A monkeypox study in The Lancet blows even that faint hope to smithereens.

There is something bizarre about a Lancet article entitled “Human monkeypox virus infection in women and non-binary individuals during the 2022 outbreaks: a global case series.” It had all the earmarks of a reputable study.

It was published in The Lancet, which still rests on a reputation it earned over 199 years. It has an enormous number of authors with strings of letters behind their names:

And of course, its very format implies respectability.

The fact that it referred to non-binary individuals was a bit concerning, but the casual reader would assume that the article focused on biological women, no matter what they claimed to be. After all, we’ve long known that diseases affect men and women differently, including the fact that men and women perceive the onset of a heart attack in very different ways. That makes sense, given that men and women have different organs, bone structures, and hormones.

The devil, as always, is in the details. It turns out that almost half of the “women” involved in this study about monkeypox in women…were men:

This is a bizarre study.

It concludes "The clinical features of monkeypox in women and non-binary individuals were similar to those described in men"

47% of the women were male.

It is hardly surprising they had clinical feature similar to men.

ЁЯЩД https://t.co/NMX3Djlyp8

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 26, 2022

That little fact is buried in the study’s findings, along with the information that most of these “men” caught monkeypox the exact same way all gay men caught it: Unsafe sex. Moreover, a quarter of these men were HIV positive, something that could well affect monkeypox contagion:

Collaborators reported data for a total of 136 individuals with monkeypox virus infection who presented between May 11 and Oct 4, 2022, across 15 countries. Overall median age was 34 years (IQR 28–40; range 19–84). The cohort comprised 62 trans women, 69 cis women, and five non-binary individuals (who were, because of small numbers, grouped with cis women to form a category of people assigned female at birth for the purpose of comparison). 121 (89%) of 136 individuals reported sex with men. 37 (27%) of all individuals were living with HIV, with a higher proportion among trans women (31 [50%] of 62) than among cis women and non-binary individuals (six [8%] of 74). Sexual transmission was suspected in 55 (89%) trans women (with the remainder having an unknown route of transmission) and 45 (61%) cis women and non-binary individuals; non-sexual routes of transmission (including household and occupational exposures) were reported only in cis women and non-binary individuals.

To the extent the study implied that it was concerned with women, it was a fraud implying to superficial readers (e.g., the media) that women were as likely to catch monkeypox through sexual transmission as men were, taking this stigma off promiscuous homosexuals. And indeed, that’s exactly what happened.

The University of Minnesota wrote, “The first global case study of monkeypox in female patients suggests that as much as 25% of infections in women are not linked to sexual transmission” (i.e., 75% are STDs). Forbes wrote, “Monkeypox mainly spreads among women and nonbinary people through sexual contact….” Carefully reading the summary, though, shows it was the fake women (i.e., homosexual men) who got monkeypox through sex.

The results for women are opaque because The Lancet article jumbles together “cis women and non-binary individuals,” the latter of whom could be men. Of those, 61% caught the pox sexually. Significantly, “non-sexual” transmission occurred “only in cis women and non-binary individuals.” That means, of course, that the study is dishonest when it writes that 89% of fake women caught the disease through sex; it was 100%.

This goes beyond an unreplicable study, which is itself a huge problem in what used to be known as science. It may even go beyond “mere” fraud. Fraud requires knowingly making a misstatement with the intention that people rely upon it to their detriment. What we may be seeing here is the result of at least two decades of academic brainwashing.

That is, the “scientists” involved may no longer be capable of understanding that men and women are biologically different. Their indoctrination may be so profound that they genuinely believe that a biologically intact man who has sex with other men but who nevertheless “identifies” as a woman is a woman for all purposes, including scientific analysis.

If the Lancet study reflects that level of delusion, we are in more dire straits than if this were just fraud. This is a magical pre-modern world, one in which dreams, portents, witches, and evil spirits, along with all sorts of other imaginary things, control the world’s institutions. The premodern world was also a time of short lifespans, cold, dark, hunger, and great suffering.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Image by Andrea Widburg using public domain material.