Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

sensible-med.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 340 posts

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#311

Post by sitkack »

scarab92 wrote: post #216
sitkack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people voted against Trump than voted for. • 77,302,580 voted for this administration (49.8%) • 77,935,722 voted against this administration (50.2%) From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43191410

You're being a little deceptive here, by summing votes for all candidates combined as "against". What really matters is Trump v Harris, and Trump won that both in the electoral college and in the popular vote.

There is no deception, those numbers are what they say they are, if you click through the link you can see the source document.

More people voted for a candidate other than Trump.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#312

Post by conicsl »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #309
conicsl wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives leapt upon this as a wedge issue in recent years, but originally the pushback against the imposition of males upon the female category in sports (and female spaces in general) came from feminist activism. At this point it's hundreds of male athletes competing in women's and girls' sport: https://shewon.org/males

So now we have people inspecting women's genitals to see if they are really female, women being called out because they don't look feminine enough, and all the worst misogynistic instincts on full display. The thing is, the best athletes frequently have genetic privilege that others don't have, whether it be extra long or extra short limbs, being extra tall, having higher than average testosterone levels, etc. There…

Screening for sex can be done with a cheek swab. It's much, much less invasive than the anti-doping tests that require blood to be extracted and a direct visual on the athlete passing urine. And it only needs to be done once in an athlete's career.

In most cases though it's very obvious when a male is in a women's event. For example, no-one is going to mistake this male, who competes in women's cycling, for female: https://i.ibb.co/N6ZBzh4K/F4-Svyxt-XYAAMpc-M.jpg

The best athletes often do have some sort of genetic privilege, that is true. But look at the world records of pretty much any sport and compare the most elite male athletes with the most elite female athletes: the difference is massive. Even having advantages in limb length, lung capacity, and so on doesn't overcome the physical advantage of male development.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#313

Post by kleton »

motorest wrote: post #310
kleton wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preserving state institutions As Obama said, elections have consequences. Do you think there should be a permanent bureaucracy that is totally unaffected by elections? Or put it this way, hypothetically if James Bowman takes power for the next 8 years, and the other side has had 12 years to implement and entrench their institutions, are you really going to object to your side reversing it when the pendulum swings b…

> Do you think there should be a permanent bureaucracy that is totally unaffected by elections? I don't think you have a good grasp on what is happening, both in form and extent. You're making it sound like the Trump administration is refreshing bureaucrats, where in reality it's completely dismantling the whole federal state while imposing a totalitarian agenda. It's destroying public health services, education serv…

To return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH- hadn't they been funding gain of function research on coronaviruses? It would be hard to claim that cleaning house there is national suicide.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#314

Post by a-dub »

kleton wrote: post #313
motorest wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think there should be a permanent bureaucracy that is totally unaffected by elections? I don't think you have a good grasp on what is happening, both in form and extent. You're making it sound like the Trump administration is refreshing bureaucrats, where in reality it's completely dismantling the whole federal state while imposing a totalitarian agenda. It's destroying public health services, education serv…

To return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH- hadn't they been funding gain of function research on coronaviruses? It would be hard to claim that cleaning house there is national suicide.

if you have a growth mindset, it certainly is. they're making the united states a less attractive place for the tippy-top of stem research on a world class level. serious people have choices, they can and will choose elsewhere if things here are a mess.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#315

Post by kleton »

a-dub wrote: post #314
kleton wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH- hadn't they been funding gain of function research on coronaviruses? It would be hard to claim that cleaning house there is national suicide.

if you have a growth mindset, it certainly is. they're making the united states a less attractive place for the tippy-top of stem research on a world class level. serious people have choices, they can and will choose elsewhere if things here are a mess.

Imposing the Common Core curriculum on American children did infinitely more damage to the country's STEM competitiveness than gutting the NIH's funding of unreplicable or outright harmful research.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#316

Post by a-dub »

kleton wrote: post #315
a-dub wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you have a growth mindset, it certainly is. they're making the united states a less attractive place for the tippy-top of stem research on a world class level. serious people have choices, they can and will choose elsewhere if things here are a mess.

Imposing the Common Core curriculum on American children did infinitely more damage to the country's STEM competitiveness than gutting the NIH's funding of unreplicable or outright harmful research.

to return to specifics, this thread is about the NIH. cutting indirects overnight to 15% with zero warning is vandalism. the united states was a world leader (this means it produced and attracted the best) in this area, hopefully it will remain so despite this vandalism.

with respect to common core, as far as i can tell, nationalization efforts were initiated under bush ii, and then driven over the past two decades by institutions, states and federal support. some states follow it, others do not. i don't see your point.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#317

Post by LinuxBender »

The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

I know I will get beat up for this comment but someone has to say it. I believe this direction is well deserved. Clearly they were given far too much trust and were operating as a rogue organization for far too long. Developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines on college campuses and then moving them to China once called out by Obama is cavalier, aggressive, dangerous, wanton disregard for life and absolute folly. And that's just what we know about. They can not take their own work seriously. To be clear I am not opposed to developing bio-weapons and dual use medicines rather I just want the people making these things to put a tremendous amount of safeguards friction and security around them. Move all the weapon development to highly secured military installations that are far away from everyone and require extensive scans before boarding a jet required to travel to that location and that is just to start their assignment. Once there they will have no privacy and will not leave until their work is completed and fully vetted.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#318

Post by FireBeyond »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #257
wyager wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To Republicans' credit, they have not flipped on states' rights even when they dominate DC. Maybe this is a good time for everyone to (pretend to) be aligned on states' rights and ram through some measures to that end.

There are inklings of a change there. You can see it in things like proposing to prevent women from traveling to another state to get an abortion, or forcing states to assist the federal government with immigration enforcement. I expect we will see more of that if it helps them get to their desired policy goals.

Absolutely. "Conspiracy to commit abortion" is being proposed if not partly a thing in many states, and runs the gamut of anything from looking up info online, to traveling, to financially supporting or even giving a place to stay for someone doing this.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#319

Post by FireBeyond »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #7
bryant wrote: post #2

Practically speaking, when the majority of people who decided to vote voted for the person applying these policies, what mitigations are left? The courts are themselves slow and ultimately roll up to allies of the despot. People say that the midterms are crucial, but the midterms are only likely to be won if Democrats truly unify and apply winning strategies. Sadly the only winning strategies now seem to involve tell…

True that. But I don't recall Trump campaigning on this policy. In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections. It's a sad sign of the state of US politics that this, which would cause outrage in the past, barely merits a mention amidst all the other rage bait things he's doing. His barmy executive orders, DOGE, that disgraceful display with Ze…

Trump really is 1984 writ large.

> In fact he's putting into play Project 2025, the thing that he explicitly disclaimed knowledge of prior to the elections.

He did explicitly disclaim knowledge and awareness.

And he explicitly, previously, called them out as some "good people who have some very strong ideas that would be very good for the country".

What is amazing, sadly, is just how little this impacts or affects him.

Re: The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

#320

Post by throwaway48476 »

throwyouaway wrote: post #267
throwaway48476 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closest since Lincoln.

Lincoln started the war? Lincoln’s actions didn’t result in the eventual freeing of the slaves? Lincoln was unpopular in the South and so they wanted to take their ball and go home; the South started the war - the North ended it and has the graciousness not to take absolute vengeance on the remains. Lincoln was imperfect and could have done more so you think Trump would have done anything? Except make a “deal” swappi…

Its a good thing you are gracious not to take absolute vengeance on your neighbors when they annoy you. I feel bad for them to have to live near someone so violently unhinged. Politics is the art of compromise.
Post reply on HN