Author | Lightnews

Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 9d

Nah, it wasn't that one day people got weird. Those ads were for cis men, who, obvs, society says can do no wrong. Cis women taking hormones of any kind has always been controversial. Q.v. birth control, eliminating periods, and the whole "HRT causes cancer" moral panic.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 9d

Paper says the opposite: rare genetic versions of disease are being misdiagnosed as commoner forms of the disease - a finding which is way less surprising.

This is in keeping with the whole idea of Personalized Medicine, which had a moment ~2 decades ago, then stopped being cool for some reason.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Don't be dishonest. You said that in a context, so its meaning is mediated by that context.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

But that's not what you're saying, is it?

I know this is the first time you've ever heard someone criticize what you've been lead to believe is good evidence-based practice.

But you've been lead to believe smth that is obviously logically unsound, and I invited you to re-examine it w skepticism.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

This is how the logic you espouse kills people. Typically to save someone else a buck.

Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Of course, subsequently, the RTC was in fact performed demonstrating that Gardasil is efficacious at preventing cervical cancer in 30-something-year-olds.

In the intervening decade, some number of them went to their graves for want of a vaccine that "wasn't proven".

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

But third party payers were happy to stand on the grounds that Gardasil had not been proven via RCT to be efficacious in slightly older patients, therefore it was off label and they didn't have to pay for it.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Certainly, we ordinarily assume RTCs on one population are evidence of efficacy in others, the most famous example of course being drug trials on male patients being extrapolated to be pertinent to female patients, on whom the drug was never tested.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

There was no particular reason to believe that the HPV vaccine would stop working when one turned 30, and the evidence it worked to prevent cancer in 20yos could certainly have been construed as evidence it works in older populations.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

For example, some interesting but uncounted (though countable) number of people died in the US of cervical cancer, bc the initial RCTs of HPV vax only tested on adults up to iirc 28yo, so insurance would not cover the shot for pts over that age.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

We see this most clearly in medicine, where lack of conclusive proof of efficacy is used as justification for withholding treatments that have lesser but still compelling scientific evidence – by third party payers, such as insurance, NHS, etc.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Here in reality, we must make ethical decisions in the absence of perfect certainty. To insist on waiting for conclusive evidence is to procrastinate ethics, which is to say to abdicate them.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

True, but irrelevant. The idea that we should only act on proven certainty is tantamount to the cognitive bias that Type II errors don't exist, and have the pragmatic upshot of being a bias in favor of the status quo, which is to say the already disproportionately as advantaged.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Nominally, interest on rental deposits is legally mandatory in Massachusetts.

Admittedly, the letter of the law can be fulfilled with a 0.01% account, so you're not making real money.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

(Medicaid instead of Medicare, bc Medicaid is what pays for long-term nursing home care even for the elderly, once their finances are wiped out by needing long-term nursing care.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 12d

Given that golf courses are a public health hazard - living near or working on golf courses leads to elevated risk of Parkinson's Disease - that tax money needs to go right into Medicaid to fund the care of people bankrupted by the economic devastation of PD.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Proximity to Golf Courses and Risk of Parkinson Disease

This case-control of older US adults examines risk of Parkinson Disease by proximity of residence to a golf course.

jamanetwork.com

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 16d

How much time do you find yourself spending to check that what you're being told isn't a hallucination?

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 16d

Why would this work? Does it work? Have you tried it? AIs are the laziest searchers and default to the most mainstream of corporate media.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 16d

youtube.com/shorts/XKsPa...

Em dash on ChatGPT allegations

YouTube video by Elle Cordova

youtube.com

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

Frankly, it seems most likely they have you and other YouTubers they sponsor repeating a false claim, but, hey, if they know something I don't, I would love to know about it.

I cannot stress enough what a big deal this would be if true.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

I really want to know about it.

If you have a contact at Incogni you can nudge about this for more information, well, you yourself, given your interest in surveillance, might be interested in what they have to say. Certainly I would be.

4/n

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

*got*that

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

Regardless of where they got the info, whether from the dark web or from your insurance claims or just from asking you point blank.

So if anybody has any evidence - even weak circumstantial evidence - got a health insurance company is actually doing this, that is a huge big deal and

3/n

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

This is my beat. I predicted it would happen (or might already be happening) a long time ago.

But to my knowledge it's only a hypothetical threat as of yet. Not least because in the US it became illegal in 2014 for health ins to set rates based on health at all.

2/n

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea.bsky.social · 19d

Hey, I have a question about something your sponsor claimed. You're the second YTer I have seen sponsored by Incogni reading their copy which mentions the threat of health insurance cos using dark web data mining to raise rates. As it happens,
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