HUB's LIST of medical fun facts

“Bathroom Bill passes the House and goes to the Senate next month.
Governor Baker still on the fence.”

Gender politics are currently heating up in North Carolina, Massachusetts, and other states about proposed bills banning discrimination against transgender people “in public accommodations”. Many states have already passed laws or issued Executive Orders banning discrimination against transgender people in government and other jobs. The lightening rod in these new bills is the clause allowing transgender people to use the public restroom appropriate for what “they look like”.  This effort to “ban transgender discrimination in all public accommodations” has been succinctly reframed as “which restroom are they allowed to use”, hence the name “bathroom bill”.  Groups in favor of letting transgender people use the bathroom “that matches how they look” advocate passionately for the rights of transgender people. Opponents raise the specter of men masquerading as women assaulting women in public bathrooms. If it weren’t for the strong emotions swirling throughout this largely symbolic conflict these discussions might be another source of “comic relief” in this election season.

As previously blogged  different kinds of gender-benders can look the same.  These proposed laws will set rules based on how people LOOK, but transgender people define themselves by how they think. “Transvestites, transexuals, and cross-dressers can be defined by who they go to bed WITH. Transgender people are defined by who they go to bed AS.”

These bills mark our continuing evolution of trying to deal with the changing views of gender identification. In 2014 ABC News found 58 possible gender identifications allowed by Facebook, though many of them are just slight variations of the same term; ex: “Male to Female” and “MTF”, “Cisman” and “Cisgender Man”. The list also includes “Other” and “Two Spirit”.  In 2015 California colleges in response to a 2011 California law started giving 6 choices for voluntary gender identification on student applications: “male; female; trans male/trans man; trans female/trans woman; gender queer/gender non-conforming; and different identity.”   They also added a question asking the student to voluntarily identify their sexual orientation. All of this apparently for state government data collection purposes, and, perhaps, to help make appropriate roommate assignments. The California colleges have stated repeatedly that the new information does not enter into the admission decision process itself. 

Not surprisingly a demand on a number of college campuses has risen for more “gender neutral” restrooms as one logical solution to this gender conundrum.. In Europe, and in select small public facilities in the U.S., they are  called “Unisex” restrooms. If you are wondering how you could identify such a facility, you might just look for this sign.:

UnCHOF
My most recent nomination to the Unintended Consequence Hall of Fame (UnCHOF) goes to the Novartis pharmaceutical company. They make Voltaren (diclofenac) a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug commonly used  for joint stiffness and pain when simple Advil doesn’t help. It has been associated with a small risk of cardiac toxicity in humans.

Years ago farmers in India started giving diclofenac to their aging, limping, stiff cows in hopes of getting another year or two of use out of them. When the cows died their carcasses were left in the fields as was the custom in India and millions of vultures quickly reduced them to piles of bones. The vultures of India have been providing this necessary and efficient service for centuries.  But, the vultures ingested the diclofenac remaining in the cow carcasses, and it so happens that vultures lack the enzyme that metabolizes diclofenac. The rising blood levels of the drug were toxic to their kidneys.  Millions of vultures in India and Pakistan, as in ALL of them, had died by 2008 of renal failure. “Today there are many young Indians who have never seen a vulture.” (1)

When the “vulture clean-up service” died out the cow carcasses were trucked away to dumps. Feral dogs found the dumped carcasses to be a ready source of food, and the feral dog population in India exploded. Recently there have been more frequent sightings of leopards, yes leopards, in some Indian urban areas. The leopards are there to eat the dogs.

So, veterinarian use of a very common non-steroidal drug consumed by millions of humans has in India killed off a whole species and has produced a new type of urban danger, hungry leopards!  QED

References:
1. A River Runs Again; India’s Natural World in Crisis;  by Meera Subramanian, 2015

This entry was posted on Friday, April 15th, 2016 at 11:22 PM and is filed under current events, drugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.