'Resist 45' Activist Gets $45,000 Taxpayer Grant To Study 'Transgender Health'

The National Institute of Health (NIH), in its infinite wisdom, has just awarded nearly $45,000 to a post-doctoral student at Duke University, and unabashed "Resist 45" activist, for the specific purpose of studying "transgender health."  According to the NIH website, the project got underway on May 1st and is expected to continue through August 2018...at which point we"re almost certain more taxpayer money will be thrown at worthy follow-up projects.

But, perhaps even more important that the topic of the grant is the person to whom the grant has been awarded.  Ethan Cicero is a post-doctoral student at Duke University and an avid "Resist 45" activist.   He has written numerous previous research reports in the past on extremely critical healthcare issues like whether or not hospitals should ask individuals for their preferred pronouns and “be sensitive to shared spaces” by keeping the “gender to which they identify in mind” when placing transgender individuals in rooms.

Cicero has also attacked doctors for “incorrectly us[ing] sex and gender interchangeably,” since gender is “more abstract and refers to the complex relationships among gender biology (sex), gender identity (one’s sense of being female, male, both, or neither), and gender expression (outward presentation behaviors, and roles).”

Meanwhile, in an article published in the January 2016 issue of the Journal of Emergency Nursing entitled ""I Was a Spectacle…A Freak Show at the Circus": A Transgender Person’s ED Experience and Implications for Nursing Practice," Cicero went so far as to blame America"s emergency rooms for the high attempted suicide rates of transgender people.

"Few worry about clinician competence or are concerned that they may be denied care; however, transgender personal contemplating and ED visit sometimes face these issues.  The scarcity of of clinical providers adequately prepared to care for transgender persons is a major barrier to seeking care.  In addition, some transgender people encounter denial of services, discrimination, harassment, and even violence in healthcare settings.  The accumulation of barriers cause some transgender people to avoid seeking even routine preventative care.

The implication of these barriers is profound.  The lack of high-quality, equitable healthcare is directly  associated with a high lifetime suicide rate in the transgender community."

New flash, Ethan, everyone hates going to the emergency room...it has nothing to do with your "gender expression."

As the The Washington Free Beacon points out, Cicero"s controversial public statements go well beyond his emergency room research papers and were spread all over his FaceBook page before it was recently changed to private.  Perhaps he didn"t think that the NIH would appreciate his post alleging the Pence"s pro-life views only applied to “white, straight, and American individuals/babies.”

Ethan Cicero, a post-doctoral student at Duke University, received the grant. Cicero describes his employer as "The Resistance" on his now-private Facebook account.

Cicero"s cover photo on the social media platform reads "Resist 45," in reference to President Donald Trump. He changed his profile picture to "Not My President" on Inauguration Day.

"Hey Women"s Marchers, vagina does not equal woman," Cicero wrote on Facebook, referencing the liberal march the day after Inauguration Day that received criticism from transgender activists for not being inclusive to biological men who identify as women.

"Stop erasing trans/gender nonconforming people," Cicero said, linking to an article in the Washington Post with the headline, "It"s time to drop the vagina as a protest symbol."

Cicero"s Facebook account was changed to private shortly after the request for comment was sent.

We simply can"t wait to see what amazing things Ethan can write about with his new $45,000 budget. 

Trump's Budget A First Step Toward De-Politicizing Science

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

The Trump administration has released its proposed 2018 budget, and within it are some things worth cheering. Trump’s "America First budget" includes needed cuts to the regulatory state, defunds efforts to purchase more Federal land, eliminates funding for 19 minor government agencies, and makes significant cuts to a number of more significant ones — including the State Department, HUD, and Commerce. Unfortunately, the proposal also reflects the myth that America’s military is underfunded, calling for a $52 billion increase for the Pentagon and another $2.8 billion increase for Homeland Security. The budget also ignores America’s web of entitlement programs, the larger driver of the nation’s fiscal woes.

While the Trump budget, should it pass, would do little to change government spending as a whole, the targeted cuts would have a positive impact beyond the US debt clock. For example, the proposed cuts to the Energy Department, the EPA, and the National Institute of Health represent a significant step toward separating state and science.

It should go without saying that scientific research is a vital part of civilized society, allowing for technological breakthroughs that dramatically increase the quality of life for mankind as a whole. It is precisely because of its great importance that it should not be politicized by being influenced by politicians and government bureaucrats. The inherent problems of government"s inability to efficiently allocate scarce resources doesn"t change when the subject is science, so government research can suffer with the same issues of waste, fraud, and abuse that regularly haunt other programs. 

The National Institute of Health, one of the areas most impacted by the Trump budget, provides a number of examples of such questionable research. As Senator Jeff Flake documented last year, the National Institute of Health dedicated millions to such pressing research as the impact of cocaine on bees, testing sex steroids on goldfish, and studying the appearance of Jesus on toast. In its own version of Washington Monument Syndrome, the NIH then came back to Congress asking for more funds to dedicate to actual public health concerns.

Waste at the NIH isn’t just a concern for economists and attention-seeking politicians, Dr. Michael Braken, at Yale University School of Public Health, has argued that 87.5 percent of the organization"s research is waste.

For every 100 research projects, only half lead to published findings. Of those 50, half have significant design flaws, making their results unreliable. And of those 25, half are redundant or unnecessary because of previous work. That’s how you get to 12.5 percent.

Not only are the priorities of public research questionable, it can impact the science itself. We have seen this particularly in the case of climate science, one area which is targeted extensively in Trump’s budget.

Earlier this year Dr. John Bates, a former NOAA scientist, documented how climate data was improperly handled. The purpose, as Bates states, was:

[to put a] thumb on the scales — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Government-funded science was manipulated to push a government agenda.

Past administrations" concerns with warming have also led to programs incentivizing “alternative energy” sources, which can lead to all sorts of bad investments by private companies seeking public subsidy. One of the most prominent examples was the failure of Solyndra, the solar panel company that went bankrupt after receiving billions from taxpayers. These programs also take a hit in Trump’s budget.

Cuts to government research programs, however, should only be the first step toward making American science great again. The second part should come in the form of cutting taxes to the wealthiest Americans, and eliminating taxes for scientific investment. This is precisely what Murray Rothbard advocated in Science, Technology, and Government, and it would build upon a long standing American tradition of wealthy Americans playing a pivotal role in scientific innovation.

While it’s fair to debate whether Elon Musk is closer to Howard Roark or James Taggart based on his use of government subsidies, his SpaceX program has demonstrated the potential of privatizing space exploration — and the efficiencies that come with it. For those concerned about private interest in research without explicitly profitable ends, last year private non-profits provided $2.3 billion to basic research.

While his proposed budget is a solid first step toward de-politicizing science, unfortunately the increase in Pentagon spending means that military-related research will continue to enjoy the perks of government privilege. Resources that could have been dedicated to serving the wants and needs of the public will instead be allocated to building ever more expensive weapons for the world’s most powerful military (regardless of its actual performance).

As long as Trump continues to view the military-industrial complex as a sacred cow, he won’t make real progress in draining the swamp.