The Changing Face Of AIDS

Hit this link for a huge interactive version of the above image. Definitely worth a few minutes of your day.

Mark King Attends The ADAP Conference

JMG reader Mark King sends us his recap of the AIDS Drugs Assistance Program (ADAP) conference, boiling the entire event down into a few minutes.

Tony Perkins On Gay Dick Size

"As a pro-family organization, we would prefer not to use R-rated language in reporting the news--but in our current culture of sexual dysfunction, sometimes it can't be helped. Fiscal and social conservatives should have no trouble uniting in outrage over the news that federal taxpayer money from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was used to subsidize a researcher studying the size of the male sex organ in homosexual men. The researchers wanted to see what difference size made for the men's 'sexual health.'

"The main difference they found was in the positions assumed when such men engage in a certain sexual act, which former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop rightly called 'simply too dangerous to practice.' Men having sex with men is a high-risk activity that should be discouraged altogether, not subjected to bizarre research at taxpayer expense. Let's tell President Obama, Congress, and the NIH: We'd like to keep our own money and use it to raise our own families." - Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, reacting to a NIH study of gay male penis size.

Another Penis Size Study

A 2009 NIH study of penis size and gay men is just now getting publicity. The study reveals little unknown to most of you, I'm betting.

This particular research resulted in a 2009 report titled, "The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men." The study reported, among its findings, that gay men with "below average penises" were more likely to assume a "bottom" sexual position, while those with "above average penises" were more likely to assume a "top" sexual position. Those with average penises identified themselves as "versatile" in the bedroom. Though it's difficult to trace exactly how much federal funding went to the project, the study was one of many linked to an $899,769 grant in 2006. The grant was administered by NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, and went first to a group called Public Health Solutions and a researcher with the National Development and Research Institutes before going to individual researchers.

The wingnuts are rushing out of the woodwork to denounce the study, of course.

OHIO: Catholic Bishop Bans Raising Money For Breast Cancer Research

Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair has banned his parishes and schools from participating in any fundraising for breast cancer research. Because one day, maybe, some of that money might be used for stem cell research.

Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair sent a letter banning the fundraising for Susan G. Komen for the Cure to all priests and parishes in the 19-county diocese over the weekend. Cincinnati's archbishop earlier this year decided that schools and parishes in the 19-county Cincinnati Archdiocese cannot raise funds for Komen for the same reason. Scientists say research on embryonic stem cells, which are usually taken from discarded embryos at fertility clinics, may lead to cures for diseases. The Catholic Church maintains that the destruction of the embryo amounts to the killing of human life.

The Komen Foundation says it has never funded stem cell research.

One-Eyed Baby Albino Shark

The jury is out on whether this is photoshopped, but either way I'm seeing a new Disney character.

The Handfish

Via Richard Dawkins:

Using its fins to walk, rather than swim, along the ocean floor in an undated picture, the pink handfish is one of nine newly named species described in a recent scientific review of the handfish family. The new-species determinations were made based on a number of factors, including number of vertebrae and fin rays, coloration, the presence of scales and spines, and proportional body measurements, according to review author Daniel Gledhill of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO.

Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea Found

Scientists in Japan have discovered a new strain of gonorrhea that appears to be resistant to all antibiotics.

"This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery," lead researcher Magnus Unemo, professor at the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in Örebro, Sweden, said in a statement. "Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it."

Flashed Face Distortion Effect

Women Are Better At Everything

So says a study cited by TIME Magazine. Men do things worse, apparently, because they have a penis.

What's the problem with men? "There's been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they're doing, even when they really don't know what they're doing," John Ameriks, the author of the Vanguard study, told the New York Times. The reason for that overconfidence may come down to biology, research suggests. There's a growing field of study called "neuroeconomics," in which scientists are examining the link between hormonal and neurological impulses and financial decision-making. One such recent study by John Coates, a research fellow in neuroscience and finance at Cambridge University, tested male traders' hormone responses to workplace decisions. He found that testosterone — the stuff that makes men, well, men — surges during winning streaks. And that may drive both risk-taking and an attitude of infallibility. The so-called "winner effect," which has been seen in athletes during competition, also seems to apply to male traders.

The Narrowing Food Tree

(Source)

AMA Comes Out For Marriage

In response to the vote in the New York legislature, the American Medical Association has issued a call for the marriage equality across the United States. Via press release from Freedom To Marry:

With the New York State now the sixth – and largest – state to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a policy position declaring that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is “discriminatory” and reaffirming existing AMA policy to support relationship recognition of gay and lesbian couples as a means of addressing health disparities faced by those couples and their families. “With this deliberate policy statement by the American Medical Association, the nation’s doctors diagnose the pain and injury that exclusion from marriage inflicts on lesbian and gay couples, their children, and loved ones – and make clear that ending marriage discrimination is the cure,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and President of Freedom to Marry. “The AMA now joins every other mainstream public health organization in America in making the case for providing the freedom to marry – and the critical safety-net that comes with marriage – to loving, committed same-sex couples.”

FOTF Denies Climate Change