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Maybe you know, but how much chronic illness does the UK wrestle with compared to the US? About the same?
A while ago I went down this rabbit hole about how to combat childhood obesity, and the scourge of associated diseases it causes, assorted advocates are recommending Ozempic as a first line of defense instead of diet and exercise. Because psychopaths are employing HAAS or woke -ISM language to imply diet and exercise is unfair, but Ozempic for toddlers is "equity".
So I sit and I ask myself, does a NHS in the American context make this worse or better? My gut reaction is worse. These people have wormed their way into every level of government policy crafting in a way that has proven (as yet) impossible to uproot. I can't shake the feeling that if we had an American NHS they'd be reporting parents to child services for feeding their kids vegetables instead of pills.
Or take trans kids, an issue I am 1000% against. By and large it's fiat accompli as medical licensing boards have been weaponized, and if even ideologically critical doctors don't toe the "affirm affirm affirm" party line, they lose the livelihood they went into massive college debt and sacrificed over a decade of their life to achieve. All the same, does this get better or worse with an American NHS? My gut is it gets worse. Which is paradoxical as the UK NHS effectively banned the practice of transing kids. But my read on the beliefs of the PMC that would be in charge of an American NHS say the outcome would be the complete opposite.
Because it actually matters what people make up an institution. And presently, I wouldn't trust the federally employed PMC to manage my health. As the groundswell of support for RFK Jr shows, they've done a shit job in their already limited capacity the last 50 years.
Maybe in 4 years, or however long it takes to restore trust in institutions and non-partisan science, my thoughts on this will change. I want to believe things will be different this time around. But I am also prepared for disappointment.
Just a minor nitpick, but since I see this so often:
It's "fait accompli," (French for "accomplished fact") not "fiat accompli" — a "fiat" is an authoritative command or order, and is from the Latin fīat "let it be, let their be, may it become, may it happen" (probably best known from the phrase in the Latin version of Genesis 1:3: fīat lūx, "let there be light").
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Puberty blockers for under-18s banned indefinitely, published just three hours ago. Strange to see a country as culturally close to the US as the UK, to deviate so greatly from the policies of the Metropolis. Maybe Arjin is right, and that transexualism, unlike other minority sexual ideologies, will not achieve permanent victory.
Wes Streeting is an openly gay man and has (like a lot of the Labour cabinet) a fairly consistent record of being pro-LGB and trans sceptic. This is often framed as a matter of "they want to make gay kids trans instead of letting them be gay". Trans activists often frame this anti-trans attitude, the one area of an agenda which the country has otherwise enthusiastically embraced, as being due to the tabloid press. I have to say I agree, the media which has been broadly pro-refugee, gay rights etc. (with the only dissent coming sporadically from the Sun and Express) has been in near lockstep over the trans issue, at least since the Tavistock scandal. Even the Guardian publishes regular TERF-y op eds. Why? Honestly no idea, I mean the outrage stuff clearly sells, but it isn't as if the politicans are all anti-woke, just specifically on this issue.
Far out speculation: there might be a link to the fact that the Conservative party activist wing and MPs are incredibly homosexual from top to bottom, as is Fleet Street. They legalised gay marriage so have their credentials with the LGB crowd already, rather than in the US where it tends to be either LGBT rights OR anti-LGBT. Something there..?
It's interesting speculation, but generally the LGB organisations have taken up the T mantle, and this is no different in the UK (with Stonewall being a strong proponent of trans issues).
Two plausible-ish reasons I've seen come up to explain it are:
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