Science & Technology

A new study from the University of North Carolina shows children and teens who frequently check social media may become more sensitive in the long term to “social feedback” in the form of “likes” and “dislikes” at a time when the brain is experiencing significant developmental changes. In the study, published at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, researchers Maria Maza, et al, investigated whether the frequency with which middle-school age children check their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat social media accounts is associated with long-term changes in brain development as they mature further into adolescence.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a regulatory change that allows independent and chain drugstores, as well as mail-order companies, to offer a drug that induces abortion, making it easier for women and girls to conduct their own abortions at home or in college dorms. The New York Times reported Tuesday evening the FDA’s regulatory change, which apparently came without an official announcement to the public, officially removes the requirement for the patient to have an in-person doctor’s visit for the prescription of mifepristone, the first drug used to induce an abortion.

America First Legal (AFL) released a fourth set of documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that reveals more evidence of alleged collusion between the nation’s public health agency and social media companies to censor free speech and silence Americans under the government’s label of “misinformation.” Last week, AFL’s 600-page document release uncovered evidence that Twitter operated a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other selective “stakeholders” that would allow them to delete or flag posts viewed as “misinformation,” noted AFL, which is led by former President Donald Trump’s immigration advisor Stephen Miller.

Retired Navy SEAL Chris Beck, who called himself Kristin Beck for nearly ten years, announced he is detransitioning, and warned Americans that LGBTQ activists pushing transgender health services on children are harming them. In 2013, Beck, a combat veteran who served for over 20 years, with 13 deployments and numerous medals, came out as the first transgender soldier on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, a story that, podcast host Robby Starbuck noted earlier this month, was watched by “tens of millions of people.”

Parents are ripping a recently published “American Girl” “body image” book that contains a section called “Gender Joy,” in which young girls are urged to ask their doctors for puberty blockers in order to gain more time to weigh their gender identity.

Doctors and scientists who participated in Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s (R) COVID-19 roundtable Wednesday shared their personal experiences of the federal government’s alleged corruption and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic that they say have likely caused many more examples of serious vaccine injury for which Americans have no recourse.

Worldwide religious freedom legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a federal lawsuit Friday that challenges the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of chemical abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, claiming they present significant health risks to a pregnant woman as they also starve her unborn child to death. “[T]he FDA failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States,” the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, asserts. “And it has continued to fail them by repeatedly removing even the most basic precautionary requirements associated with their use.”

Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake condemned her opponent Katie Hobbs’ support for allowing teens who claim to identify as transgender to have access to life-altering hormone drugs and surgeries. “She’s sponsoring – that means putting her name on legislation that would introduce sex education to kindergarteners,” Lake said during a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) rally Sunday. “This is outrageous and I was racking my brain, going why would someone do that? That is sick and twisted at the same time.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says abortion providers are prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to women in advance of becoming pregnant – a practice that is without authorization and potentially dangerous for women. “The FDA is concerned about the advance prescribing of mifepristone for this use,” an anonymous FDA spokesperson reportedly told the German-owned Politico Friday. “Mifepristone is not approved for advance provision of a medical abortion.”

The Florida Board of Medicine has voted to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries such as double mastectomies and castrations – what LGBTQ activists call “gender-affirming care” – for children under the age of 18 in the state. The move to prohibit the life-altering hormones and surgeries for the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and teens makes the Florida medical board the first in the nation to pursue such a rule, NBC News reported Saturday.

A new poll finds 75 percent of likely American voters believe the transgender movement has gone too far by encouraging underage minors to use drugs and surgery to transition to the opposite sex. The survey, sponsored by Colorado-based Summit Ministries, which embraces a Christian worldview, in partnership with national polling firm McLaughlin & Associates, also finds 69 percent of voters, who have an opinion on the issue, believe the rise in transgenderism among teens is the result of influence to question their gender by social media and other cultural forces.

Connecticut GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski said Thursday in a press statement that if he is elected Connecticut governor that the state would never mandate the COVID vaccine for "schoolchildren, public or private employees, or anyone else." “It's time that we start allowing actual science -- not political science -- to inform how we approach public health decisions,” Stefanowski added. "I challenge Governor Lamont to make this same pledge to the people of our state.”

Data journalist and pollster Rich Baris posted to social media he predicts a “homeschool boom” following the news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee unanimously voted to add the COVID shot to the children and adolescent immunization schedule, a move that will likely lead many states to require COVID shots for school attendance. Baris, also known as “The People’s Pundit,” tweeted Wednesday, “Parents will flip the F--k out, with good reason. Homeschool boom.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) may have scheduled in its meeting agenda for Wednesday and Thursday a vote on whether to recommend adding COVID-19 shots to the standard Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule. The agenda’s wording is ambiguous, as Children’s Health Defense (CHD) President and General Counsel Mary Holland noted.

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech announced Wednesday the Biden Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for their “bivalent” mRNA COVID-19 booster shot for children aged 5-11 years without having completed clinical trials. “As families across the country take part in fall festivities and plan for the upcoming holiday season, we aim to provide school-aged children with additional protection against the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants, which continue to account for more than 80% of cases in the U.S.,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. “Anticipating this need, we manufactured millions of booster doses, which will be made available, pending CDC recommendation, to help families stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations.”