Thursday, April 28, 2011

GTFOH!




Last week, New York state characterized freeze tag, Wiffle Ball, kickball and dodgeball as potentially hazardous, thereby subjecting camp providers overseeing those games to state regulation.
Out West, the NCAA is at odds with the University of North Dakota over the continued use of the nickname "the Fighting Sioux" and its accompanying logo.
But neither was the PC story of the week. That distinction belongs to a controversy surrounding a world-renowned surgeon who resigned a leadership position in the face of criticism over a one liner he delivered concerning semen.
Lazar Greenfield, M.D. is no ordinary surgeon. Until last week, he was the president-elect of the American College of Surgeons. The man is the inventor of the Greenfield Filter, a device that has saved countless lives as a means of preventing blood clots during surgery. He's a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan. He has written more than 360 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, 128 book chapters and two textbooks. He has served on the Editorial Board of 15 scientific journals and was also the lead editor of the Surgery News, the trade publication in which his writing initiated Semengate.
In the February issue, he penned some thoughts on Valentine's Day under the heading of "Gut Feelings." ("But Valentine's Day is about love, and if you remember a romantic gut feeling when you met your significant other, it might have a physiological basis.") Greenfield proceeded to then discuss the mating habits of fruit flies ("It has long been known that Drosophila raised on starch media are more likely to mate with other starch-raised flies"), the mating habits of the rotifer ("Biologists say that it's more advantageous for a rotifer to remain asexual and pass 100 percent of its genetic information to the next generation."). In each case, Dr. Greenfield made sure to reference to the scientific literature. Then he turned his attention to humans.
Dr. Greenfield noted the therapeutic effects of semen, citing research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior which found that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms (as well as those who remained abstinent).
Presumably it was the closing line that caused the controversy: "So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates."
The attempt at Jackie Mason-humor apparently didn't sit well in certain quarters. Dr. Greenfield resigned as editor of the Surgery News and gave up his stewardship of ACS after learning that his article had spurred threats of protests from outside women's groups.
 [Source]

When I read the headlines "Scientist Says Sperm Makes Women Happy."  I expected some heavy handed treatise light on facts suggesting women should all swallow.  When I read the actual essay which you can find in the above link, what I found was a tame and well written essay with one line that actually pertained to human females and sperm.  What a world we live in where something as tame as this essay which smacks more lighthearted than serious, could case such an uproar.  This guy had to actually step down from a position behind this PC garbage.

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