sci-show i generally like what you say but why are you like that sometimes
like, genuinely
the video on hrt and transition claiming that "spironolactone is the most commonly used anti-androgen" with zero extra qualification, without even checking if this fact about the USA even applies to other countries at all (it doesn't, because spironolactone is an awful "dirty" medicine that's not ideal in most cases - in fact it only even kinda works as an anti-androgen because it is too non-specific, its main use is to regulate blood pressure ffs)
now they put up a video on how "some doctors want to split up autism spectrum disorder again" and the only mention of autistic people not being consulted at all in the process is a small remark at the end of the video
and of course, plenty of stock photos of the DSM, with zero acknowledgement that not every country out there uses this usa-specific, paywalled, mental health diagnoses manual
"oh but the researchers grouped people by genetics"
*looks at you in the eye, grisps you, and forces you to at least check fgukign wikipedia before saying something dumb*
because if you did, you'd know there are more than a hundred genes that affect one's odds of being autistic, and that, crucially, we *don't know which alleles contribute to it*, in part because it's not a simple "the more you have of these the more chance", no, it's a complete mess where different combinations lead to different odds profiles for a bunch of different traits, and yes, *odds* profiles, because there's still randomness even after that whole mess where one allele might contribute to a particular set of risk factors but only in the presence of x y z w other alleles, while in the presence of q w e r t alleles it does the opposite and way more complicated relationships than that
these genetic studies are incredibly important to prove that autism is overwhelmingly genetic. they are *not* meant for categorization purposes because you can't just cluster based on the presence of certain mutations
and in fact, if you do try to do that, what happens is that each group attempting it gets a different categorization scheme based on random luck of the sample *which is exactly what's been happening* but they only mention it in passing!!
this was such a good chance to actually explain these things, it's complex stuff that's super satisfying to finally get, how autism can be genetic without there being any specific "autism gene", and what kind of context you need for clustering analysis to make sense and work, also a great place to talk about how research is still keeping autistic people out of the conversation, and how this is a conversation that needs to be international! but, no, "some scientists want to split up autism" is what we get
"oh but they're PBS and PBS is focused on amerika"
look, *grisps you again*, i cannot make it more clear that nothing would be more useful to the usa and its trans residents that the fact that you're forced to take spironolactone is a huge injustice that is entirely avoidable. to not even mention it, is a massive disservice to trans and cis people in the usa alike
it's the same thing here, idc if you're focused on the usa, people are just one species, we're not different if we're from the usa or not, it literally does not matter
at least some important things were mentioned in passing, but none of the complexities of the genetics of autism and how they put any genetics-based categorization in doubt was mentioned
