The Scientist erases pregnant women: Male placentas produce more proinflammatory molecules than female placentas, while pregnant people carrying male fetuses produce fewer antibodies in response..

[frazzled1]

Interesting twitter response twitter.com/TheScientistLLC/status/1451269554139713542

From the article
Pregnant people respond to COVID-19 differently depending on the sex of their unborn child, according to a study released yesterday (October 19) in Science Translational Medicine. Male placentas produced more proinflammatory genes and proteins than female placentas after the parent contracted COVID-19, and people gestating sons produced fewer antibodies following infection. They also passed fewer protective antibodies on to the fetus.

The virologist then quoted is clearly not sufficiently Stonewalled:

“What’s interesting about that is it means that the sex of the baby can dictate how the mother responds to a viral infection,” Akiko Iwasaki, a virologist and immunologist at Yale University who was not involved in the study, tells STAT. “We knew that maternal infection can significantly impact the fetus, but this means that there is cross-talk between the fetus and the mother. That’s exciting because it adds an extra layer to what we are used to thinking about.”

Who are these pregnant people carrying a sexed unborn child?

The fertilised ovum makes the placenta, so it has the same genes as the foetus. Therefore placentas are sexed. As of course are foetuses.

Funny that it's OK to describe a male foetus accurately, but not his mother. Apparently that's more inclusive.

Found a picture of one of these pregnant people here.

twitter.com/katebevan/status/1451910168883744777?t=5W8YN5KhnkcpiZr--_Qwpg&s=19

Apparently the language in the actual paper is very different, and doesn't shy away from using mother and woman.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]Found a picture of one of these pregnant people here.

twitter.com/katebevan/status/1451910168883744777?t=5W8YN5KhnkcpiZr--_Qwpg&s=19[/quote]
Wow. Is that pregnant person gonna give birth through his anus?!

Shit a brick!

Wow! Anusol won't be sorting that one out!

As a person with a panic disorder that it at times debilitating, this nasty message from the writer (retweeted by The Scientist) made me make this face

mobile.twitter.com/Scatter_Cushion/status/1451278691397365767

My favourite bit of the article is the bit about 'pregnant people who gestate sons', it's very 'men are men and women are incubators who produce more men'

Oops sorry 'people getasting sons'

But I thought sex was assigned at birth? So how on earth are there male foetuses and male placentas? How do they know the sex of the foetus? Are they magically doing the assigning earlier?

The Lancet and now the New Scientist, honestly it's a joke. And all the men on twitter going look dear there isn't a problem, it's only a word! Maybe they did it to get to publicity!

male placentas

Am envisioning a future where people carrying foetuses will need to add their personal pronouns to their email bios, are well as their placenta's pronouns, just to be really sure we aren't causing offence to anything or anyone

So a placenta can have a sex, and a foetus can, just not the person who is pregnant. Right.