James Lyons-Weiler is an odd duck. He started his career in bioinformatics conventionally enough, getting a PhD, following it up with post-docs, eventually getting a position at the University of Pittsburgh, and then…he succumbed to the lure of the crackpot circuit. He now wanders about the country, giving anti-vax lectures and giving his uninformed opinions about autism. He also launched a website called IPAK-EDU.org, where IPAK is short for “Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge.” Yeah, he also invented an academic institute, which is his, and of which he is the sole member. He peddles online courses on various topics — you can, for instance, gain access to a series of lectures on evolutionary biology for the low, low price of $160.
He’s also notorious enough that he has a Wikipedia page. It’s short. Here’s the bulk of it.
Lyons-Weiler has made numerous false and misleading claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. United States Court of Federal Claims Special Master Christian J. Moran concluded in 2020 that Lyons-Weiler was “wholly unqualified to opine on the question of vaccine causation”; the decision related to a lawsuit in which Lyons-Weiler had testified claiming that a woman was injured as a result of the HPV vaccine.
His February 2020 claim that SARS-CoV-2 contains a genetic sequence proving that the virus was probably engineered in a laboratory was discredited by researchers and fact-checkers.
Now you know where he’s coming from: he’s a failed academic who ekes out a living by being a mouthpiece for quack ideas. He’s anti-vax, he’s got weird ideas about autism, and now, oh joy, he’s jumped on the anti-trans bandwagon. He has an essay that seems to be fairly typical for him, Evolutionary Analysis of the “Trans Agenda” as Mass Sterilization of Youth as Reproductive Spite, in which he lards a lot of nonsensical pretentious jargon around the thesis that gender-affirming care is a scheme to sterilize your children.
Please understand that this article was written to create awareness about the new reality involving the interplay between social dynamics and the way people control and influence others’ reproductive heritage. I have not seen this issue addressed by anyone because discussions about evolutionary principles and social dynamics are taboo because evil people in the past twisted Darwin’s understanding of evolution toward their own advantage in ways that led to mass forced sterilization. I am issuing this article as a warning of the hidden dangers of de facto state-sponsored sterilization programs being implemented by certain states within the United States embedded in the Trans Agenda.
The evolutionary principles and social dynamics
he’s talking around are the ideas of eugenics and the extermination of undesirable individuals. Yeah, it’s taboo
, and he is the brave truth-teller who is going to expose the Trans Agenda as the same thing. He’s going to explain Haldane and Hamilton and Maynard Smith to back up his argument that gender affirming care is a nefarious plot, and he’s going to cite animal examples as evidence (bonus points for mentioning spiders).
Some female spiders may consume their own offspring. This is known as “filial cannibalism”, is seen in many species of fish that brood their live young, and is a form of reproductive spite. This behavior can be driven by a lack of resources or as a strategy to gain additional nutrients for the female, thereby increasing her chances of surviving and reproducing again, thus maximizing the mother’s, but not necessarily the eaten young’s, lifetime reproductive success.
In some insects, males deposit substances in the female reproductive tract that harm or kill the spermatozoa of previous mates. This approach to sperm competition helps ensure that their own spermatozoa have a higher chance of fertilizing the eggs and increases their reproductive success. While spermatozoa are not live, this feature of competition via spite is thought to be the explanation for the shape of the human penis.
Hang on there. He defines his term, Reproductive spite refers to the phenomenon where an individual’s reproductive behavior negatively affects the survival or reproductive output of other individuals,
but the spider example is not relevant. The spider is optimizing its opportunities for reproduction by recycling its own progeny, not that of others. The insect example is just mundane, familiar sperm competition — it’s only affecting the reproduction of others in the sense that if a female is bearing the male’s children, she isn’t available to bear someone else’s. This is just weird. It’s like he doesn’t understand his own argument.
Then this is a surprise: spermatozoa are not live.
What biologist would make that claim? Of course they’re alive! Also, that claim about the shape of the human penis is weak, supported only by some crude modeling studies, and has not been demonstrated to be functional.
And did you know that some kinds of gender modification (but not all) lead to sterilization? No trans person ever thought of that, I guess.
In the current Trans Agenda, in which gender modification surgeries are advocated for minors as “affirming care”, a dark link exists: gender modification surgery often leads to sterilization of those individuals as a side effect.
Again, if I choose not to have children, voluntarily and of my own free will, that is not “reproductive spite.” If a man chooses to get a vasectomy, you cannot argue that that is an example of the taboo
subject of eugenics. Human beings are not obligated to bear children! Also, it is not your duty to have children for your parents’ sake.
The strongly negative reaction of parents to news that some state governments – and some in powerful positions in the US Federal Government – want to allow minors to choose gender reassignment surgery – even over the objections of their parents – is understandable from a rational, scientific point of view.
No, it is not. It is understandable from a narrow, utilitarian point of view that sees individuals as having one single task, the direct production of offspring. We are social animals, and the ability of individuals to specialize and fill other roles is advantageous to the population as a whole. Remember, please, that evolution is a property of populations, not individuals.
Evolution is also not a conspiracy theory, but Lyons-Weilers seems to see everything as a conspiracy theory.
…I am not saying I have evidence the connections are intentional, but I am saying: Screw the Taboo. We owe it to our children and our collective future to ask these questions and to use Science to find the answers.
There are other areas in which social pressure is used to try to coerce or force parents to put their children in harm’s way for the potential benefit of other children. Social psychologists who are deeply schooled in evolutionary principles should look into the potential role that the vestiges of reproductive spite may play in promoting tolerance of, or even the promotion of increased risk for harm to other peoples’ children in the area of vaccine mandates.
Right. Let’s abuse “evolutionary principles” to compel children to believe that having babies is their destiny. And oh, look, there’s the crackpot anti-vaccine nonsense! Getting vaccinated reduces harm, that’s the whole point of vaccines, so you don’t get to use that as an example of people trying to reduce the competition.
But then, this is a kook who sees trans people as an example of Mass murder, mass sterilization,
just like he sees vaccines as a strategy for poisoning the other members of the population.