The five-foot shell of a giant, extinct turtle.

In the world of reptiles, turtles have a certain reputation as shell-dwelling wimps that make nice pets for 8-year-old girls. They're slow and passive and hardly what one would call intimidating. Sure, you can argue that the snapping turtles pack a mean bite, but who among us has actually been at the receiving end of one? More >>

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[Insert joke about "painting with all the colors of the wind" here.]

​Bear with me -- this is cool.More >>

RACIST

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​Could a whole coalition of highly accomplished, super educated doctors and researchers -- the ones who work at and advise the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Harvard School of Public Health -- all be wrong?

Or are their critics hindering them from saving lives?

As described in our recent feature story about circumcision, three studies conducted in
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chargerchant.wordpress.com

It's all about the ratio.

​Finally, a pair of Gainesville biologists have discovered another reason for men having ring fingers longer than their index fingers, and as folklore would have it, it's related to sex.

The findings of the University of Florida College of Medicine developmental biologists, Martin Cohn and Zhengui Zheng, add to the long list of things that are said to be determined by the "digit ratio," specifically the "2D:4D" ratio -- which compares the ring and index fingers.

Now, in addition to penis size, athletic ability, and dozens of other traits thought to be indicated by this ratio, the Florida biologists are now adding sex drive to the list.

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I can has sterilization?

​This might come as a disappointment to animal hoarders, but well adjusted pet owners will be happy to learn that a local scientist's research could slow pet overpopulation.
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David Geier, (not an) MD.

​Two weeks ago, the Pulp published a small item about Mark and David Geier -- a father-son team of self-proclaimed autism experts who treat the condition with a powerful chemical castration agent called Lupron. They're from Maryland, but their interests run deep in Florida.

They've got a clinic here, out in Pembroke Pines, and they've long enjoyed the support of Dr. Gary Kompothecras of Sarasota -- a chiropractor and advocate for fringe autism treatments who's good friends with our erstwhile governor, Charlie Crist. In 2008, Crist appointed Kompothecras to his special Autism Task Force, and Kompothecras -- or "Dr. Gary," as he's known -- used his political muscle to pressure the Florida Department of Health to give the Geiers Florida's confidential vaccination records so they could run a study that, they hoped, would conclusively prove the link between vaccines and autism.
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African Greens.

​Respect and gratitude to the monkey lovers at the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) for ensuring that humanity will enjoy the company of AIDS, blindness, and hepatitis a little while longer.

These are just three of the maladies under investigation by scientists who use nonhuman primates in their research -- a practice that ARFF apparently regards as more appalling than AIDS, blindness, and hepatitis combined. Which is why it rallied its troops last week to protest the shipping of African green monkeys to Florida by IBC Airways, sufficiently scaring the higher-ups at that company that, by Friday, they'd promised to never ship monkeys for research purposes again.
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For the chemical castration of abnormal youths.

​Governors should stay the hell out of the autism wars.

Their intrusion leads to naught but embarrassment and the enfranchisement of questionable characters. Example: In 2009, Charlie Crist appointed anti-vax chiropractor Dr. Gary Kompothecras to his Autism Task Force. After his appointment, Kompothecras -- not incidentally, a man whose uncanny ability to raise funds for politicians has earned him the moniker "the rain maker" -- attempted to strong-arm the Florida Department of Health into turning over state medical records to the execrable father-son team of quack autism experts, Mark and David Geier. (My partner and I broke the news of this embarrassing episode for the Miami New Times.) Crist, who was not elected for his scientific acumen, did the public a profound disservice by lending these gents the credibility implied by his office.

How profound? The Geiers are the leading proponents of what's called the "Lupron Protocol" -- the purported science behind which is explicated here -- which involves dosing autistic kids with large amounts of the chemical castration agent called Lupron. They get away with this by diagnosing autism as "precocious puberty." Even when used on children who actually do suffer from precocious puberty, the drug can occasionally cause permanent sterility. For those children who do not suffer from precocious puberty, the permanent effects are likely more severe -- especially since the Geiers prescribe the drug in extremely high doses.
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