A common perception is that science is neutral and objective and can therefore be trusted. Science simply presents the facts, and facts are facts and ideology is something for the religious. Um, not so fast.

A recent article in Science, called ‘Sex differences in immune responses’ which does what it suggests. It lays out pretty clear evidence that there are differences between how male and female bodies respond to the COVID-19 virus. Here are a few examples.

• Male bias in COVID-19 mortality is observed in nearly all countries with available sex-disaggregated data and the risk of death in males is ∼1.7 times higher than in females
• Sex differences beyond sex organs are present across species and extend to physiological systems, including the immune system
• Male sex is more often associated with lower immune responses and higher susceptibility and/or vulnerability to infections in animals. This is generally also the case in humans
• Females generally mount a more robust immune response to vaccines, such as influenza vaccines
• What could be the potential underlying mechanism of this sex dimorphism in immune response? One culprit is the sex chromosomes…
• Sex has a major impact on immune cell transcriptomes; immune cells or even the immune system are differentially affected by ageing, depending on sex
• Ageing induces a decline in the proportion of naïve T cells that is more prominent in males, and B cells decline after age 65 only in males
• The other important biological factors are sex hormones.
• Estrogen receptors are widely expressed by many cell types, including immune cells, and estrogen is a critical regulator of gene expression and functions in innate immune cells

And there’s more but it seems fairly clear that the differences between males and females is far more than skin deep. Not just chromosomes but cells of all kinds, including those that make your immune system work are different depending on whether you are male or female.

But of course, to say that so clearly would probably be transphobic to someone, somewhere, so the authors of this paper then shove in this paragraph.

Sex is not binary, and little is known regarding immune responses to viral infections, including COVID-19, in individuals with disorders of sex development (DSD) or transgender individuals…Additionally, transgender is a collective term encompassing those whose gender identities or gender roles differ from those typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Little is known about the immune responses in these individuals, some of whom are undergoing gender reassignment hormone therapies. It is possible that DSD and transgender individuals mount distinct immune responses to viral infection in general and also in COVID-19.

Now the authors are conflating a few things here. DSD are differences off two binary ends which is the force of what the rest of their article points out. There are only two sexes and it is not a spectrum either because then all of the findings above start to unravel and make little to no sense.

There is absolutely no reason or evidence to suggest that a transgender individual would have a different immune response to the one that their birth sex produces in them. So even if there are hormone replacements, their own body is still producing and fighting disease according to their chromosomes. To say otherwise is not science but ideology.

Now I doubt there will ever be enough transgender people to eventually skew the statistics enough to make a noticeable difference BUT if researchers cannot accurately record the sex of those that they are studying and treating then they cannot determine how best to treat them. I’ve always wondered whether a transgender woman would refuse treatment if it meant being treated as a male? Or vice versa of course.

I doubt it, they will just mess with the language to the point where it is nonsensical. Females can have penises and prostates. Men can menstruate and give birth. Yet their own actions belie the nonsense of this. They do want as many of the physical properties of the other sex that medicine will let them have. How many years before someone is saying a national health service should pay for a uterus transplant?

We are going to need to learn how to discern the difference between science and ideology. We are going to have to learn how to respond to public policies that are based on ideology but claim the support of ‘science’. We are going to have to learn how to live with institutions that are increasingly shaped by an ideology that has no basis in science, which is ironic because humanists are still making that same argument against the presence of religions in the public square. We need to be thinking long and hard about the implications of this on education, public policy, medical health, pastoral care and media. While there is increasing resistance, it is difficult to see how this ideology will not finally win the day in western liberal democracies for the next generation or so.