You then went on to suggest a link between gender identification and the results of a study on a single variable. It’s probably the case there are many environmental and physical dimensions at play with gender identity. While I can’t say at this point that your link is wrong, it may be best to hold back on the last assumptions; especially a biologically based one, given the scope of the impact.
> Well, we can introduce a protocol, and study it, and know conclusively in perhaps 10 years. But, between then and now...
Intuitively, and from my experience of 15 years of fighting with chronic pain, it's incredibly hard to emphasize with anything at all when you're in serious pain. It's hard to even think about anything other than pain. I'd say - again, from the perspective of a chronic pain patient - that reducing the pain with medication makes it possible to have empathy towards others. Obviously, I have no neurochemical data to back this up, I'm just saying how it looks like to me, psychologically.
If I had to guess, I'd say that being in pain does little good for empathy and it's a memory of being in pain that counts. When I'm in pain I'm not going to care too much about yours, but when I was in pain, and I remember it clearly, I'm going to care a lot.
(Even though it's clearly not net-helpful due to the serious physiological side-effects.)
That's amazing!
... why isn't there more research on isolating this particular side-effect?
And others.
True or not, parent wasn't just making up the empathy-painkiller association.