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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls.

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It would've been more interesting if it was actually skewed in favor of a gender, but the framing of this (as opposed to "affected people equally regardless of gender" or something similar) puts a suggestion of this primarily affecting girls when it seems to be gender neutral.

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> > But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls.

> (◔_◔)

Me, who comprehended the connection to the previous paragraph that clearly puts the quote in contradistinction to Tourrette's affecting mostly boys:

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In fairness, the difference would've been more pronounced to me if they'd actually given the numbers. "Typical" doesn't give me enough context, but 3-4x does:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2008/04/9325.html

Thanks for steering me.

I think "these new patients" refers to patients who came to the clinic after a certain point in time, not with a certain quality. Google tells me that about 3/4 of children with (real) Tourette's are boys - so a sudden change to 1/2 indicates that this is a problem primarily affecting girls. In any case, the writing should have been clearer.

More than a decade ago South Park had the same exact topic covered where Cartman suddenly "develops tics" and the doctors are confused why he got it when he was much older.

Cartman is just mimicking other people with tourettes for attention

I believe it is meant to contrast with the first paragraph of the article, which does indeed state that typically this behavior is seen in boys. So half of the patients being female is noteworthy.

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