It’s SCIENCE
Scientific American tries to tell us that “youth” who identify as trans need to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, yes need I tell you. It’s science.
This week Arkansas became the first state to ban physicians from giving hormones or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender people under age 18. Doctors who do so could be stripped of their licenses and sued. The law is called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act…
…
The state senate sponsor of the Arkansas bill, Alan Clark, has said that puberty blockers and hormone treatments are “at best experimental and at worst a serious threat to a child’s welfare.” But medical and scientific organizations say his claim is wrong.
We are given the usual long list of organizations and the usual claims that it’s all safe safe safe.
The Netherlands group was the first to study puberty blockers in transgender children. And Annelou de Vries, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, says she has not seen any major side effects in the approximately 1,500 adolescents treated at her clinic. Last June her team published a study showing that 178 transgender adolescents receiving blockers had better psychological functioning and fewer suicide attempts, compared with 272 transgender youth who did not receive early care.
What about the long haul though? What about how they fare as they get older? Is it really a safe bet that tinkering with teenage bodies this way will be good for them for the next 50 or 60 years?
And are the people doing this research inquiring into how these teenagers became convinced they’re the other sex in the first place? If you become convinced that you can’t be happy unless you have a diamond belt buckle, then having a diamond belt buckle may make you happy for a time, but how did you become convinced of that in the first place? Is it a real need or longing? Or is it a socially generated need or longing, which can be intense, for sure, but is very subject to decay and change over time. How sure can the researchers really be that blockers and hormones will be good for the subjects over a lifetime?
As their investigation progresses, Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues are trying to get as much information as they can about how gender-affirming treatments affect the body, which will help physicians better target treatment to individuals and know what to watch for. One major medical concern about puberty blockers is their effect on bone growth. The drugs prevent the accumulation of bone mineral in growing children, which is why physicians try not to administer them to adolescents for very long. But a study by the Netherlands team found that transgender boys’ bone density returned to normal within a few years.
Cool cool cool. Go ahead and weaken their bones then. Might as well, right?
Has anyone yet suggested administering puberty blockers for all children, for their entire lives, so that they can always keep open the option to transition? Surely it would be unfair to discriminate.
Yes. Zinnia Jones is one person who’s made that suggestion.
https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1334159240466997249
Sackbut @2:
I just clicked. I see he’s got the head tilt. Good job!
Does he? she? literally suggest that consenting to puberty blockers is equivalent to “consenting” to puberty? Seriously? I’m pretty sure I’m not a minor, and I didn’t “consent” to menopause, but it happened anyway. My grandmother didn’t “consent” to death, but she is as dead as if she did. Because THESE ARE NOT PROCEDURES THAT SOMEONE DOES TO YOU. These are things that happen because you are…well, human. Female or male, you go through puberty. Because you grow up. You go through menopause, because you get old. You die because…well, lots of reasons.
I don’t have to consent before I have an asthma attack, but I do have to consent before the doctor stops it with medicine or surgical intervention. It seems like, if the world was set up fair and square, he could intervene to save my life, but the asthma could not threaten to kill me without my consent. But that isn’t how the world works. Life happens, puberty happens, growth and development happen, breasts happen, menstruation happens…whether you consent or not. They just are.
But someone intervening to stop a natural event, even for your own good (which stopping asthma from killing me definitely is, but I’m not convinced puberty blockers are) is something that must receive informed consent. Children are not considered capable to give informed consent to get a tattoo, have their ears pierced, have their appendix out, buy a house, or have sex. Why the hell should they be capable of giving informed consent for something they can’t possibly be informed on when no one really has the information they need yet? I don’t feel like I could give informed consent on that with the information I have, so my answer if someone was going to put a child in my care on puberty blockers would be Hell, no!
Ideology has turned a lot of brains to mush.
Re: TRAs’ attempt at a reductio ad absurdum.
Their argument proceeds thusly. Oh, even though I’m not going to waste time doing a full argument diagram, this is going to be tedious. Sorry.
Les sigh. This attempt at a proof by contradiction depends on hiding a reinterpretation of the argument it purports to dismantle. To see the sleight of hand, let’s make the original argument explicit.
That is pretty straightforward, but it does leave out the justification for (b). Let’s fix that.
A key point to note is that the conclusion (c2) is not that kids should not be given GnRHa. That conclusion derives from other policy, such as the Tavistock’s official position on consent. Somewhat inconvenient, that, so the TRA argument pretends otherwise. Ignoring reality is totally out of character for them. Anyway, as I’ve said before, a proper reductio ad absurdum requires that one assume precisely the proposition—or set of propositions—to be shown inconsistent. Failing that, one must assume a set of propositions that is less likely to generate a contradiction. That’s … not what is done here.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
Too bad I’m out of scotch. :(
I always knew science was bullshit. What more proof is needed?
Kids cannot consent to being born…
Aah, the reductio ad absurdum, it’s spreading!
Therefore, abortions should be administered to all pregnant women. Sorry, I mean to all pregnant people.
I don’t think that psychological functions and suicide attempts are the side effects that are causing concern. Unless I’ve misunderstood, it’s the halting of physical development of the brain and body, along with the irreversible loss of bone density that non-biased doctors are worried about. But, that aside, why do I get the feeling that the 178 kids used in the study were cherry-picked? What about the approximately 1,322 other adolescents treated at her clinic? If those 178 kids were ‘best-case’ outcomes then it appears that only around 1-in-8 adolescents given blockers did better psychologically than did the 272 who were not treated, and that is only <if the 178 saw an improvement in their psychological well-being; maybe they were doing fine psychologically prior to treatment with blockers compared to the untreated kids. And if the approximately 1,322 adolescents treated but not included in the trial showed no improvement in psychological functions and no reduction in the number of suicide attempts, or worse, a decline in functions and increased suicide attempts, wouldn’t this suggest that their initial feelings of being the ‘other’ sex or gender were actually symptoms of a deeper underlying problem, and that the deeper problem was either not helped or possibly made worse by what would have been unnecessary treatment with blockers and hormones?
In short, is it possible that the majority of medicalised gender ‘affirmation’ treatments are in reality misguided attempts to treat symptoms rather than the causes of the adolescents’ problems?
Which is part of the problem with how some medicine is approached. Deal with the symptoms, the patient feels better…until the symptoms return. One thing I’ve learned in my years working with the medical profession in various capacities is that patients want the doctors to deal with the symptoms; that’s what they experience. The cause may be longer lasting and more difficult, and they want immediate relief. The relief is all right, as long as it does more than just mask the problem.
My doctor was telling me recently how glad he was that I am willing to focus on the underlying cause of many of my problems, the life-threatening illnesses that may not show immediate symptoms but could kill me, instead of just the pain-causing symptoms that are bad but not life-threatening. Since he is willing to deal with both, I’m fine with that. Though the pain causing ones do need to be dealt with to not undermine the quality of life even as we prolong it.
That’s what I see as the problem with the trans. They want immediate relief from their pain. and there really are few if any treatments for mental or emotional distress that do that. There are anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs, but they don’t work nearly as consistently as things like, say, cortisone shots for pain. Changing the body has effects that can be seen immediately, even if it is no more than putting a pink bow in your hair and limping around in high heels. Therapy is help only in the long term; surgery has a much more immediate…something…and makes the patient think the doctor is doing something, even if the surgery does not cure the illness.
I’m not convinced that they have pain from which they want relief. I’m convinced that, for some of them, it’s a social want. It’s status to be trans, status to have had various medical treatments, status to have everyone fawn over you and apologize profusely if they transgress by calling you the wrong name or using the wrong pronoun or denying you entry to the spaces and resources you want. It’s like being in a clique or a club.
One point I overlooked about the ‘study showing that 178 transgender adolescents receiving blockers had better psychological functioning and fewer suicide attempts’ is that even among this ‘successful’ group there were still clearly problems with psychological functions and suicide attempts (not ‘thoughts of’ or ‘ideation’ but actual attempts). They may score better as a group than the 272 untreated kids but clearly there are still psychological and suicidal issues that were not cured by giving the youngsters what they thought they needed – and what the good doctors treating them allowed them to believe it was what they needed rather than persuading or even insisting that all other possible avenues were explored to find the root cause of their issues before even considering the pharmaceutical option.
To me, this sounds like a clear-cut case of deriliction of their duties as doctors, but what do I know?