The finding might be weaponized
Much discussion today of the NYTimes article about puberty blockers and the possibility that they…er…don’t achieve the desired goal.
The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.
In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.
Brilliant, isn’t it? The findings might motivate people to point out that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress, and we can’t have that, can we. Oh god no, we have to keep that secret, because…er…
…er…
…er…because transphobia! Yeah, that’s it! It’s all the fault of those pesky transphobes!
Keep taking the blockers, kids.
I wonder if accusations of “weaponization” (or the equivalent concept) was used against those who presented evidence that showed the medical ineffectiveness of lobotomies?
I found it quite interesting that the argument given for why the blockers did not improve their mental health was
But of course, if this is so, then why give any medication at all? Schrödinger’s TransTeens seem to both have good mental health and be in constant danger of suicide if not getting access to blockers immediately.
And this at the end
is exactly what any homeopath or other peddler of snake oil claims “Clinical studies do not reflect our vast experience.” Well, we do clinical studies exactly because your “experience” is severely influenced by things like confirmation bias, regression to the mean and other logical fallacies that our intuition is really bad at filtering out.