I guess I find it kind of funny that the only possible explanation for medical groups refusing panels to the author is bias and groupthink, whereas her research is apparently fully objective and entirely free of such problems.
The author links to another article which goes into more detail on this and quotes the program committee chair:
> The academy's unwillingness to host Kaltiala and other likeminded clinicians suggests that even this moderate stance may now be a bridge too far for America's premier child psychiatry association, where even senior officials are raising concerns about ideological capture.
> AACAP has chosen "advocacy over science," Kaliebe said in an email to James McGough, who oversees conference programming, after the second two panels were nixed. In response, McGough conceded that politics likely played a role.
> "I actually share some of your concerns about AACAP ... coming down too heavily on one side of politically charged topics," McGough told Kaliebe in a May email. Decisions about conference programming, he added, are "based on input from various AACAP committees." If the gender committee is "too one sided, the program committee is in a tough spot. Our committees are considered our experts."
> The exchange illustrates how a small group of activist doctors can suppress the viewpoints of clinicians who disagree with them, creating the appearance of medical consensus where none exists.
What even is an activist doctor? Seems like a weird phrase to me. Shouldn't all doctors be activists, especially when they're in decision-making authorities such as the AACAP?
> But the ones who came were nothing like what was described by the Dutch. We expected a small number of boys who had persistently declared they were girls. Instead, 90 percent of our patients were girls, mainly 15 to 17 years old, and instead of being high-functioning, the vast majority presented with severe psychiatric conditions.
and after treatment...
> The young people we were treating were not thriving. Instead, their lives were deteriorating. We thought, what is this? Because there wasn’t a hint in studies that this could happen. Sometimes the young people insisted their lives had improved and they were happier. But as a medical doctor, I could see that they were doing worse. They were withdrawing from all social activities. They were not making friends. They were not going to school. We continued to network with colleagues in different countries who said they were seeing the same things.
> "Although a recent New York Times investigation largely corroborated Reed’s account,"
This is entirely false. The New York Times did not corroborate any of Reed's allegations of wrongdoing against the clinic, and large parts of it have been disputed by patients and parents of patients.
These rebuttals are kind of missing the point. For example:
> Claim 18: "The psychiatry services were limited and could only serve patients who were 'not too severe,' which meant that many patients were being sent to the already overburdened emergency rooms for suicidal ideations, for self-harm, and for inpatient eating disorder treatment."
> An outpatient clinic does not provide emergency inpatient care. It is normal for patients whose symptoms are severe enough to require emergency treatment to be referred by such a clinic to an ER. The NYT found patients from the Center were referred to the ER. That the ERs were overburdened, and that better options weren't often available for youth in severe crisis, is a sad reality of the U.S. mental health system. It is not something that can reasonably be laid at the feet of an outpatient service for a vulnerable group of young people that everyone agrees is at a higher risk of suicide.
> At the trainings, E.R. staff shared concerns about their own experiences with their young transgender patients, which Ms. Hamon later relayed to her team and university administrators.
> The E.R. staff, she wrote in an email, had been seeing more transgender adolescents experiencing mental health crises, "to the point where they said they at least have one TG patient per shift."
> They aren't sure why patients aren't required to continue in counseling if they are continuing hormones," Ms. Hamon added. And they were concerned that "no one is ever told no."
That is, the ER departments were getting an unexplained increase in presentations from the clinic's patients despite the treatments supposedly working well. Which really does bring into question the idea that affirmation-only treatment significantly improves mental health.
I think you're misunderstanding the article. It's analyzing the claims Reed made, specifically the ones she made in her affidavit, and whether they had been corroborated by the NYT or elsewhere. It's not analyzing the claims made in the NYT article by Ms. Hamon or by Reed. Reed doesn't mention any kind of unexplained increase in this particular claim, so the response is adequate.
Besides, the claims listed in the article are just the ones where some amount of truth has been found. If you scroll to the bottom, it has a link to the spreadsheet where you can see the author's tally of Reed's claims, including the claims where the author found no corroboration and ones where the author considers the claim to have been refuted by the available evidence (evidence which includes the third link in my previous comment, which I do recommend you read).
Children with hormonal diseases (like precocious puberty) have to take puberty blockers and they have no lasting effect. They just stop the onset of secondary sex characteristics until a more appropriate age. (remember: those hormones control all sorts of changes, including sometimes-painful growth spurts)
Transitioning as a child is a series of steps. It starts with social transitioning below age 10. Puberty blockers from around 10 to 15. Hormone treatments from 15 onward. Some opt to continue to top/bottom surgery, usually after the age of 17 (with a parent's consent if under 18).
And no. Puberty blockers are well understood (been using for over 50 years), and their use restricted to timeframes where it won't impact the child's development.
Just so I understand, you're making the claim that you can put a child on puberty blockers / hormone treatments from age 10 to 17, and then you can take them off of it and they will resume their sex-at-birth biological development the same as their peers who didn't have hormone treatment, with no permanent effects? Is that right?
If it's just puberty blockers, as I claim in the previous comment, correct. Which is to say, up to the age of 15, there are no permanent changes. From 15 - the point where they start hormone therapy, that's anywhere between 5-10 years into the overall treatment - there are more permanent changes. The two are distinct phases in their transition.
But nothing really life altering. Will the child end up looking different if they de-transition after taking hormones, yes. More breast tissue if they took E, and more muscle definition if they took T. However, these are also body developments that can also happen without human intervention.
I didn't mean to misrepresent your post. It looks like throughout this thread, my original question became distorted from a larger scope to just puberty blockers taken at an early age.
Anyway, aside from effects on bone density, I did find this:
> One of the disadvantages in adolescent girls who have been treated with GnRH analogues at an early age is the possibility of insufficient skin for penile inversion vaginoplasty.
> How Young Is Too Young: Ethical Concerns in Genital Surgery of the Transgender MTF Adolescent
I could be misunderstanding this, but it sounds like there could be lasting effects on penis growth. Wouldn't that make sense, since your body would be getting estrogen during a time where it'd normally be developing in a way where it'd otherwise would be receiving testosterone?
Double check those bone density results, because new research shows they're present before treatment with puberty blockers starts. Some theories are that some children have reduced access to sporting activity.
Puberty blockers have a long use in children. Unlike a lot of paediatric medications puberty blockers are licensed for use in children, and are used for their licensed use (blocking puberty), albeit for a different population (gender incongruent children with strong trans indicators, instead of children with precocious puberty).
This - being licensed in children, and being used mostly in line with the license - is better than many paediatric meds.
We have a lot of research about use in precocious puberty - they meds are mostly harmless. We don't have a huge amount of research in trans children, but that's for exactly the same reason we don't have research in a bunch of different meds for children.
There's some crazy stat, that 98% of kids put on puberty blockers continue to cross-sex hormones. Which clearly tell you, whatever the puberty blockers are for, its not temporary and its not 'time to think'...
According to the Cass Review, even social transition isn't a neutral act but should be considered an active intervention, which could lock in what may be a temporary phase of identity development, and make it more difficult for the patient to accept their body as it is.
The Cass Review has also said that children should have easier access to cross sex hormones - they're considering removing the requirement for children to have spent time on puberty blockers before moving onto CSH.
The alternative explanation is that it was almost impossible for trans children to access healthcare in the UK and the only people making their way through the pipeline of GP to GIC to hormone centre were those who were undeniably trans.
Between 1% and 8%, depending on how detransition is defined. This article found 6.9% (12/175, 6 clearly detransitioning and 6 ambiguous) at one clinic, including anyone who sought and received care over a certain interval.
That is interesting but the same study also says that 21.7% of this cohort disengaged from the clinic. So the rate could be even higher, depending on if they stopped treatment entirely or changed to another service provider.
“Disengaged” here means that they did not make it through the assessment/pre-screening process and did not receive treatment, which is not what is meant by “detransition” or what is commonly understood as contributing to “regret rate”.
When an elderly person rejects knee replacement prior to surgery e.g., because they’ve learned the risks, they’re also not counted in the regret rate for knee replacement.
EDIT: Those that disengaged did not complete treatment, therefore they cannot regret completing treatment. Perhaps they regret starting treatment and perhaps they don’t; either way, that’s not the same thing as detransition. I can’t read their minds to figure out why they disengaged, and neither can anyone else.
If I'm reading this correctly, this included disengagement prior to surgery but after hormonal treatment. So it could be that some in this group regretted the hormonal treatment so chose not to continue with the surgical intervention?
The data there is not good. There are studies that claim it is low. They focus on surgery a lot. There are not many trans people (relative to the general population) and not many studies on them. There is not sufficient granularity between:
- trans people who only take hormones,
- who do that and have top surgery,
- who are castrated and,
- who have top and bottom surgery
Personally, I think bottom surgery is not quite there and is definitely a medical frontier and free-for-all. Hormones and top surgery are fairly reversible via application of more money, exercise and time.
Based on that, I am forced to fall back to first principles, and feel that given that the risk of lasting damage is low on some procedures, that those procedures which give perfectly acceptable and also potentially reversible results are reasonable to offer in this way.
There is a big difference in what would be an objectively determined need (a knee replacement) versus something that is very subjective (wanting to be another gender). There is no quantifiable measurement for determining gender. (Speaking specifically for minors.)
If someone wants a knee surgery because they want to continue their hobby of endurance running, but does not need the surgery for an otherwise normal life, does that surgery count as an objective or subjective need?
LMAO the free press is some bullshit rag and Bari Weiss is a grifter. She pretends to be an enlightened centrist but only ever complains about the left and woke/cancel culture. On top of this she dismisses criticism as anti-semitism. And then of course there's this little gem below:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fu...
That's their MO. Repeat a lie over and over. Like the indidual above who claims this is from 2019, when it isn't. There's a date on top and bottom, And the things mentioned in the article are much more recent than 2019.
I have three kids, and if one of them wanted to socially transition, I would support them. But I would not support medical transition until they are 18. If at that point they want to do that for themselves, then I will support them.
Are you sure you're looking at the same article linked from this post? I'm seeing "October 30, 2023" at the top and "Monday, October 30, 2023" at the end.
