European countries are taking turns scientfically destroying gender ideology.
Interesting quotes:
At the request of the English National Health Service, the senior pediatrician Hilary Cass has completed the most thorough consideration yet of this field, and her report calmly and carefully demolishes many common activist tropes. Puberty blockers do have side effects, Cass found. The evidence base for widely used treatments is “shaky.” Their safety and effectiveness are not settled science.
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We also don’t have strong evidence that social transitioning, such as changing names or pronouns, affects adolescents’ mental-health outcomes (either positively or negatively). We don’t have strong evidence that puberty blockers are merely a pause button, or that their benefits outweigh their downsides, or that they are lifesaving care in the sense that they prevent suicides.
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Medicalized gender treatments for minors became wrapped up with a push for wider social acceptance for transgender people, something that was presented as the “next frontier in civil rights,” as Time magazine once described it. Any questions about such care were therefore read as stemming from transphobic hostility, full stop.
When even The Atlantic is souring on a lefty position, you know the idea is on shaky ground.
“We don’t have strong evidence” is not the same as what I think you’ve said.
Do you think the Atlantic is a lefty mag?
I think you’re confusing it with some other magazine. The Atlantic is for neoliberal centrists. It’s modestly liberal in the way The New Yorker is, but it’s for old, wealthy New England investors.
Well, I’m a lefty and anybody with any common sense knows that this is wrong. It’s just critical thinking skills that are missing, in my opinion.
Believe it or not, The Atlantic is not an academic medical journal.
The Atlantic is not an academic medical journal
Of course not. They are merely leaning on the science and the science is saying things like:
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“Puberty blockers do have side effects”
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“We don’t have strong evidence that puberty blockers are merely a pause button, or that their benefits outweigh their downsides, or that they are lifesaving care in the sense that they prevent suicides.”, and
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“The evidence base for widely used treatments is ‘shaky’”
Everyone says listen to the science, well, here is the science.
Cool. Which of those negates the fact that puberty blockers can prevent suicides?
Which of those negates the fact that puberty blockers can prevent suicides?
The part I quoted goes over that: “We don’t have strong evidence that puberty blockers … are lifesaving care in the sense that they prevent suicides”
Again, not my words, this is what the science says.
“We don’t have strong evidence” doesn’t sound like “we should stop using this method.” Shouldn’t that be between the doctor and their patient?
As long as you listen to the science and stop referring to puberty blockers as necessary life saving treatment that merely pauses puberty, you can advocate for what you want. Again, just quoting the science: “We don’t have strong evidence that puberty blockers are merely a pause button, or that their benefits outweigh their downsides”
A discussion on if the benefits outweigh the downsides is no longer verboten.
Again, shouldn’t this be between a doctor and their patient? Why are you getting between them?
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Fascinating article. The parts about transitioning were interesting, but I was much more interested in how restricted any discussion of this topic has become. There’s no room for science, debate or discussion, there’s only your side vs mine.
This is pay walled so I can’t read the whole thing, but some incredibly important context to the Cass report is that it examined 103 studies on trans youth and rejected 101 of them. Of the 50 studies on hormone blockers and 53 studies on hormone replacement therapy, miraculously the 2 they found to be ‘valid’ just happened to have inconclusive results.
Their excuse for rejecting them is that they weren’t double blind. But the thing is, it’s not always ethical or possible to do double blinds in medicine. If you have evidence that withholding medicine causes harm (guess what all those rejected studies found!!) then you’re never going to convince an ethics review board to let you withhold treatment. Even if it momentarily answers the “concerns” of terminally online transphobic freaks before they start hauling the goal post off somewhere else.
Anyway, Helen Lewis is a well known member of the terminally online transphobic freak club and has no background in any field of science to comment on any aspect of the Cass report, so here’s a breakdown of why the report sucks ass from someone who is qualified: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2024.2328249
NHS to discontinue delivery of babies until double-blind study is done vs just leaving it in there.
Is there a mirror link of the whole article?
Use a browser that respects your privacy if you want to view paywalled articles. BRAVE is one, or Firefox with a paywall extension.
