Category: Child Care

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Mission: Investigate: Trans Children

This is a follow up post to a previous one where I questioned our current Assistant Secretary of Health, Transwoman Dr Rachel Levine. Read this first, if you haven’t already:

Dr. Rachel Levine is Uninformed, or Worse.

Many doctors and clinicians in Europe disagree with Dr. Levine. Below is a Swedish documentary on the hazards of hormone therapy & puberty blockers. It’s about injured children and withheld information.

And why the home of the Nobel Prize in medicine, Karolinska Univ. Hospital, did an about face on prescribing hormones & puberty blockers to children and adolescents.

The story follows the parent of a daughter who announced when she was 10 that “she is really a he.” And that she wanted to be called Leo. 

He was little, only 10, and telling us how he perceived himself.  Our first thought was just to affirm our child.  If our child feels this way then of course we should affirm it.  And just listen to him and follow his cues.  - "Natalie" Leo's Mother

Social Transitioning began with pronouns and name change. Combined with supportive parents and supportive school. But Leo’s mental health worsened. So they sought help at Astrid Lindgren’s Children’s Hospital and were told:

"the earlier you stop puberty, the better."

Leo was given puberty blockers at 11 years old.

“Natalie” explains, “I trusted them when they said, ‘This will help your child.'”

It didn’t.

You will hear about doctors who “left the field” because they couldn’t in good conscience experiment on children.

You will hear from detransitioners, those who regretted their decisions to “change” their gender.

You will hear about bureaucratic blame shifting. And perhaps medical malpractice.

It lasts 57 minutes. Very much worth your time.

Mission: Investigate: Trans Children [click on the SPELA button to start]

When Leo is 11 years old, doctors in transgender care start giving him puberty blockers. There are risks with the treatment, but his family are not informed of them. One day Leo says his body is aching. Mission: Investigate reveals what the doctors at Karolinska University Hospital knew, but didn’t reveal.
Looking back, I feel such anger.  Of course anger at the professionals we trusted.  But also at myself.  I'm supposed to protect my child, but I haven't done that. - "Natalie" Leo's Mother

In May of 2021 the Karolinska Institute, the same institute that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine, advised its hospital to stop hormone treatments and surgery for young people under 18!

This stance is precisely what some of our State Legislators are considering. Alabama, most conspicuously. See my next post.

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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.”

Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.

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Covid-19 Lockdowns and Gender Swapping

A leading clinical psychologist with 16 years’ experience in child mental health say more than half of her patients now identify as transgender.

She saw a sudden rise after the coronavirus lockdowns. And parents are letting their kids transition at ages five or six. But parents had been “sold a lie.” 

'When we disconnect them from their biological sex we set up patterns of denial and secrets. We set them up to hate their bodies at puberty, to beg for [puberty] blockers and binders, because for years we told them they could change sex and they believed us – but their body knows otherwise.
'They become desperate to go back to the years when no one knew any different, but that time will never come again. Time is not reversible. What we grow up being told in our childhood matters for our whole lives.'

She reports this anonymously because she said:

“she feared being accused of ‘transphobia’ or even conversion therapy if she questioned or explored the child’s decision to swap gender.”

Sixty out of 1,000 students at a secondary school declared their gender to be different than their birth sex.

According to the DailyMail:

The majority have done so since most Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were lifted last summer, raising concern about the impact of online trans ‘influencers’ on youngsters who were largely confined to their homes for months.

“Transformers Lockdown Animated Deluxe – caja” by mdverde is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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Dr. Rachel Levine Is Uninformed, Or Worse

People with Gender-Critical views like mine are constantly told that “the science” is unequivocal on this issue and in favor of “gender-affirmative care.”

Dr. Rachel Levine
Dr. Rachel Levine

Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine, who is a Trans-female, and the highest-ranking transgender member of the federal government dismisses those of us who criticize new federal guidelines that recommend “gender-affirming” care for transgender minors — saying that no responsible doctors oppose it.

Here’s a NY Post article with more details of her criticism.

A few days ago, Dr. Levine made the following comment to National Public Radio (NPR)

"There is no argument among medical professionals - pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc -- about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care."

To suggest that “the science is settled” on this issue is patently false.

Here is a recent peer-reviewed and heavily researched article with links to more studies than you could ever read on the subject.

Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults. Published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

A few important findings.

In less than a decade, the western world has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the numbers of children and adolescents seeking gender transition. Despite the precedent of years of gender-affirmative care, the social, medical and surgical interventions are still based on very low-quality evidence. The many risks of these interventions, including medicalizing a temporary adolescent identity, have come into a clearer focus through an awareness of detransitioners. 

When uncertain parents of children and teens consult their primary care providers, they are usually referred to specialty gender services. Parents and referring clinicians assume that specialists with “gender expertise” will undertake a thorough evaluation. However, the evaluations preceding the recommendation for gender transition are often surprisingly brief (Anderson & Edwards-Leeper, 2021) and typically lead to a recommendation for hormones and surgery, known as gender-affirmative treatment.

Despite the widely recognized deficiencies in the evidence supporting gender-affirmative interventions (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence, 2020a; 2020b), the process of obtaining informed consent from patients and their families has no established standard. 

Social transition, hormones, and surgeries are unproven in a strict scientific sense, and as such, to be ethical, require a thorough and fully informed consent process.

...the dramatic growth in demand for youth gender transition witnessed in the last several years that has led to a perfunctory informed consent process. A rushed process does not allow for a proper discussion of not only the benefits, but the profound risks and uncertainties associated with gender transition, especially when gender transition is undertaken before mature adulthood.

Although the incidence of natal males asserting a trans identity in adolescence has significantly increased, the dramatic increase is driven primarily by the natal females requesting services. Many suffer from significant comorbid mental health disorders, have neurocognitive difficulties such as ADHD or autism or have a history of trauma.

To respond to growing demand, an innovative informed consent model of care has been developed. Under this model, mental health evaluations are not required, and hormones can be provided after just one visit following the collection of a patient’s or guardian’s consent signature....we believe this model is the antithesis of true informed consent, as it jeopardizes the ethical foundation of patient autonomy. Autonomy is not respected when patients consenting to the treatment do not have an accurate understanding of the risks, benefits, and alternatives.

It is common for gender-affirmative specialists to erroneously believe that gender-affirmative interventions are a standard of care. Despite the increasingly widespread professional beliefs in the safety and efficacy of pediatric gender transition, and the endorsement of this treatment pathway by a number of professional medical societies, the best available evidence suggests that the benefits of gender-affirmative interventions are of very low certainty and must be carefully weighed against the health risks to fertility, bone, and cardiovascular health.

The ‘transition or suicide’ narrative falsely implies that transition will prevent suicides. [N]either hormones nor surgeries have been shown to reduce suicidality in the long-term.

Full Article at this link.

For those of you sitting on the fence about where the science comes down on this issue (forget the ethical-religious questions for a moment), you need to read this article published in a medical journal.

Abigail Shrier questions the Secretary…

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