Category: Gender Science

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The American Academy of Pediatrics Orders A Scientific Review of Current Gender-Care Practices

But will it be an honest review? Leor Sapir has written an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal asking some important questions. Along with his usually brilliant observations.

The piece is behind the normal WSJ paywall, so here are the highlights.

According to Sapir, the AAP is essentially a trade union. Given its vested interests as a trade union, which understandably prioritizes its members, i.e. the same doctors who have performed gender-affirming care, will this be an impartial review? Or will this be an example of confirmation bias, and/or simple CYA?

The AAP has consistently advocated for the safety and effectiveness of sex-trait modification, influencing various stakeholders from insurance companies to the Biden administration.

The AAP and prominent members have consistently assured policy makers and judges that sex-trait modification is safe and effective and based on strong science. Insurance companies have based their coverage decisions on these claims. Democrats have used them to cast opponents as bigots. The Biden administration regularly cites the AAP in its efforts to guarantee minors unfettered access to hormonal drugs and life-altering surgery. Parents have accepted AAP claims and agreed to allow doctors to disrupt their children’s natural puberty, flood their bodies with synthetic hormones, and amputate their healthy breasts. 

Yet existing systematic reviews from European health authorities have found weak evidence supporting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Given these findings, Sapir suggests the AAP should advise extreme caution in using these interventions for youth gender dysphoria, as other countries have done, while its own review is ongoing. (Reviews typically take 12 to 18 months)

Unlike narrative literature reviews, systematic reviews follow a transparent, reproducible methodology on the same body of research. Anyone who uses the same methodology should arrive at more or less the same result. The existing systematic reviews on the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, conducted by health authorities in three European countries, all found “very low” quality evidence for these interventions. 

Given the finding of every existing systematic review to date that the evidence for “gender-affirming care” is exceptionally weak, the AAP should immediately recommend extreme caution in the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries in treating youth gender dysphoria. This is a no-brainer; health authorities in the U.K., Norway, Sweden, Finland and France have done it. “There is not enough evidence to support the safety, clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” said the statement from England’s National Health Service.

Source: Wall Street Journal [emphasis mine]

We’ll be watching.

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Protect Children

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Positive Movement By American Academy of Pediatrics & Others

From the Wall Street Journal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s premier association of pediatricians, plans to review the evidence for gender-affirming medical care and potentially amend its policies that help guide doctors and clinicians providing the treatment to transgender youth. 

The exact scope of the review has yet to be determined, but is expected to include an evaluation of medical interventions such as puberty blockers and hormones, which are in some cases used to delay puberty or boost physical features associated with a gender different from the patient’s sex at birth. 

The process, known as a systematic evidence review, typically looks at all relevant evidence behind any given treatment, adjusting for bias and other potential flaws. It will be conducted by an external organization, the AAP said. 

In a related matter.

PSH are Puberty Suppressing Hormones aka Puberty Blockers

Another change of mind about puberty blockers. (Good God. What was he thinking to begin with.)

“I’ve changed my mind based on the evidence; it’s really not a pause for the vast majority of young people,” he said.

Dr. Stathis, who is medical director of Child and Youth Mental Health Service at Children’s Health Queensland, was referring to Dutch and English data showing that almost all of the young patients started on blockers went on to cross-sex hormones, which have irreversible effects. 

Blockers have often been promoted as a “no regrets” option giving a child time to mature and consider the weighty decision whether to progress to lifelong hormones.

Dr. Stathis, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who founded the gender clinic at the Queensland Children’s Hospital where patient numbers rose from 48 in 2014 to 635 in 2021, made the remarks on July 23 during a lengthy presentation at a conference of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) in Cairns, Queensland.

Dr. Stathis appears to be one of the first gender-affirming clinicians to publicly accept the findings of systematic reviews in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom since 2019 that the evidence base for medical transition of minors is of low quality and very uncertain.

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I Feel The ‘Earth’ Moving