08/12/2021
Left-wing medical lobbying groups stifle all dissent from their rigorous dogma. Here is the whole article:
Is it safe for adolescents to undergo gender “transition”? Is it wise for children to take hormones that block puberty? The American Academy of Pediatrics not only has answered these questions in the affirmative but is determined to stifle any debate. On Friday the AAP told an international consortium of more than 100 clinicians and researchers who doubt the reigning orthodoxy that they couldn’t set up an information booth at the association’s national conference. The cosmetics company L’Oreal and the National Peanut Board will be there, but not the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine.
SEGM’s members object to the widespread use of “affirmative care” protocols, which mandate that adolescent and even pediatric patients who claim to have gender dysphoria—severe discomfort with their biological sex—receive immediate “affirmation” from their physicians. These young people are then frequently encouraged along a path of rapid “transition” via hormone treatments and surgery.
In the past year, major hospitals in Europe have ended or curtailed pediatric hormone treatments in response to their own internal reviews. In March, the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence concluded that the benefits of hormone treatments for pediatric gender-dysphoria patients were unclear. The Karolinska Hospital of Sweden, which is affiliated with the institute that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine, in May decided to end its use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for treatment of gender dysphoria for all patients under 18, except in controlled research settings. Finland’s national gender program issued new guidelines after noticing that many of the kids it treated with hormone therapy failed to show improvements in mental health.
Clinicians across the West are acknowledging that the evidentiary basis supporting medical transition for kids is shaky and that hormone treatments on adolescents don’t produce significant mental-health benefits. Yet “there’s no home for that message inside U.S. medical societies,” as endocrinologist and SEGM co-founder Will Malone said.
The so-called Dutch protocol, a widely adopted standard of care that has been used to justify starting gender-dysphoric minors as young as 8 on puberty blockers, is based on a study of a narrow population: children with severe gender dysphoria since early childhood and no other mental-health comorbidities. The protocol is now being applied to a wildly different demographic—teenage girls who seem to have had no prior history of dysphoria, and who have high rates of anxiety and depression. Many young women who underwent hormone treatments and surgeries over the past decade now regret having done so; they call themselves “detransitioners.”
The AAP is “working very hard to give an appearance that everything’s been decided and there’s no debate. The growing numbers of detransitioners suggests that [pediatricians] don’t really know what we’re doing in this case,” said Julia Mason, a pediatrician, SEGM adviser and AAP fellow.
Another SEGM researcher, who asked that her name not be used because she has a family member experiencing gender dysphoria, added: “When the home of the Nobel Prize in medicine stops transitioning children as a matter of general practice, and pulls it back into tightly controlled research settings, is this not a wake-up a call for the rest of the world?”
For this year’s AAP conference, the National Peanut Board gained approval to provide information on developments in allergy science, Gideon International can share its famed bibles, and Infinity Massage Chairs will offer information about dissolving that knot between your shoulder blades. But a group of clinicians and researchers who want to present evidence that pediatric gender treatments rest on a foundation of questionable evidence can’t get a booth. The AAP initially granted SEGM a booth and then, without explanation, sent an email stating that it had changed its mind. SEGM’s appeal was rejected without explanation. The AAP didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.
“We show up with a valid argument, we’re not politically or ideologically driven,” Dr. Malone said. “Other countries, more liberal countries, have already come to the conclusion that we should have come to as a country years ago. And yet, because we can’t open this debate in any form . . . the debate is not occurring and kids are being harmed.”
Many of the pediatricians I spoke to for this article say they fear professional retribution because of their views and asked not to be identified. In March, one of them submitted a proposed resolution, seconded by an AAP leader, asking that the AAP re-evaluate its commitment to affirmative care in light of the growing international skepticism about this treatment protocol for children and adolescents. Among the group’s membership, the resolution received wide approval: 80% of responding pediatricians indicated that they supported it, according to Dr. Mason. “What we’re dealing with is institutional capture,” she said. “The leadership is not in the same place as the membership.”
Dr. Malone, the endocrinologist, points out that they didn’t even apply for the opportunity to debate current protocols. They simply wanted to staff a booth: “This is baby stuff. Set up a booth and hand out some information? No, we can’t even do that.”
Ms. Shrier is author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”
Doctors who question the orthodoxy won’t be allowed to set up a booth at its annual conference.
