The US could in principle restrict treatment to experimental studies, just like other countries....but let's look at what US studies have been done recently.
There's Olson et al., where they didn't bother to diagnose the young people in the study but just measured how long they stayed socially transitioned, there's Tordoff et al. (2022) w…
The US could in principle restrict treatment to experimental studies, just like other countries....but let's look at what US studies have been done recently.
There's Olson et al., where they didn't bother to diagnose the young people in the study but just measured how long they stayed socially transitioned, there's Tordoff et al. (2022) where the majority of kids ended up medicalized but weren't seen to improve, and then there is Chen et al., 2023, which Singal discusses in detail, which had announced several outcome measures would be checked but which has only reported on 2 of the 8... (what happened to the other indicators they measured in the 2 years?) and two kids of the 315 committed suicide.
So yes, you could have US kids only being treated in studies, but the current studies are not protecting the young people right now (they or rather their parents are giving informed consent to clinicians who believe in the affirmative model and who at least write papers which are misleading and/or incorrect) and they are not being done well enough for anything to be learned. If an exception is made for studies, how do you make sure those in the studies are giving true *informed* consent (which rules out anyone listening to affirming clinicians as they are misinformed themselves). And how do you justify sterilizing young people to find out who might be helped or harmed by this? Minors?
The US has refused to look at facts, to do systematic reviews of the evidence, aside from Florida (and the Endocrine Society made recommendations which were stronger than the evidence seems to support, see the great article by Block in BMJ on this). So how do you keep every affirmative clinician from just saying they are doing a study and then business (and there's a lot!$$$$) as usual?
I don't have answers, would love to hear what you think. I don't think the answer is business as usual but I don't know how to deal with all the lies, bad faith and misinformation, I'm astounded they have gone on this long.
absolutely need to be exposed. But I worry that as long as the studies are so poorly done that anyone who "affirms" will just declare they are doing a study and then continue as usual....
It needs to be rebutted in the journals, not just by Jesse, on his blog. But indeed, the work was so badly written up that even a non-physician can see many fatal flaws and he did a fantastic job laying them out.
The US could in principle restrict treatment to experimental studies, just like other countries....but let's look at what US studies have been done recently.
There's Olson et al., where they didn't bother to diagnose the young people in the study but just measured how long they stayed socially transitioned, there's Tordoff et al. (2022) where the majority of kids ended up medicalized but weren't seen to improve, and then there is Chen et al., 2023, which Singal discusses in detail, which had announced several outcome measures would be checked but which has only reported on 2 of the 8... (what happened to the other indicators they measured in the 2 years?) and two kids of the 315 committed suicide.
So yes, you could have US kids only being treated in studies, but the current studies are not protecting the young people right now (they or rather their parents are giving informed consent to clinicians who believe in the affirmative model and who at least write papers which are misleading and/or incorrect) and they are not being done well enough for anything to be learned. If an exception is made for studies, how do you make sure those in the studies are giving true *informed* consent (which rules out anyone listening to affirming clinicians as they are misinformed themselves). And how do you justify sterilizing young people to find out who might be helped or harmed by this? Minors?
The US has refused to look at facts, to do systematic reviews of the evidence, aside from Florida (and the Endocrine Society made recommendations which were stronger than the evidence seems to support, see the great article by Block in BMJ on this). So how do you keep every affirmative clinician from just saying they are doing a study and then business (and there's a lot!$$$$) as usual?
I don't have answers, would love to hear what you think. I don't think the answer is business as usual but I don't know how to deal with all the lies, bad faith and misinformation, I'm astounded they have gone on this long.
absolutely need to be exposed. But I worry that as long as the studies are so poorly done that anyone who "affirms" will just declare they are doing a study and then continue as usual....
It needs to be rebutted in the journals, not just by Jesse, on his blog. But indeed, the work was so badly written up that even a non-physician can see many fatal flaws and he did a fantastic job laying them out.