Receipt: Pitch to Mainstream Outlets, 10/24
On Monday, a new study was released to great fanfare and much publicity. Lead researcher and MacArthur genius Kristina Olson’s paper showed high rates of satisfaction, and low rates of regret, among young transgender people who had socially transitioned, and then medically transitioned. The paper’s conclusion: “In the last few years, there have been moves to ban or restrict access to gender-affirming care for minors…” “Our hope is that these data, reflecting the experiences of youth who accessed these treatments, will contribute to continued updating of decisions regarding the provision of gender-affirming care to adolescents.”
Two days later, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy—no relation—was in the news about another youth gender study. She had neglected to publish the data gathered as part of an almost $10 million NIH-funded study “because of the charged American political environment,” Olson-Kennedy admitted. The results hadn’t shown what she’d expected—that puberty blockers would have positive effects on adolescents’ mental health—and “I do not want our work to be weaponized.” That is, she didn’t want the unfavorable data used to bolster the bans on gender-affirming care, which the Supreme Court is set to consider on December 4th.
Many of us immersed in this topic have lamented how it has become a political controversy—the stuff of presidential ads—rather than one of science or medical ethics. Red states ban these interventions, and blue states create sanctuaries for them. But gender-affirming clinicians themselves are playing politics. And the bans, and subsequent lawsuits, have led to shocking discoveries. That includes the revelation, detailed in documents released last week, that Dr. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary of health, pressured clinicians creating standards of care to remove all age limits for gender medicine, including almost all gender surgeries.
However one feels about bans, they are filling a regulatory vacuum left by medical associations that act more like lobbying groups than scientific organizations. The American Psychological Association published a series of talking points for members to combat bans against gender-affirming care, but issued no statement about the Cass Review—the most comprehensive document ever produced about these interventions, which found no good evidence to support it. When I asked a representative for the APA why they hadn’t engaged, he told me they saw youth gender medicine not as a scientific issue, but one of human rights. The American Academy of Pediatrics has continued to refuse or delay a systematic review of the evidence.
We will never get to a cease fire in the youth culture war unless the scientists stop acting like politicians and lobbyists, and start acting like scientists.
(Much more detail to add if it’s a go).
This is excellent, and your bottom line point is pitch perfect.
“When I asked a representative for the APA why they hadn’t engaged, he told me they saw youth gender medicine not as a scientific issue, but one of human rights.” This is a stunning statement. We have a major medical authority is refusing to engage scientifically on a medical treatment approach, and claiming that the human rights framing is the appropriate one to inform their medical decisions. They are, of course, engaging selectively with the studies that purport to show benefits and not costs. So they are hiding behind the veneer of science in that case. They are also putting forth a position that access to their preferred treatment plan is a human right, as if this were settled consensus, which it is not. And even more egregious, this ignores the fact that we need more complete scientific information, non-suppressed evidence, rigorous evaluation of the existing information-in other words, “science”, to inform their human rights debate.