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Original poster

Most disingenuous claim by a TRA doctor I’ve seen yet

35 replies

NotBadConsidering · 19/08/2020 09:59

Jack Turban is a child psych fellow. He shot to prominence earlier this year when he has a paper published in Pediatrics that claimed to show transgender adults who had been on puberty blockers as children had better mental health when in fact it actually showed those adults who had been on puberty blockers as children were twice as likely to have been hospitalised for a suicide attempt in the 12 months prior compared to transgender adults who hadn’t been on puberty blockers.

He is claiming, in response to Abigail Shrier, that puberty blockers don’t cause infertility. To prove his point he links a study.

mobile.twitter.com/jack_turban/status/1295560729173475328

The study looks at the use of puberty blockers for precocious puberty. This is a condition where children go through puberty too early, puberty blockers are used, and then always ceased to allow normal puberty to happen. Therefore these children do not end up infertile. This is a completely different condition.

With gender variant children who are given puberty blockers they are NOT stopped, normal puberty is NEVER allowed to happen, normal fertility is NEVER developed because sperm and ova aren’t matured by the process of puberty. Cross sex hormones, given later do not allow this process to happen. Surgery to remove ovaries or testes then makes it permanent.

In the “theoretical” case study of a child continuing on puberty blockers without progressing to cross sex hormones the authors acknowledge the risk of infertility and recommend consideration of egg preservation and counselling.

jme.bmj.com/content/early/2020/07/24/medethics-2019-106012

Puberty suppression would also impair Phoenix’s fertility. Phoenix’s eggs are unlikely to mature without sex hormones.29 While fertility preservation techniques exist (eg, ovarian tissue cryopreservation), these remain experimental, especially for individuals who have not gone through puberty,10 such as Phoenix. Current guidelines recommend the impact of puberty blockers on fertility and fertility preservation options be discussed with patients and families before beginning puberty suppression.

Jack must know this. He can’t not know this. If Jack doesn’t know this he is a very poorly informed self-appointed expert in this field. If Jack does know this and is being disingenuous in his post, I can’t possibly post my opinion on Jack’s integrity because this post took too long to risk deletion.

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FWRLurker · 20/08/2020 19:23

An ethics committee would have probably been involved.

Indeed, in fact this study was rejected by NIH before finally being funded for ethical violations. One of the demands Of the ethics reviewers was a random assignment to no-hormone Or placebo control group. Exposing subjects to potentially unsafe medical treatments in a study Is not ethical if it cannot, by virtue of the design, Detect an effect of the treatment.

They applied again and managed to get it through by claiming the study is “observational” (something only possible due to the huge number of IC clinic children in the US, and extremely disingenuous given the authors RUN one of the clinics), and that all the kids in the control group would Be in danger of suicide.

Gingerkittykat · 20/08/2020 18:24

Hopefully Mermaids and friends will have to start reporting accurately on what happens rather than just tell the people they are reversible and just pause puberty, something I believed before I came on here.

SunsetBeetch · 20/08/2020 18:02

@Tootsweets23

The good doctor is Ben Cohen's husband of Prick News fame.
Oh really? That explains a lot.
Original poster
NotBadConsidering · 19/08/2020 21:34

With regards to the claim that normal puberty would resume, no one knows if there is a finite point for this. Puberty blockers for precocious puberty are usually stopped after around 2 years, when a child is at the standard puberty age. So it’s physiologically understandable that puberty would resume. No one know if this still happens at 18, 20, 22, 25? There may be a point at which the hypothalamus just gives up.

What’s also notable about the consent form strongly pointing out that infertility will result is that it is a consent form for a study. An ethics committee would have probably been involved.

But what about consent forms for this treatment outside of the study, in all the other clinics around the world? Are parents and children even presented with a written consent form to sign?

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FWRLurker · 19/08/2020 20:32

If your child discontinues the use of blockers, and does not go on gender affirming hormones, they will continue their pubertal development about 6-12 months after stopping the medication, and fertility would be maintained.

As far as I am aware, if such data exists, it is not published. The main reason being that nearly everyone who takes puberty blockers past the age of standard puberty had gone on to X sex hormones.

I think there should now be enough children who do desist (even just a handful) to do a case study, but I haven’t seen one. Which makes me think the news is not good.

JellySlice · 19/08/2020 19:47

There are many things we are not told that we cannot mention, yet posts get deleted for mentioning them.

Most mentions of this individual, though, end up falling foul of the iniquitous guidelines:

Most disingenuous claim by a TRA doctor I’ve seen yet
Tootsweets23 · 19/08/2020 19:12

The good doctor is Ben Cohen's husband of Prick News fame.

Datun · 19/08/2020 19:03

@JellySlice

Please don't discuss J on this thread. By the moderation rules, posts discussing naming individuals tend to get deleted, and sometimes even the entire thread, despite those individuals choosing to make intimate details of their lives public.
As far as I'm aware, I thought speculation was the problem, not what is actually in the television programme?

i've never been told we can't mention jazz at all.

JellySlice · 19/08/2020 18:52

Please don't discuss J on this thread. By the moderation rules, posts discussing naming individuals tend to get deleted, and sometimes even the entire thread, despite those individuals choosing to make intimate details of their lives public.

Datun · 19/08/2020 17:49

@Aesopfable

Don’t follow Jazz. But the last I heard the attempt to construct a ‘neovagina’ out of a hotchpotch of tissues fail. Did they continue to be filmed or has that dropped away to give them a chance to have some space to reflect?
I don't follow jazz, either. The last I heard, though, is they didn't go to college, which I believe was meant to be Harvard?
Aesopfable · 19/08/2020 17:47

Don’t follow Jazz. But the last I heard the attempt to construct a ‘neovagina’ out of a hotchpotch of tissues fail. Did they continue to be filmed or has that dropped away to give them a chance to have some space to reflect?

Datun · 19/08/2020 16:05

I mean, I wouldn't mind, but the story of eg Jazz Jennings is beamed out of their home and doctor's surgery into the homes of millions of people. Millions.

Jazz's every utterance about sex, and the doctors' comments about their anatomy and sexual function, isn't exactly a secret. Jazz and Jazz's family rely on the world knowing all about it, for their livelihood.

nauticant · 19/08/2020 16:01

I suspect that "fertility would be maintained" would more accurately be expressed as "fertility will not necessarily be wholly destroyed". The way these doctors are twisting words in this is a scandal.

Aesopfable · 19/08/2020 14:44

If your child discontinues the use of blockers, and does not go on gender affirming hormones, they will continue their pubertal development about 6-12 months after stopping the medication, and fertility would be maintained.

This is a big claim. Have they got evidence to back this up if, for example, you went on blockers at 10/11 and stopped at 16/17?

ThePurported · 19/08/2020 13:41

Very interesting. An endocrinologist in California has released the consent form to the study that Johanna Olson-Kennedy is doing on puberty blockers and cross sex hormones

It's Michael Laidlaw apparently. It's a shame he's not more active on Twitter.

Datun · 19/08/2020 13:38

If your child starts puberty blockers in the earliest stages of puberty, and then goes on to gender affirming hormones, they will not develop sperm or eggs. This means that they will not be able to have biological children. This is an important aspect of blocking puberty and progressing to hormones that you should understand prior to moving forward with puberty suppression.

I'll never cease to be shocked that this medication is being given to children without any substantial medical evidence to back it up.

nauticant · 19/08/2020 13:37

'expert' status in a relatively new field.

The "new field" aspect is important here. It gets someone first mover advantage meaning that if the field explodes in prominence and size, they're well on track for "big fish in a big pond" status. I think this is very attractive indeed to those with a god complex.

ErrolTheDragon · 19/08/2020 13:16

@ArabellaScott

Gosh, $15,000 dollars is quite a large sum of money for a doctor to receive from a company that manufactures puberty blockers, isn't it? I'm sure there's a very good and clear explanation for why he's trying to attack Abigail Shrier's arguments.
I can't see any 'competing interests info' on that paper, shouldn't there be one?
ThePurported · 19/08/2020 12:59

I genuinely don't think it's about the money for these people. I think it's god complex / narcissism /MBP / enjoying all the woke cookies they get. In a "normal" balanced individual surely the known well documented risks would outweigh the unlikely, poorly researched benefits.

I don't know. I think most of them are just pursuing career (and financial) opportunities and 'expert' status in a relatively new field.

Original poster
NotBadConsidering · 19/08/2020 12:37

Very interesting. An endocrinologist in California has released the consent form to the study that Johanna Olson-Kennedy is doing on puberty blockers and cross sex hormones:

drive.google.com/file/d/1Q-zJCivH-QW7hL25idXT_jITfJZUUm1w/view

If your child starts puberty blockers in the earliest stages of puberty, and then goes on to gender affirming hormones, they will not develop sperm or eggs. This means that they will not be able to have biological children. This is an important aspect of blocking puberty and progressing to hormones that you should understand prior to moving forward with puberty suppression. If your child discontinues the use of blockers, and does not go on gender affirming hormones, they will continue their pubertal development about 6-12 months after stopping the medication, and fertility would be maintained.

The sentence “This an important aspect..” is underlined for emphasis in the original form but I can’t format that on my phone.

Twitter thread:

mobile.twitter.com/BrandonMShow/status/1295924599738245121

What say you Jack?

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Aesopfable · 19/08/2020 12:12

Money and medicine are much more closely linked in the states. Because of the NHS it is considered almost unethical to talk about doctors being paid to provide treatments/making money from it. But medicine is very much ‘big business’ in the states - not just big pharma.

Original poster
NotBadConsidering · 19/08/2020 12:03

@Aesopfable

When you say he is a child psych fellow do you mean psychologist (not a medical doctor, no training in the physical body) or a psychiatrist?
He’s an MD, a doctor, training in psychiatry.
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Original poster
NotBadConsidering · 19/08/2020 12:02

What concerns me about his work is how a journal like Pediatrics published his paper, which was a low quality self-selecting questionnaire study that didn’t conclude what it purported to. It’s a similar situation to the American Journal of Psychiatry’s paper that needed a correction published. These journals should know better. It’s another institutional capture.

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Aesopfable · 19/08/2020 12:02

When you say he is a child psych fellow do you mean psychologist (not a medical doctor, no training in the physical body) or a psychiatrist?

Winesalot · 19/08/2020 11:15

I have read some of his work. He does not seem to have a balanced approach.