It gets worse - a new, fresh hell

[WootMoggie]

Medical paper in which it is argued that non-binary children should be given puberty blockers FOR LIFE
^
"In this article, we analyse the novel case of Phoenix, a non-binary adult requesting ongoing puberty suppression (OPS) to permanently prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics, as a way of affirming their gender identity. We argue that (1) the aim of OPS is consistent with the proper goals of medicine to promote well-being, and therefore could ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle;"

"Phoenix, 18, was assigned female at birth but has identified as gender non-binary (not entirely/exclusively male or female) since age 5."
^

• and so it begins.

Lord help us keep these clinicians away from our families. Puberty is a scary thing, but this line of thinking is essentially redefining it as optional.

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

I'm not academic, nor a scientist.

Could someone explain why the article sets out their 'argument' at the very beginning? ('We argue that it can be ethically justifiable for clinicians to offer OPS to non-binary adults') Isn't the point of this type of ethical paper to investigate with as much of an open mind as possible?

Is ethics about positing a view and trying to defend it, or is it an exploration of the potential issues?

I mean, what I'd like to see is alternative 'arguments' put forward, I suppose, considered and evaluated.

They can’t argue that puberty blockers are safe to be used, but then get all mopey and ethical about whether they’re safe to be used past the time the doctors want. Look at the options being presented:

The paediatrician stated that, when Phoenix turned 16 and had a better sense of their gender identity, they would meet to discuss whether Phoenix wished to discontinue the puberty blockers and (1) revert to their endogenous (female) sex hormones or (2) commence testosterone.

So look at what they see as the “outs”. Option 2 is to continue the damage with ANOTHER line of hormone treatment. They still think they’re doing good by continuing the affirmative approach, and seem to think that putting a female on testosterone and all the side effects THAT entails is one of the better fucking options!

I can see how parents could make decisions that seem extreme to people from the outside.

There's no physical or cognitive disability in these scenarios, other than whatever long term use of puberty blockers might induce. And the argument here isn't about parental decisions- it's about ensuring cognitively immature children can make the choice to avoid going through puberty regardless of whether their parents or guardians approve. I do think the Ashley X case is a derail, sorry.

scrimpshaw I think that's the way it's done in philosophy though I'm happy to be corrected. It's an ethics journal so I think the purpose is to argue what is morally right or wrong on any given issue and pick a side of the fence.

Somebody else will now write in to argue the other side (well I bloody hope they do in this case) and lo, everybody gets publications out of it for their CV etc, gets invited to squabble officially at a symposium in a nice touristy city somewhere (pre covid anyway). Meanwhile, actual children are getting chemically castrated.

Do we even know how long puberty blocking drugs can be taken before it reaches the point that the body won't just pick up where it left off when they're stopped? Sorry, that's quite a complex sentence, but I'm sure you get it. I mean how long until it's irreversible?

Are we heading back to creating castrati choirboys? What happens to ageing bodies that missed the growth spurt in brain, bone and muscle as well as genitals that puberty delivers?

What will these eternal children do with their lives? Will they be competent to attend university and qualify for professions? Will they be 40yo drivers with booster seats?

Who will they sue for what's been done to them?

If there were to be a sudden epidemic that turned off puberty and meant all succeeding generations could never mature bit only grow into aged children, imagine the international distress and panic... Why would we do this to our species just because we can?

Thanks, Antibles. It's interesting to know the usual conventions & mechanisms for these things. I would have thought that as far as philosophy goes, problems are kind of invented to test the issue hypothetically as a sort of exercise in logic/argument, but perhaps applied ethics/bio ethics has a different slant/outcomes?

NearlyGranny

I don’t think anyone knows the answer to your first question. If you withdraw puberty blockers at 25, 30, 35 etc? I would imagine there is a finite point where the hypothalamus just switches off, the way cells are generally programmed to.

I would also make the point that I don’t think there needs to be an epidemic. Just doing this to one child is scandal enough.

I don't think anyone knows NearlyGranny because pretty much every child that takes blockers goes onto cross sex hormones. Which is why the 'it's just a pause' argument is so disingenuous. Once you're on blockers, you are on an irreversible pathway to transitioning

Even clinics which hand out blockers with enthusiasm suggest that 4 years is the maximum you should take blockers because of the damage to bones. So the fact that ever younger children are being prescribed them means they will be moved onto cross sex hormones at a younger age

I find anyone believing that puberty blockers are reversible or are just pausing puberty incredibly gullible. Do they really think that if a 12 year old started taking them, and at the age of 18 they stopped, then a "normal" puberty would kick in? Or stopped at 25, then suddenly a girl would grow breasts, brain would develop, add on several inches in height etc. Really?

Yes, even being madly optimistic and saying puberty would begin perfectly normally as soon as you stopped taking them, imagine pretty much starting your adolescence in your 20s. All your school peers have already gone through the growing of breasts, the acne, body hair, the sexual urges, the moods, the blazing rows with parents. They've already hit all the milestones you're meant to hit at that age, and done their rebelling while still having parental care, and they've largely figured out who they are by 25. Imagine starting that whole process alone much, much later. It's bonkers.

Most parents feel a deep sadness at some point at watching childhood eventually slip away from their kids.
For those who suffer this at pathological levels, they might grab at this as a chance to keep their children as children, forever, as a side-effect of being held up as an example of being a lovely "affirming" parent.

Yeah, I can imagine this would be Christmas come early for the parents with Munchausen by proxy. The idea that all parents are good and clear-sighted and know what is best for their child just isn't an accurate one.

@ScrimpshawTheSecond that's fairly normal for an academic paper in the humanities - the argument is stated first and the article then explains how/why that argument was reached. It doesn't necessarily reflect a lack of exploration in the research process itself (although, here...!)

It is hypothetical research. I have no objections to hypothetical research, so long as, all of the possible outcomes are known and discussed thoroughly and that massively includes the effects of drugs.

If this every became accepted, Physicians in this area would never get insurance

ever

I just dread to think the damage that drugs like Lupron could do to a body through long term usage as an off-label drug. This article covers the side effects from relatively short term usage (7 years in one girls case) www.statnews.com/2017/02/02/lupron-puberty-children-health-problems/

@Flapjak

I wonder who is funding her research and why? Money would be better spent on the psychosocial or neurological causes of gender dysphoria

In the section on Funding at the end of the article it says she received a grant from the University of Melbourne. I note that one of the co-authors (Julian Savulescu) received funding from the Wellcome Trust - but it doesn't state specifically whether it was for this article.

This is one of the most worrying things I've read and I've read quite a few things over the last few months that have made my jaw drop. But I can't quite put into words how horrifying I find it that this kind of treatment might ever be sanctioned by healthcare practitioners.

This basic idea, I first came across in a Sci-Fi novel by Larry Niven, where intervention early enough would mean lack of sexual desire and adult development, but increased intelligence and immortality.

Other sci-fi says, what if you freeze their development at 5, at 10? Forever sweet little kids.................(or in the case of the story I read, a permanent kitten rather than an adult cat).

A bit different to what is being offered here, where normal mental and physical and sexual development being stymied for the sake of.....looking non-binary forever.

My take would be, do we have the right to take away normal adult development away from someone, just because they are in that gap where they are old enough to consent to some things, yet not old enough to fully understand what they are loosing.

Puberty is an important part of natural human growth, mentally and physically. This lie about pausing it, now becomes, why not just stop it happening altogether..........

This is at least the logical endpoint of the use of these drugs in childhood, that you never come off them, and what then? We have seen what happened to Jazz Jennings in terms of surgery and physical and mental development. Do we have a right to deprive anyone of their full mental and sexual development, even if they ask for it? No, because they don't yet have the full development to know what they are sacrificing. We don't have the right to deprive someone of full adulthood.

A World Out of Time SomeDyke:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time

See this brief snippet:

www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=512

She is a fellow of the "Murdoch Children's Research Institute" her other published papers are at the bottom of this page www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/gender-research

I don't get this. Would the blockers stop all development? I realise I don't really know what puberty blockers achieve.

Christ, I just clicked through to that Melbourne institute and by following something else Notini has published, which I couldn't access, I saw an article entitled by someone called Maura Priest from 2019 entitled:

Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm.

FFS . Are all the medical ethicists busy supporting this shit or are there some naysayers? I worry because of what academics on FWR have said academia has been like on the trans front. People daren't speak up.

What I worry about with academics, or doctors and suchlike too actually, is that they find it very hard to backpedal on an issue once they've published a fair bit about it. Human psychology means people have a vested interest in continuing to argue the same corner rather than do a public U-turn and admit they were wrong.

I don't really know what puberty blockers achieve.

They stop the biologically obvious occurring, the reality of which may help confused youngsters to desist as they mature. Desisting teens would undermine the trans ideology.