it's actually OK to listen to scientists - you can learn things.
Medscape (long read article)
Transgender Teens: Is the Tide Starting to Turn?
Becky McCall and Lisa Nainggolan
April 26, 2021
(extract)
Endocrine Society Guidelines Based on One Study
"Safer serves on the Standards of Care revision committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). WPATH's most recent standards of care , issued in 2012, state: "Adolescents may be eligible to begin feminizing/masculinizing hormone therapy, preferably with parental consent. In many countries, 16-year-olds are legal adults for medical decision-making and do not require parental consent." They add: "Hormone therapy should be provided only to those who are legally able to provide informed consent. This includes people who have been declared by a court to be emancipated minors."
Safe is also a co-author of the Endocrine Society's 2017 guidelines for treating youth confused about their gender. These guidelines were formally presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in March 2018.
Malone was there.
"At this conference, the Endocrine Society — a highly respected organization — rolled out a set of guidelines for kids that essentially said, 'Your job as endocrinologists is to medically affirm [gender dysphoric] adolescents with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,'" he tells Medscape.
Malone says he was astounded when he first heard the guidelines, but immediately assumed, "There must have been a massive change in the landscape, some landmark study that I missed somehow, some stunning piece of evidence that says, 'Psychotherapy is out and affirmation is in.' " But the evidence simply wasn't there, he says.
The recommendations are based on a single uncontrolled study out of the Netherlands (the so-called 'Dutch' study, published in 2014), which Malone says was of low quality. (continues)
No Questions Allowed: Follow the Advice; Debate Is Most Polarized in US
Malone says he was shocked by the Endocrine Society guidelines. "If you start puberty blockers at Tanner stage 2 [early puberty, as recommended], and then put these kids straight onto cross-sex hormones, then it's almost certain they will be infertile, as well as many other irreversible changes."
What he found equally concerning was a complete lack of any facilitated discussion on this controversial topic at the meeting.
"Endocrinologists need to be aware that the 2017 Endocrine Society guidelines on gender dysphoria are one-sided and the evidence referenced within them is low quality. I would urge concerned clinicians to review the primary studies that are being used to justify irreversible interventions," he says.
Malone says the Endocrine Society is failing its members because "although they state that the evidence behind the recommendations is low, they promote the recommendations as though they are 'a standard of care'; they are not." (continues)
www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949842?src=soc_tw_share#vp_6