Academic article on the Dutch protocol, puberty blockers etc by Michael Biggs

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Apologies if there is already a thread on this. I couldn't see one. New academic article by Professor Michael Biggs of the University of Oxford. Open access, so you should be able to read the entire text using the link below.

It's jawdropping stuff. I am not an academic or an HCP, but I could follow the gist of it. To my amateur eyes the case for giving children and teenagers puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones and 'gender affirming' surgery (i.e. double mastectomy for girls, followed by hysterectomy and removal of ovaries, removal of testicles and surgery on penis for boys) is based on appallingly flimsy evidence. Who has been advocating for the children in all of this? Why haven't HCPs and scientists, not to mention politicians and social worker, been looking at this and saying 'No'?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238

The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence
Michael Biggs
Published online: 19 Sep 2022

Thanks for sharing, will read. Commenting so more will see your post

I've read this. It's shocking and I hope it will be sent to the Cass Review. No time for a longer comment now but also bumping so others will see it.

OMG.
I've read it - need to read it again as it's so detailed but it's damning.
The lack of effective data, inept / incomplete trials, burying data that demonstrates results medical activists would like to suppress and more.
Michael Biggs has pursued this issue for years, doggedly and determinedly analysing the data about what is happening to children and shedding sunlight on what's happening. And it's this:

"Jennings’ surgeon, Marci Bowers, who has performed over 2,000 vaginoplasties, acknowledges that “every single child … who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2, has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it’s really about zero” (Bowers, 2022). This remark refers to males. The effects of puberty suppression at such an early stage on females is unknown".

Thank you for this OP. Crikey. Very clear and hopefully to be considered by Cass.
Commenting to say thank you and to bump

Really interesting, thanks OP. He undermines himself a little at the end by quoting the Phoenix study as a real life case. It was a hypothetical case, although based on clinical experience.

Forever young?
jme.bmj.com/content/46/11/743

Very useful to see this, thank you.

Michael Biggs has pursued this issue for years, doggedly and determinedly analysing the data about what is happening to children and shedding sunlight on what's happening. And it's this:

Yes he has. I will attest to that.

Bumping. So important.

Placemarking to read when I get time

You're right, I'd forgotten that. Nullification surgery is a real phenomenon, though, so it's not that removed from reality.

www.alignsurgical.com/non-binary/nullification/

While many patients might be interested in transitioning into either a male or female identity, there are plenty of individuals who feel that their gender identity does not quite conform in one direction or the other. Gender nullification surgery can enable non-conforming patients to enjoy a relatively smooth genital area. Nullification creates a relatively continuous and mostly unbroken transition from the abdomen down into the genital area, enabling gender non-conforming patients to enjoy a body that looks closer on the outside to the way they feel on the inside.

There's so much in here, and it's not long so it shows how well written it is.

What happened in GIDS in 2010, that the reportedly more cautious Di Ceglie left? He seems like he was the last one standing against the incoming push for medicalisation of children. It's given on p7 that he left but we don't know why.

The paper is - as I say - well written but it's complex. Do I read this bit right? De Vries got her doctorate under the supervision of Cohen-Kettenis (p7) who'd been the published an article - the Dutch Protocol - in 2006: "supported financially by Ferring Pharmaceuticals" (p4). They're the ones who donated to the LDs, IIRC?

And is this study of de Vries, the study that propelled use of PBs even further? Even though the evidence didn't exactly support doing so?

Elsewhere, I see that some issues have been documented for some time but that the "treatment" seems like it went ahead anyway. For example, it seems it was known to cause a drop in IQ (p12). And that was known about in 2007. Yet still here we are.

Then there's lower bone density which was recorded in 1996. Anyone know how low it is in comparison to say, an old person with osteoporosis? I'd have been interested to know that. I don't understand what a Z-score is but it seems like these ones are bad news.

If they knew it had an adverse impact on cancer patients' libidos in 1999, and made for "very uncomfortable" side effects of those with paraphilias (p6), why was there no curiosity about this?

There's so much in here and I've only scratched the surface. GIRES, Mermaids, Gender GP feature.

The conclusion includes:

"While the use of GnRHa to suppress puberty helped to create the juvenile transsexual, it could now be creating another “new way of being a person” (Wren, 2020): a sexless adult. This follows from the premise that natal puberty can be a kind of disease, and therefore failure to prevent an “irreversible development of secondary sex characteristics … may be considered unethical” (de Vries et al., 2011, p. 2282)."

A move to making sexless adults. Ones trapped in children's bodies, encased in brittle bones with lower IQ, stunted genitalia, no sexual function and poor mental health. Creating a discourse where puberty is a disease, which if not "treated" becomes unethical.

Good grief.

Devastating. The research failures smack of wilful suppression rather than unfortunate incompetence.

It was only a tiny point but the GC side of the argument always has to be meticulously accurate, unlike the opposing side.

It's a really useful article in that it has so much history and detail in one place. I, like most other posters here, read a lot of info about this subject and I think puberty suppression is the scariest aspect of gender medicine. Getting a detailed history really exposes how experimental the current use of blockers is.

I remember reading somewhere that lupron isn't used for chemical castration of sex offenders anymore because the side effects are considered too cruel. Take a look at the reddit sub for parents of 'trans kids' and it's shocking to see the rush and desperation for puberty suppression. Thank God we don't have planned parenthood type orgs in the UK.

The Gender: A Wider Lens episode with the Dutch clinicians is a proper eye popper:

gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/66-pioneers-series-where-it-all-started-the-dutch-researchers-steensma-de-vries

They seem to think that the children they prescribed to were such a lost cause that any clinical outcome that wasn’t death (and even one that was) would be better than no intervention. They have very little curiosity as to how their former patients have integrated in society or functioned beyond the aesthetic successes or failures of permanent pubertal blockade and cross sex hormones.

I can only hope (pray?) that doing the interview in a second language rather than their own did them a disservice, because if my impression is anywhere close to the reality of what they’ve been doing, whilst influencing the world, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Malcom Clark thread on the paper:

twitter.com/twisterfilm/status/1573125582619086848?s=46&t=yeVVFWKSwwuT0-LRK-ij8Q

I’ll read this later. Thank you for posting this. “Sexless adults” - terrifying.

I find this all so terrifying. This should not happen. Lessons were supposed to have been learned from the thalidomide, oxycontin and frontal lobotomy scandals. Training has been given, checks and balances built into the system. But here we are. And the scariest thing about this, this is in children. The group of patients where safeguarding should be at its most stringent.

When ideology and medicine meet, it is always the most vulnerable people who suffer.

And this is why we must keep on keeping on. These children are being used as cover by middle aged men, many of whom 'transition' for entirely different reasons.

The real fight isn't over bathrooms or pronouns. It is for these kids, who will end up impotent, infertile and medicalised for life.

Absolutely, GrabbyGabby!

Then there's lower bone density which was recorded in 1996. Anyone know how low it is in comparison to say, an old person with osteoporosis? I'd have been interested to know that. I don't understand what a Z-score is but it seems like these ones are bad news

As far as I remember, ResisterRex, the comparison was fudged deliberately in various studies which is possible because bone mineral density increases massively in puberty, so should always be compared to healthy children who progressed through puberty at the normal time but often isn't. (That bone mineral density increases at the highest rate in puberty is something many people, myself included, simply aren't aware of.)

To answer your question, I remember seeing a graph that put the bone mineral density of children whose puberty was blocked (thereby preventing the massive increase that should happen in puberty) below that of postmenopausal women.

And thank you Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g for posting this paper. It's an important one to be aware of in my view.

It's a pleasure, Charlie, good to see you here. Hope you're well.

Very well, thanks. Just busy and have learned to disengage as needed. I still check FWR almost every weekday but rarely post. There's so many well informed posters now, it's really good to see. I prefer to do stuff IRL now, but MN is a good way to keep in touch with what's happening.

I was also just wondering where you were the other day Charlie!

Thanks Charlie. I'm embarrassed as hadn't thought of the comparator in healthy children! I was rather thinking - what's the bone mineral density in old people with osteoporosis to understand how bad it is, that kind of thing. I'll do some digging at some point. And obviously you'd need to know what's normal/expected too.

It's below that of post-menopausal women though...

The most important problem is the deliberately disingenuous comparison of absolute mineral bone density in a cohort where bone density should be increasing through puberty. Shocking.