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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

What about the evidence?

4 replies

BlooDeBloop · 13/04/2023 13:12

This transgender trend has been going a fair while. The experimental, off-label drug use, widespread 'affirmative care'. The Dutch protocol is now two decades old. People on all sides of the divide tell us more evidence is needed desperately. But where are the studies? I just can't understand a/ the lack of studies when you have the study population queuing at your door, and b/ the poor quality of studies done, no control group etc.

If you compare to another novel and perhaps controversial treatment, the COVID mRNA vaccine, urgent circumstances required fast roll out under emergency conditions. Data was harvested as soon as possible to verify its safety. This was essential to gain user trust. And to actually find out, you know, if it actually worked! Wherever you fall on the vaccine debate, no one can argue the studies were poor or weakly designed, or simply not done.

How can the affirmative care brigade possibly justify their inaction? The Tavistock told each other and everyone else over and over that studies were needed but sat on their own data. Trans inclusion in women's sports is predicated on us 'not knowing' if male born trans athletes have a systemic advantage. And they tell us we won't know for thirty years. Am I going mad? It's all there. The experiment has been rolling on for over 15 years across the westernised world. In the absence of 'evidence' (and bizarrely in the US they are told 'because of the evidence'), the urgent state of the trans population means, oh dear, we have to act now to save lives. Medicate first and do the research later. Sometime. Sometime never.

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CreationNat1on · 13/04/2023 13:16

Agree.

My feelings trump facts, no evidence required. But why are doctors not being held to account and schools.

DarkDayforMN · 13/04/2023 13:34

I don't know how they justify it, but the recent NEJM study (link to Jesse Singal's analysis https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/on-scientific-transparency-researcher) is revealing re the thought processes, I think.

Some other researchers into youth gender medicine seem to be entirely cynical, and their "research" is deliberate data mining to bolster a foregone conclusion which allows them to justify continuing to rake in the money.

These people preregistered the hypotheses they were planning to test and came up with a decent study design, considering the lack of a control group (with these treatments designated "lifesaving" a control group is seen as unethical.) They must have genuinely believed in the treatments and have been expecting to find evidence the treatments worked - but then when they didn't find that, they did their best to cover it up. I think it's cognitive dissonance at work. Too difficult to admit that they might be doing harm.

On Scientific Transparency, Researcher Degrees Of Freedom, And That NEJM Study On Youth Gender Medicine

There are a lot of unanswered questions here, which is unfortunate

https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/on-scientific-transparency-researcher

BlooDeBloop · 13/04/2023 16:49

I guess a combination of the money factor plus refusal to admit fucking up, yes powerful reasons to cover up data that didn't fit. Bad enough. When you factor in the general, let's say, reluctance to harvest data in the first place it's easy to see why there is nothing of note on the research record. We saw it in Polly Carmichael's reign (detailed in Time to Think) - where GIDS was bank rolling the far less successful Tavistock. What I find hard to see is these reasons being replicated across countries, continents even. I do just wonder if what we are seeing is the fall out from an initial rush to treat across the west following the Dutch protocol. Then when clinical results came back as less clear, clinicians instinctively doubled down, fearful because of backlash from patients, pressure groups and, more importantly, their own consciences. The social movement during this time was generating a whole ineluctable momentum of its own. It became impossible NOT to treat but at the same time they knew the data would be inconclusive at best so didn't collect it. Many clinicians left GIDS in the last years of its existence. I wonder what the retirement/turnover rate is from across these services world wide?

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TheABC · 14/04/2023 08:42

This was laid bare in the recent Economist article about transgender medicine. All the studies were assessed as poor quality and there is shockingly little rigerous assessment or follow up. We just don't know if the hormones and surgeries are a long term success or not.

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