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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Dutch public TV report on Dutch Protocol for treating children with gender dysphoria.

13 replies

334bu · 29/10/2023 00:13

Why did this happen? Why were medical professionals so keen to promote treatment when evidence was so poor?

OP posts:
PriOn1 · 29/10/2023 02:11

Many clinicians working in this area of medicine are transitioners. This means that they are (in my opinion) still experiencing uncured mental health issues around their own sex and will be unable to take a rational, dispassionate view of others’ mental health issues on the same subject.

It would be a similar situation if uncured anorexics were being given help to lose weight and were also heavily involved in researching treatment for the condition.

This is exactly the problem with a “treatment” that entirely fails to address the underlying issues, or even admit there may be underlying issues, in favour of attempting to reduce negative feelings or actual delusional thoughts by nurturing those thoughts and encouraging them to be considered normal.

Not sure how much that applies to those who pioneered the Dutch protocol, but that’s certainly a factor in why WPATH are so uncritical in wanting to adhere to so called “affirmation”. WPATH is not solely a medical outfit, but is also a lobby group. This is obvious due to the fact that a non-medic, highly successful trans lobbyist - Stephen Whittle - is a past president.

HagoftheNorth · 29/10/2023 05:08

If I remember correctly, the trial was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company which had an huge (financial) interest in what the outcome was? What I find even more amazing is that such a small trial has been uniquely relied on in so many countries for so long; and nobody thought it was worth collecting any more data. Surely that is medically negligent? Plus what PriOn said

What does the report say OP?

IncomingTraffic · 29/10/2023 06:13

Lots of detail here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238

FarEast · 29/10/2023 06:41
Happy Birthday Aniversario GIF by Travis

It’s worth listening to Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad’s interview of the Dutch practitioners on their podcast Gender: a Wider Lens. It’s about 18 months ago I think. The lack of any kind of acknowledgment of the social and mental health implications by the practitioners is a bit astounding.

FarEast · 29/10/2023 06:43

Sorry I don’t know why that gif is there. On my phone and can’t get rid of it.

Motherdaughtercircle · 29/10/2023 07:38

HagoftheNorth · 29/10/2023 05:08

If I remember correctly, the trial was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company which had an huge (financial) interest in what the outcome was? What I find even more amazing is that such a small trial has been uniquely relied on in so many countries for so long; and nobody thought it was worth collecting any more data. Surely that is medically negligent? Plus what PriOn said

What does the report say OP?

Hannah Barnes book has a lot of information about how this evidence was used in the UK, and why further evidence hasn't been forthcoming.

Tavistock originally planned a study, with participants closely matched to those in the Dutch protocol, but fairly quickly they seemed to abandon the protocol and started offering blockers to many more ineligible children (for example those with underlying mental health issues which hadn't been dealt with).

From data that is available from this, the majority of those on blockers went on to cross sex hormones, which basically disproved the "time to think" narrative they were pushing... it wasn't ending up a brief pause of puberty, but was locking kids into a transition pathway. But inexplicably they kept on with the same narrative, not explaining ther emerging evidence to their patients, and... they didn't collect any bloody data. WTF? It's honestly totally baffling to read the story, but it is a great book.

OP posts:
334bu · 29/10/2023 07:54

Sorry seems to be a problem with link to TV programme.

OP posts:
heathspeedwell · 29/10/2023 10:01

@IncomingTraffic thanks for that report, it's fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. It shows that right from the start the medicalisation of gender confused kids was hugely homophobic and the evidence was blithely ignored or swept under the carpet.

From the abstract: "The intervention was justified by claims that it was reversible and that it was a tool for diagnosis, but these claims are increasingly implausible. The main evidence for the Dutch protocol came from a longitudinal study of 70 adolescents who had been subjected to puberty suppression followed by cross-sex hormones and surgery. Their outcomes shortly after surgery appeared positive, except for the one patient who died, but these findings rested on a small number of observations and incommensurable measures of gender dysphoria. A replication study conducted in Britain found no improvement."

RainWithSunnySpells · 29/10/2023 10:18

IIRC, the patient who died really suffered terribly and had to have a huge amount of skin removed from their body in an attempt to save their life.

So, they started with a healthy child and then put them through a more dangerous operation (used colon when constructing a neo-vagina due to not enough penis tissue as a result of puberty blockers) which they they died from as a result of horrific complications.

This incident alone should have put the brakes on the protocol.

NecessaryScene · 30/10/2023 13:48

A new piece from talking about the Finns' results totally differed from the Dutch claims:

'Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.'

The patient population the Dutch doctors described was a small number of carefully selected young people—almost all male—who, from their earliest years, insisted they were girls. These patients, apart from their gender distress, were mentally healthy and high-functioning. The Dutch clinicians reported that following early intervention, these young people thrived as members of the opposite sex.

[...]

But the ones who came were nothing like what was described by the Dutch. We expected a small number of boys who had persistently declared they were girls. Instead, 90 percent of our patients were girls, mainly 15 to 17 years old, and instead of being high-functioning, the vast majority presented with severe psychiatric conditions.

...

Soon after our hospital began offering hormonal interventions for these patients, we began to see that the miracle we had been promised was not happening. What we were seeing was just the opposite.

The young people we were treating were not thriving. Instead, their lives were deteriorating. We thought, 'what is this?' Because there wasn’t a hint in studies that this could happen. Sometimes the young people insisted their lives had improved and they were happier. But as a medical doctor, I could see that they were doing worse.

I became so concerned that I embarked on a study with my Finnish colleagues to describe our patients. We methodically went through the records of those who had been treated at the clinic its first two years, and we characterized how troubled they were—one of them was mute—and how much they differed from the Dutch patients. For example, more than a quarter of our patients were on the autism spectrum. Our study was published in 2015, and I believe it was the first journal publication from a gender clinician raising serious questions about this new treatment.

[...]

But the foundation on which the Dutch protocol was based is crumbling. Researchers have shown that their data had some serious problems, and that in their follow-up, they failed to include many of the very people who may have regretted transition or changed their minds. One of the patients had died due to complications from genital transition surgery.

[...]

In June of 2020 a major event happened in my field. Finland’s national medical body, COHERE, released its findings and recommendations regarding youth gender transition. It concluded that the studies touting the success of the “gender-affirming” model were biased and unreliable—systematically so in some cases. The authors wrote: “In light of available evidence, gender reassignment of minors is an experimental practice.”

[...]

We need to learn from such scandals. Because, like recovered memory, gender transition has gotten out of hand. When medical professionals start saying they have one answer that applies everywhere, or that they have a cure for all of life’s pains, that should be a warning to us all that something has gone very wrong.

‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’

My country, and others, found there is no solid evidence supporting the medical transitioning of young people. Why aren’t American clinicians paying attention?

https://www.thefp.com/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor

UtopiaPlanitia · 30/10/2023 13:57

334bu · 29/10/2023 00:13

Why did this happen? Why were medical professionals so keen to promote treatment when evidence was so poor?

De Vries reminds me of Polly Carmichael: in interviews both seem keen to be seen as pioneers and both dismiss evidence-based criticism from other medical bodies as not being in line with their personal experience and instincts. Neither sees the failure to replicate the Dutch Protocol results as a reason to stop using puberty inhibiting drugs on an expanding group of children.

I don’t know if they both have massive egos (a God complex) or if they have gone so far along this path they feel unable to contemplate that they might be wrong. I mean, De Vries talked so calmly about her patient who died after genital surgery - how did that dreadful outcome not give her pause for thought?!

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