New Canadian review on gender medicine for children finds poor evidence

[miri1985]

Apologies if this has already been talked about but I did a search and couldn't find a thread

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-treatments-for-kids
https://archive.ph/fLMxA

"The Canadian team combed the available evidence, pooling the results of research on puberty blockers and gender affirming hormones for children and youth up to age 26. They graded the evidence using a scoring system co-developed by Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a celebrated McMaster scientist who coined the phrase evidence-based medicine.
Article content
After screening 6,736 titles and abstracts involving puberty blockers, only 10 studies were included in their review. While children who received puberty blockers compared to those who don’t score higher on “global function” — quality of life, and general physical and psychological wellbeing — the evidence was of “very low certainty.” Very low, meaning researchers have “very little confidence in the effect estimate” and that the true effect “is likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect.”
The studies also provided low certainty of evidence on the impact of puberty blockers on depression. While they may decrease depression in “male-to-female participants,” they didn’t decrease depression scores in the female-to-male group. “We are very uncertain about the causal effect of the (drugs) on depression,” the researchers wrote.
“Most studies provided very low certainty of evidence about the outcomes of interest thus, we cannot exclude the possibility of benefit or harm,” they said."

Link to the studies referenced in the article from McMaster University
https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2025/01/24/archdischild-2024-327909.full.pdf
And
https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2025/01/24/archdischild-2024-327921.full.pdf

Thank you Miri.

It is almost like, I don’t know, it is almost like Cass’ team, the Swedish team, Danish team, German team and others were right all along. And yet, the BMA is trying to prove them wrong and other groups have continued with the misinformation that they were all negligent in their findings.

It is almost like the wishful thinking of these groups heavily invested in a falsehood, particularly WPATH, can’t admit they were wrong.

You know what everyone in Canada will say. ‘Out of seven thousand studies they carefully cherry picked 10 to get the answer they wanted - it’s the same as the Cass report, they are all out to get us!’ (The Cass report stated that most studies were not rigorous and only a small number actually met the criteria. The irrational anti science people who can’t read jumped on that to say they only used the tiny amount that met the criteria; which is untrue, they used all of the ones reviewed actually. I’ve never seen anyone admit they were wrong about this)

Thanks for posting this. I haven't seen this research reported on CBC (no surprises there), and unless CBC and other liberal/left Canadian media outlets begin reporting this in a less biased way this research will unfortunately not have much impact on the Canadian public (left/liberals anyway) and their positive perception of "gender-affirming care".

Most liberals will dismiss it because it's in the National Post (a more conservative leaning newspaper) and will most likely double down on their belief that this is a right-wing vs left-wing issue. Trump's EO on sex combined with his tariff threats and general antipathy to Canada will also compound the desire of Canadians to be "not like America" and be "kind" and inclusive, and to liberal Canadians that means gender-affirming care is all good and anyone criticizing it is a Trump sympathizing bigoted fascist etc etc.

Most Canadians seem utterly oblivious to the changes other countries have made to how they treat gender distressed children and youth. Or if they are aware, left-leaning/liberal Canadians are definitely not talking about it, which is unsurprising. I do find this weird given how much Canadians like to differentiate themselves from insular Americans who they think are clueless about the rest of the world. In this case, it is absolutely Canada which is the clueless one.

Thanks, OP.

I agree, they all say this, because despite what the evidence says, they “just know” it works.

I’ve never seen anyone admit they were wrong

I think the number of people who have admitted they were wrong about the entirety of gender ideology, including sterilising children, can be counted on one hand.

@miri1985
Thank you.
Little by little the evidence is mounting up - the pushback continues.

Obviously this report is getting ignored now, but the countdown to the gender reckoning in Canada is coming and it is part of the change developing.

This was a big tell a few days ago:

Poilievre states reality, says there are just two genders

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/lilley-poilievre-states-reality-says-there-are-just-two-genders/ar-AA1xIuA5?ocid=BingNewsVerp

There is going to be a conservative landslide in the next 9 months the election is coming. Nothing can change that.

The big question is Poilievre and other Conservatives going to be as brave as Danielle Smith in safeguarding Canadian women and kids. She is acting NOW in Alberta. There are legal challenges against her. Studies like this are vital in fighting back.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/groups-launch-legal-challenge-against-alberta-s-new-gender-affirming-treatment-law-1.7405820

The conservatives once in federal government will have a chance to pass actual laws, not just Exec orders like Trump, to change things back to recognise reality. Will they do it ? Or will they be too scared?

The election campaign will be vital in trying to push the conservatives to actually follow through and protect kids. Luckily the TAs will help in this because they are going to accuse all conservatives of being fascists. Alongside that it will be down to gender realists to prevent the conservatives from being "nice" and saying there are more important things to do and there is no need to role back the sexist legislation put in place already.

If Canada can fight back and WIN in the gender wars that will be more impressive than anything Trump managed because the TAs have way more power in Canada than in the US and it will lay a path for change in Australia, NZ and even the UK and beyond.

So all eyes on Canada - the next stage in the gender wars rests on you. It is going to be vicious. I think though you can pull it off though. The difference is the Yanks had a bunch of weapons to fight their TAs with and a tonne of support. You are facing polar bear size TAs in the wilderness with a bunch of polite people saying that women are so nasty the only weapon you get is a sharp wit. That wit is sharp enough to win it though even with a bunch of traitors in the media trying to trip you up.

We are all rooting for you.

Well, Canada is the country that gave the world gems like the plastic fake Z cup boobs male teacher who was allowed to teach CHILDREN dressed like that (safeguarding male fetish red flag!) for ages before anyone did anything, and the man who identifies as a young girl.

Lots of people will know the truth of this but be scared to speak out just in case they get invited to a struggle session (struggle against reality - misquoting Monty Python). It's still insanely costly to state the basics of human biological reality in Canada - look at the punishment meted out to nurse Amy Hamm. It's serious Emperor's new clothes territory over there.

Hear, hear.

I'm hoping that Trump does most of the heavy lifting for the Canadian Conservatives. It is an 80/20 winner with voters in the US and Trump's EO has put it on the map. The Democrats haven't come back on this and they need to find a way forward which puts them between a rock and a hard place of their own making. Hopefully Canadians are watching.

Canada is also the country that brought us Jessica Yaniv.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled against Yaniv, a trans identifying man who brought 15 discrimination complaints after he was refused wax services at more than a dozen beauty salons.

Yaniv, reported to have full male genitalia, contacted the businesses through Facebook messages requesting appointments, including for a Brazilian wax.

Oh god, yes, Yaniv. Shudder. Talk about punching down on women. Those poor women beauticians.

Another predator in a women's shelter.

https://www.edmontonpolice.ca/News/MediaReleases/sasheltersJan24

That latest horror is covered by Reduxx.

CANADA: Trans-Identified Male Charged After Allegedly Sexually Assaulting Multiple Women While Staying At A Women’s Shelter
https://reduxx.info/canada-trans-identified-male-charged-after-allegedly-sexually-assaulting-multiple-women-while-staying-at-a-womens-shelter/

Canadians cannot rely on Trump or the US. In fact Trump and US conservatives are going to be used as the bug bear to try and prevent Canada from sorting out its own mess.

It will be up to Canadian women and men too, from right across the political spectrum to demand this horror stops.

In fact it was the Americans who started most of this stuff and to some degree they have partial immunity to it - because the gender ideology developed by utterly insane US women hating liberals to make money arose facing against the crazy US right. I believe Canada just was too reasonable so when the gender plague hit it went rampant with no natural resistance and the feminist antibodies were kept on the sidelines along with other sceptics like Peterson while many Canadian conservatives have mostly stayed silent till recently mostly because money talks.

Canada has to face this horror itself in its own way. It can take inspiration from elsewhere, especially from UK, but it has to do itself because otherwise any victory will only be shallow and the TAs will win long term.

Luckily there are a bunch of terfy outlaws ready to ride in from the Canadian wilderness, mean, frost bitten, but hardy survivors, there are even more hidden in secret lairs in major cities. They are very very angry and Trudeau's regime was the only thing keeping them from standing up on a major scale. As soon as it falls there is going to be a reckoning and I don't think the TAs are ready to face what is coming out to meet them.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Terfanda! We stand on guard for thee.

I'd love to share your optimism @fromorbit. And I'd love to see all these Canadian terfs riding in from the wilderness! I've only been in Canada about 10 years so although I have a reasonable knowledge of current Canadian politics and news I don't feel like I understand it in the same way as someone does when they grow up and become an adult in a country. So maybe because I haven't lived the deeper history of Canadian politics and feminism my experience has been that most of liberal/left-leaning Canada is very much TWAW, or just an overwhelming feeling that questioning any of this in a group setting is absolutely a bad idea. I've had the experience of people I respect in all other ways are absolutely credulous and unquestioning on the trans issue. It's a culture and social pressure issue even more than a legal one. Any grassroots Canadian terf movement seems like it must be very much underground in a way that British feminists are not. But maybe I'm just not meeting the right people!

Maybe once the conservatives win (unless Carney pulls off a last minute reprieve for the Liberals, which seems unlikely at this stage of the game) people will suddenly feel able to talk about this, but in my very scientific perusal of Reddit's Canadian keyboard culture warriors and from listening to what the liberals/lefties I know are saying I just find this hard to believe. People seem stuck in their tribal politics on this issue and only conservatives are able to talk about it.

Do you think Poilievre will try to change the inclusion of gender identity in the Charter?

I hope it's possible that changing the prison policies is fairly straightforward since the change to allow transgender prisoners who hadn't had genital surgery into women's prisons was very quickly enacted after Trudeau's intervention:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jamie-sarkonak-poilievres-very-normal-take-on-males-in-female-prisons

https://archive.ph/1mGH9

My concern is that even if there are legal changes this will create a "Resistance" mentality and cement the victimhood identity for TRAs and their allies.

I'm also not sure how a conservative government will be able to influence gender-affirming healthcare policies and practices for children and youth because healthcare is governed provincially. Other provinces are not following in Alberta's footsteps as far as I'm aware (happy to be corrected). But again, I'm not sure I fully understand how healthcare policy works - Canada seems to not have any overarching national/federal health guidelines on this, apart from medical associations like the Canadian Pediatric Society who endorse gender-affirming care for minors. It's really difficult to get to grips with where responsibility and accountability for healthcare lies. I don't understand what Health Canada's role is in gender affirming care policies. I keep going round in circles trying to figure it out and not getting anywhere!

"Everyone in Canada?"

Tell me you don't know anything about Canada or Canadians except what you've gleaned from watching GB News coverage of Trudeau, why don't you?

McMaster University has one of the most respected medical schools in the country. Toronto super-progressives might not like what a team from there has to say, but it will be hard to dismiss outright.

The bigger problem when it comes to the visibility of this report is that the new Trump regime is generating SO much media reaction I can imagine an awful lot of worthwhile stories quietly disappearing under the reactions to whatever Musk's latest attention-seeking ploy has been.

@SopranoPipistrelle I share your concern about Trump and the US’s revoking of all Biden admin legislation on gender, that it will embolden gender activists and confirm the victim status of trans-idendifying people. There’s nothing like feeling oppressed to encourage flagging interest.

Going back to the article, it says “Most studies provided very low certainty of evidence about the outcomes of interest thus, we cannot exclude the possibility of benefit or harm,”

But does anyone know if this takes into account that studies don't tend to follow up long term? For example, boys like Jazz Jennings or Jackie Green who were given puberty blockers and then had to have part of their colon removed to create a neovagina might have said they were happy with the outcome in their late teens and early twenties.

But once they see their peers enjoying having sexual relationships and having families, will they still be 'happy'? Once their health declines due to potential issues with osteoporosis and the side effects of cross sex hormones will they still be 'happy'?

And does it take into account the sunk cost fallacy? In his book Detrans Dr Az Hakeem makes it clear that the people who detransition are only the tip of the iceberg of people who are unhappy with the results of their surgery and hormones. He ran a group of pre op and post op transwomen and found that talking to the post op transwomen was the most effective way of encouraging pre-op transwomen to realise that surgery is often unhelpful.

Yes, it seems like this research will unfortunately disappear under the deluge of Trump stories. It's actually quite bad timing for its release, ironically.

I hope that you're right that it will be hard to dismiss outright, at least for the medical profession. However, when the Cass report was released I also thought that the Canadian medical profession wouldn't be able to dismiss it, because it's so comprehensive and was carried out by a very respectable author and team. It seemed so obvious to me that it couldn't just be dismissed in Canada. And yet the Canadian Pediatric Society did dismiss the Cass review outright (and have not taken on board the changes in any other country either) and the McMaster research is saying the same thing as Cass, as far as I'm aware.

Maybe this research will have a slow burn effect through pediatric medicine in Canada. But my scepticism and complete disillusionment with Canada runs deep at this point. The cognitive dissonance about gender medicine is too much for people here and they cannot bear to think that they're in the wrong. It goes against their whole self-concept. I think change will only come about when the children who took puberty blockers and hormones and had surgery become adults, and the reality of what this does to their bodies and lives becomes harder to ignore over the longer term.

This report is interesting as it goes upto age 26
Which is even further than Cass and effects adult gender healthcare too

I am not in Canada but I am following a bunch of out Canadian terfs on X and they indicate they have more underground than open support, it seems a lot of people are too scared to say stuff openly right now as you say. However people are not scared of voting and at the end of the day the Canadian Conservatives are milder compared to Trump.

The fact Canadian culture and American culture are different has worked well for TAs up till recently, but they have been relying on politeness, state support and repression. The problem is that means they don't actually KNOW what people are really thinking. I am not saying that Canada is going to become perfect suddenly.

What I am saying is the next stage in the gender wars is going to be fought in Canada later this year starting with the election - it will be vicious and far from polite. The conservatives whatever their actual aims are going to be accused of Trans genocide in the election. So voters are going to be making a choice most will be voting on economics for sure. However that election is going to lit the lid off things regarding gender it will mean open debate which is absolute poison for TA positions generally.

I also agree the TA Liberals are not going to go down without a fight, BUT remember too that they are scared of discussing this stuff, because it doesn't make any sense. The fact once that debate opens we don't know how it will go. It maybe the iron grip that polite opinion has on the media will remain unable to permit discussion, but that doesn't stop people reading stuff online and voting. Once the Conservatives gain power the lid comes off and we will see what happens. Obviously then liberals will resort to resistance tactics, but the thing is they are not used to doing it and can easily fail. Look what happened to the SNP internally the TAs in the party have been pushed more to the edges as it became clear their positions were electorally poison and also were insane.

Stuff like this latest horror in the refuges is just the tip of the iceberg there must be far worse stuff going on and that is going to be revealed once the Conservatives gain office or even in the run up to the elections. Recent conservative party conferences have shown the TA faction within the conservatives has completely lost control. There is no down side for the Conservatives once in power to look at topics like women's prisons where male offenders have been allowed in by the liberals. Obviously there are plenty of horrors to be uncovered.

So maybe I am too optimistic in a sense, but I think it is fair to say we are entering a new phase and we don't know exactly what will happen. However given the fact in other places once TAs lost control of the narrative they tended to spiral into self destructive patterns and the fact Canadian terfs are already battle hardened I am guessing they may emerge from the carnage in a far stronger place. We shall see.

Late to the thread but I just love @fromorbit's vision of the TERFs riding in from the wilderness. Out of the badlands they come and nobody is wheesting. Go TERFs 😃

Thank you for this, your words have actually cut through my scepticism (and possibly jaded cynicism which I know is unhelpful) and I feel some little green shoots of hope.
I'm not on X but would love to know who the out Canadian Terfs are. I'm aware of Megan Murphy and Mia Hughes off the top of my head. I don't follow them or necessarily agree with them on everything, but the more voices the better.