A UK forum is encouraging a desperate parent of a trans identified male to seek out DIY hormones, without consulting health care professionals, how is this dangerous advice legal?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

OP "If anyone could help me to understand, I would be extremely grateful. I just want my daughter to be alive and happy in her own skin as much as possible ."

Responses: "diy is reliable and safe, there are communities that will be able to help, and really all it is getting a blood test every now and then to check how low or high a couple numbers are and adjusting accordingly."

Full details here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1rw0bac/please_help_parent_to_a_16_year_old/

How is this even slightly legal? The pro anorexia sites were shut down right? The pro suicide?

That's not how evidence-based medicine works. If you want to claim that it's safe and efficacious, it's on you to provide the evidence. And 'established norms' isn't evidence.

I'd suggest that if no longer taking the drugs leads to an individual suffering withdrawal in the form of osteopenia, which goes away when the individual starts taking the drugs again, that might reasonably be said to amount to addiction?

People who go claiming medications are marvellous and safe without stumping up the evidence are merely snake oil salesmen.

The medicines are safe if you are being monitored by a professional

What a terrible non-sequitur.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to describe as an addiction. Would you say a diabetic is addicted to insulin?

We both know I’d come back with a list of studies showing the efficacy of hormones for trans people and you wouldn’t read or engage with a single one.

The medicines are safe if you are being monitored by a professional

That would require coming off them if the monitoring shows problems. Is that going to happen?

Come back with a list then and we'll see

Well, if I don't get it I suffer withdrawal symptoms and then die, so yes. The same is true of liothyronine, though that death is likely to be a lot more lingering (except that my heart would probably pack up in fairly short order). In the same way, if I stopped drinking water I would almost certainly die from dehydration in five or so days.

The difference, perhaps, is that I did not decide for myself that I was diabetic, or that I had Hashimoto's disease, and, without any actual evidence for either, self-medicate for these conditions with drugs purchased from the internet. And nobody can avoid the human body's need for water; we don't have to invent that either.

(It should be emphasised that insulin really is not at all good for people who are not diabetic; not something to take for vanity, or kicks, or because one is unhappy about not being a diabetic. Hypoglycemia is no fun at all. As a result, a non-diabetic cannot easily become addicted to insulin if he or she does not actually need it.)

My mother once described ginseng as "that well-known cure for no known disease". I'm sure there are people who have convinced themselves that ginseng is essential to their health. They might even be addicted, in that they suffer an adverse reaction if they cease to take it.

Do you know what the Cochrane Collaboration is and what they do?

https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD013138_does-hormone-therapy-help-transgender-women-undergoing-gender-reassignment-transition

"Our review found no RCTs that looked at whether hormone therapies are effective and safe when used to help transgender women to transition. Therefore, high-quality RCTs are needed to research these questions."

However, if you are interested in studies rather than proper trials what about the recent study of the emerging serious risks of oestrogen use in males?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44192-025-00216-3

"Efforts to alleviate the psychological distress of gender dysphoria have included the use of exogenous estrogen (often with anti-androgens) to alter secondary sex characteristics of natal males. In response to the rapid increase in presenting cases among young people, extensive scrutiny has now been brought to bear on these medical interventions for minors, with ESCAP reporting “an urgent need for safeguarding clinical, scientific, and ethical standards.” However, due to the lack of systematic outcome data, the associated risk–benefit profile is unknown. Several recent systematic reviews have found the evidence of benefit to be of low or very low certainty, while some risks, such as infertility, have been long recognized. This paper compiles several emerging and accumulating safety signals in the medical literature. These range from increased rates of previously associated adverse outcomes with long-term estrogen use (e.g., acute cardiovascular events) to associations of estrogen use with newly identified adverse outcomes. Estrogen also induces changes in the brain, raising concerns for negative impacts on mood (e.g., depression) and cognition. These safety signals indicate the need for further investigation and a thorough systematic search for others, which may now be more evident due to the increased number of young people receiving these treatments. There is an urgent need for the evidence base to be improved with more studies, especially those with systematic long-term follow-up and those that can disentangle possible confounders, as well as systematic reviews to help interpret their reliability."

Basically, it's well acknowledged that the evidence base is poor so I'm sure you can provide me with some studies but you probably don't know why they're rubbish.

noblegiraffe, it is seriously unkind to cite Cochrane.

Not one doctor has done any long term follow ups on people they have given opposite sex hormones to.

Also, define 'efficacy' here, not one person has ever changed sex so 'efficacy' is not a term that can ever be used.

But yes do show these studies that you think show 'efficacy'.

Evidence-based medicine is no doubt transphobic for rejecting poor quality data.

Absolutely! And Cochrane is using a tank to crush a wasp's nest.

(Speaking of which, I was told a wonderful WWII story by a Pole who charged against tanks of horseback in that war and survived; apparently one of his friends was in the path of a tank and dived into a ditch to get away from it. He landed on a wasps' nest. In the heat of the moment, he took the nest and threw it as far and high as he could – and it plopped neatly in through the open hatch of the tank, which proceeded erratically over a small cliff and fell over. Probably the only man in the world to take out a tank with a wasps' nest. Anyway, this is nothing to do with the subject, it's merely an amusing anecdote. I should do what E Nesbit said she would do with one of her divagations, and put it in brackets so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.)

I did a similar calculation with similar results but deleted it from my previous post - kicking myself now that I did not copy and paste it first for future reference 😂

Perhaps instead of teasing us with morsels of apparently contradictory information we will be treated to a proper timeline? 🤔

Still feeling sorry for poor old Ma in her one-room shack with the tin bath hanging on the outside wall, forced to get dressed and undressed in the same room as her middle-aged to Senior Citizen son.

’Ma’ is a zoology professor who seems to believe that humans can change sex.

Studies like this show improvement in quality in life, depression and anxiety, but the evidence quality is admittedly low. Studies examining the side effects of the treatment suffer from the same problems. Small sample sizes and follow-up times.

There isn’t enough evidence either way to definitively say the treatment works. I think we’d both agree proper long term follow-up studies and trials should be done.

the evidence quality is admittedly low. Studies examining the side effects of the treatment suffer from the same problems. Small sample sizes and follow-up times.

Ah, so you did look up why your studies are rubbish and you absolutely shouldn't be citing them as evidence of anything?

And your claims of safety and efficacy should be retracted as the evidence base isn't there?

@TiredOfYourLies does it worry you at all that you've been duped?

How would you know whether the treatment 'works'? What is it they're trying to treat and what would a positive outcome look like? If the problems these people face are things like depression and anxiety, why not give them the same sort of treatment as other people with those mental health problems? What is the rationale behind giving them hormones instead of, for example, anti-depressants?

Given that people can't change sex, why is there this idea that changing someone's body to look more like the opposite sex using hormones and cosmetic surgery will improve their life? It really doesn't seem very rational.

If someone was saying that they were depressed because they wanted to be disabled, you wouldn't immediately send them to a surgeon to amputate their legs, would you? So why is this any different?

Your linked study suffers from the same issue. It’s a collection of small sample size studies like a lot of the other trans healthcare studies. I will say the evidence is mixed and that a comprehensive long term follow-up is needed

Yes, because the evidence base isn't there, as I highlighted.

You clearly thought there was an clear evidence base for this medication. Who led you to believe that?

if you make the care these children think they need unavailable, they will seek out alternatives.

"Care" in this context = medication. They "think they need" medication.

Both adults and children use tobacco, alcohol (and all sorts of other drugs) to self-medicate.

Children are particularly prone to start self-medicating with legal (and illegal) drugs due to advertising, peer pressure, "influencers" and normalisation within families and wider communities. Which is why in many jurisdictions there are limitations on promotion and sale of legal recreational drugs to children.

Do you think it should be legal to sell children alcohol and tobacco, for the benefits of quality control and appropriate warnings on packaging that are currently lacking from black-market suppliers?

Should they be prescribed to children so that they do not need to DIY self-medicate with alcohol and tobacco products that they "think they need"?

“Who led you to believe that?”

I would like to know this too.

I can only speak from my personal experience and I’m aware people transition for a variety of reasons.

The first things I’d say is that transitioning is not a treatment for anxiety and depression. It’s a treatment for gender dysphoria which is distress between perceived sex and the body which is sometimes seen alongside depression and anxiety. The positive outcome is a reduction and possible elimination of gender dysphoria.

Again, it’s different for everyone, but I did see a significant reduction in depression and anxiety when I transitioned. My distress from feeling like my body wasn’t right was making me depressed, and I’m a much happier person on the other side. It’s hard to adequately describe, but my life wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is today if I didn’t transition. It’s given me a confidence I never had before.