Thread by @TwisterFilm

1./ Puberty Blockers. If you're wondering how cancer drugs used to chemically castrate offenders became a globally recommended treatment for vulnerable teenagers...wonder no more. A new paper by Dr Michael Biggs dissects the scandal. And it's a shocker.👇
tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.108…

2./ Biggs traces the 30 year long story of how a tiny experiment in Holland morphed into the 'Dutch Protocol', a treatment regimen that's helped make thousands of kids infertile but which is backed by leading science bodies and journals like the Lancet.👇
thelancet.com/journals/lanch…

3./ Like most reasonable folks you'd imagine if the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics the BMA and other medics have signed off on treating kids with blockers there must be really good evidence. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. Here's how bad the evidence is.👉

4./ Biggs' story begins in Utrecht in the early 90s when Peggy Cohen-Kettenis referred 16 and 17 year olds for cross-sex hormones. Before that only 18+s could be referred. She'd become convinced the earlier someone transitioned the happier they'd be. But her evidence was scant.

5./ It was based on a study of only 22 people who transitioned in their 20s compared to some who'd done it when older. They seemed better adjusted but as Biggs points out that might have been because in the 90s social attitudes were less negative than they'd been in the 70s.🤷‍♂️

6./ It also doesn't follow that because someone in their 20s was happier than someone who'd transitioned in their 50s, teenagers would be even happier. Remarkably, Cohen-Kettenis never followed up her group of 22 to find out what eventually happened. The first of many lapses.

7./ This lack of curiosity stemmed from the Dutch team's passionate shared world view. Cohen-Kettenis's collaborator Louis Gooren claimed, for example, to have shown transwomen's brains were closer to women's than men's. In 30 years no one's been able to replicate this work.👇

8./ Gooren studied under John Money and he shared his belief that trans identity had some biological explanation. In an interview he argued if the problem is biological then so must the solution be. This conviction led inexorably to puberty blockers.

9./ Gooren's brain work was unreproducible so rather worthless, yet it was cited when the Endocrine Society backed puberty blockers. Its guidelines were updated by Dr Joshua Safer. Here he is admitting the paper was "weak evidence" but "pretty pictures".👇

https://mobile.twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1357481905621524481

10./ By 1994, despite having run no proper trials of blockers the Dutch began prescribing them to some under 16s. Biggs has discovered Gooren did this even when a child's psychiatrist disagreed. Cohen-Kettenis claimed, "the adolescent ..knows pretty well what she or he is doing.”

11./ In 1996 a show for Channel 4 took 3 English kids to Holland to discover what it described as "transgender medicine at its most advanced". The same year Cohen-Kettenis participated in a major conference at the Tavistock in London, written up in 'Stranger in My Own Body'.👇

12./ The foreword was written by John Money, who was not yet discredited for his sexually abusive treatment of children and his scientific fraud. Cohen-Kettenis, had written "the bravest chapter" he declared, backing "early hormonal intervention" in adolescents.

13./ The Dutch maintained that blockers were reversible but did no research to prove it. In 2006 when Cohen-Kettenis published a manifesto advocating blockers she admitted,"It is not clear yet how pubertal suppression will influence brain development." Hey, it's only the brain.

14./ The world soon climbed on board the Dutch bandwagon. In 2001 puberty suppression was urged by WPATH despite evidence on only a handful of patients. Come the moment. Come the man. Dr Norman Spack, began evangelising for blockers, admitting to "salivating" about their use.

15./ In lectures Spack used a sexualised photograph of twins, one a boy going through puberty and the other of his "sister" with her direct gaze into the camera, charming head tilt and hint of decolletage. Spack describes "her" need to be saved from male puberty as urgent. Okay.

16./ Male puberty is not a disaster. No puberty is. When the Tavistock refused to fast-track puberty suppression Spack was invited to a conference in London in 2005 organised by @giresuk where he and Cohen-Kettenis put its clinicians under enormous pressure to comply.

17./ Spack, GIRES and Cohen-Kettenis argued if the Tavistock did not embrace routine prescription of puberty blockers they risked young people committing suicide, despite the fact evidence on suicide among young gender non conforming kids doesn't support this claim at all.

18./ In 2010 the Tavi agreed to begin a trial of blockers. Without warning it then adopted the Dutch approach. It took 9 years and huge pressure for it to reveal shocking results: blockers hadn't alleviated gender dysphoria. They often made it worse.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-552821…

19./ That's because most evidence suggests for the vast majority of teens, gender dysphoria dissipates after they go through puberty. Far from freeing kids to have time to think....blockers appear to trap them in the painful anxiety they feel about their body and their sex.

20./ Blockers were sold by the Dutch Protocol as an opportunity to pause. We now know 99% of those on blockers go on to cross sex hormones. If real *thinking* was happening...the figure could not possibly be that high. Blockers are effectively a fast track to medical transition.

21./ What's also become clear is the vast majority of teens referred to gender clinics are gay. It's easy to forget when the Protocol was developed in the 90s homophobia was rife. 'Stranger in My Own Body' treats homosexuality as problematic and related to being trans.👇

22./ This was known from the start of the Dutch Protocol. When Gooren was asked about sexuality he said two thirds of transwomen were attracted to men. Almost all transmen were attracted to females. "And they always bring attractive women to the clinic". Uh huh.

23./ When he retired Louis Gooren moved to Chiang Mai in Thailand to continue his err...humanitarian research. Like Cohen-Kettenis, Polly Carmichael and even Spack he no doubt thought he was doing the right thing. The result of the Dutch Protocol has been disastrous.

24./ Thousands of troubled gender non conforming teens have been fast-tracked to infertility and a lifetime of painful medical interventions. We'll never know how many were really "trans" and how many were just butch girls or fem boys uncomfortable with their sex and bodies.

25./ Norman Spack loved to compare transgenderism with being gay. The difference is gay people fought to escape ALL medicalisation. The Dutch Protocol promotes medicalisation of young people, while taking away psychiatric care. That's why it is the medical scandal of our time.

26./ You can read more on this and the rest of the science behind- and history of- the gender wars on my substack. Click on my bio above. 😉