Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Feb 22, 2023 20 tweets 12 min read Read on X
A #CROI2023 special session on #mpox. Some live tweets: Image
Dr. John Brooks, an internist at CDC office of prevention, speaks about #mpox. He notes that we've seen declines worldwide in new cases. 2/ Image
Mpox likely transmitted most via contact with skin and the anorectal area. #CROI2023 3/ Image
Dr. Brooks says, "We don't really know" why #mpox has declined so dramatically. He speculates vaccination and sexual behavior change in gay and bi men likely contributed. He does not mention my theory that the virus ran out of people with high frequency of new partners to infect. Image
Dr. Brooks calls for completion of the clinical trial of antiviral TPOXX , something that is difficult without many cases of #mpox occurring. He says people need to get vaccinated against mpox now before Pride season returns. #CROI2023 Image
Dr. Brooks notes that presymptomatic transmission of #mpox is possible. #CROI2023 Image
Dr. Sharon Frey, Clinical Director, Center for Vaccine Development, St. Louis University: MOLECULAR PATHOGENESIS AND THERAPEUTIC TARGETS FOR MPOX VIRUS lecture
Jynneos has been vaccinated intradermally: Image
Dr. Frey compares smallpox and #mpox at #CROI2023. "The presentation of mpox when it is sexually transmitted is very different from what we know of mpox in the past." Image
Dr. Frey reviews the history of smallpox vaccination. #CROI2023 Image
Post-9/11, Iraq war era, Bush's administration was afraid that Iraq would use biological warfare. It turns out Iraq did not have smallpox on hand. Regardless, a program began to develop a new vaccine for smallpox. #CROI2023 Image
The history of #mpox. #CROI2023
Dr. Frey says that quote about the virus disappearing because of ecological changes has the matter backward. Image
The 21st century #mpox outbreaks.
#CROI2023 Image
A play-by-play of the 2022 #mpox outbreak. Note that researchers later realized there had been signs of the virus in the UK by early April. #CROI2023 Image
The CDC's John Brooks says that there are an est 2M Americans who would be good candidates for #mpox vaccination, because they are a man who has sex with men at risk of sexual acquisition and/or a person with HIV. 1.2M doses have been given; only 470,000 people have both doses.
A PhD student from @fredhutch says there has been "historical revisionism" going on in the talks in today's session. Yes, he says, there was decrease in sexual activity. "I think the LGBTQ community felt very let down by the public health infrastructure."
The @fredhutch student says, "We kind of had to take care of ourselves." He refers to the delay in the vaccine arriving on US shores. "I don't mean to tell you that this is bad or anything, but I don't necessarily think this is as rosy as being presented." (Applause)
"Now is the time to protect yourself. Prepare to be protected so you can take care of yourself in the future," said Dr. John Brooks of CDC at #CROI2023, anticipating that #mpox might rise again with the arrival of #LGBTQ Pride season. Will we see another mpox summer? Image
@MegDoherty_HIV of @WHO in Geneva says there's no guarantee that the public health emergency of international concern regarding #mpox will continue. She asks about the best way to continue monitoring and surveillance and not to lose momentum in combatting the virus. #CROI2023
Dr. John Brooks says, "We have the tools that work, how do we make sure we have equitable access to those around the world." The problem of #mpox, he says at #CROI2023, is growing in W and Central Africa.

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More from @benryanwriter

Dec 29, 2024
ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine

🧵⬇️I report: The 4th highest paid staffer, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.Image
LINK: ACLU Deputy With $543,500 Salary Issues Many False Or Misleading Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine
benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…
The 4th highest paid staffer at over $500,000 per year, AJ Hikes was the ACLU's 1st DEI chief and is at the center of an NLRB case against the ACLU that found it illegally fired an employee on claims she used racist language.Image
The ACLU’s fourth highest paid staffer, who is at the center of a National Labor Relations Board case against the legal nonprofit that it lost in August, made a series of false or misleading claims about pediatric gender medicine in a recent interview.

@AJ_Hikes, who identifies as nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns and describes themselves in their ACLU bio as “a social justice advocate, community organizer, TED Talk Speaker, and unapologetically queer and Black,” holds a powerful position at the liberal legal juggernaut as the deputy executive director for strategy and culture.
benryan.substack.com/p/aclu-deputy-…Image
Read 12 tweets
Dec 28, 2024
More reporting from @JesseSingal on the case of the young detransitioner who is suing top pediatric gender medicine doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Singal zeroes in on the therapy (or lack thereof) provided by another defendant in the lawsuit.

What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like

When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behind.Image
LINK:

What The Detransitioner Clementine Breen’s Gender “Therapy” Looked Like

When therapists are also activists, patients can get left behindjessesingal.substack.com/p/what-the-det…Image
Detransitioner Sues Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a Top Pediatric Gender Medicine Doctor, For Medical Negligence

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the most prominent doctor yet to be sued by a detransitioner—for medical negligence after overseeing a mentally ill girl's gender-transition starting at 12 and mastectomy at 14.benryan.substack.com/p/detransition…Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 26, 2024
In response to a WaPo article in which an Italian child travels to Spain to obtain puberty blockers and does so on the first appointment following a single online consultation, journalist Evan Urquhart claims there “still hasn’t been a single reported example of a minor getting blockers or hormones without a lengthy assessment.”

Evan is ignoring Jesse Singal’s Economist article from earlier this month about Clementine Breen getting blockers after a single appointment with Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

And he is forgetting my reporting that since 2018, it has been Boston Children’s policy to provide only a single two-hour assessment appointment with a psychologist to determine whether a minor should get blockers or hormones.Image
Image
Read 7 tweets
Dec 24, 2024
The Mayo Clinic’s @DrMJoyner: “There are profound sex differences in human performance in athletic events determined by strength, speed, power, endurance, and body size such that males outperform females. These sex differences in athletic performance exist before puberty and increase dramatically as puberty progresses. The profound sex differences in sports performance are primarily attributable to the direct and indirect effects of sex-steroid hormones and provide a compelling framework to consider for policy decisions to safeguard fairness and inclusion in sports.”Image
The Mayo Clinic's @DrMJoyner concludes: "There are profound sex differences in human performance in athletic events determined by strength, speed, power, endurance, and body size such that males outperform females. These sex differences in athletic performance exist before puberty and increase dramatically as puberty progresses. The sex differences are markedly greater in magnitude (10 to 40%) than the advantages that policy-making bodies seek to eliminate when they regulate equipment or drugs that could enhance performance. As one example, World Athletics amended regulations on shoe manufacturing after advanced footwear technology was linked to a 1 to 2% performance advantage relative to other racing footwear (52–54). Regulation of sports technology and potential performance enhancing drugs is typically based on an evidence-base that is general in nature and based on plausibility, mechanism of action, and real-world data as opposed to RCTs. In this context, exogenous androgens administered to female (XX biology) athletes improve performance but do not close the male-female performance gap and do not eliminate the male advantage. Testosterone suppression among male (XY biology) athletes who have undergone male puberty reduces performance but much of he male advantage is retained, including: 1) muscle strength, power, and size, 2) maximal aerobic capacity, and other potentially performance enhancing attributes such as height and limb length. This evidence summary may provide a useful framework to understand claims about the nature and extent of the evidence that supports existing eligibility guidelines and to consider the merits of reforms that would govern the classification of transgender athletes and athletes with certain DSDs in competitive sports. Both the magnitude and duration of the influence of testosterone and puberty on sports performance should be recognized with appropriate consideration."Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 17, 2024
Activist-blogger Erin Reed has published a guest article:
"Washington Post Editorial Board Misleadingly Attacks Care Of Trans Youth"

In, fact, many of the claims in this essay challenging WaPo are themselves misleading.

I will go through them in this 🧵⬇️ Image
"It selectively cites three European reviews critical of gender-affirming care, while ignoring the consensus of leading medical organizations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—all of which support such care."
▶️While WaPo hyperlinks to three European reviews, there have, in fact, been a half-dozen systematic literature reviews of pediatric gender-transition treatment. All of them have found the evidence backing such interventions weak and inconclusive.
▶️This has lead the health authorities in the UK and four Scandinavian nations to reclassify such treatment as experimental, and to sharply restrict access, in some cases to research settings only.
▶️The Cass Review found that WPATH and the US medical societies that endorse such interventions have engaged in "circularity," which is a more polite term for "citation laundering." WPATH made claims that were not supported by strong evidence in its 2013 Standards of Care 7. Then other US medical societies referred to those claims. And then it its SoC 8 in 2022, WPATH referred to those other societies, not mentioning that the claim they were referring to originated with WPATH. The near unanimity in these organizations is in part a product of the same people cross-pollinating their ideas from one organization to the next.Image
*Hilary Cass was chosen not in spite of her lack of experience in pediatric gender medicine, but because of it. Ideally, people assessing the strength of evidence in a field will not have financial or intellectual conflicts of interest, as did every single author of WPATH's SoC8.
*A couple of dozen members of the BMA moved to denounce and scrutinize the Cass Review this summer. But after an internal outcry and a letter of protest signed by over 1,000 members, the BMA backpedaled and now has a neutral posture as it conducts its review of the Cass Review.
*Despite the fact that the Yale Law School put up the white paper criticizing Cass on its website, claiming it is the product of experts at Yale is a stretch. There is a Yale Law author, and otherwise Meredith McNamara is the lead author. Speaking of people who have no experience with pediatric gender medicine: she is such a person. Under pressure in a deposition in a Alabama civil case, she admitted that in her entire career as a pediatrician, she has only ever referred two patients to a pediatric gender clinic and has never prescribed pediatric gender-transition treatment. And yet she presents herself in myriad forums as a leading expert on this medical care.Image
Read 11 tweets
Dec 15, 2024
In the wake of the detransitioner lawsuit against them, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has released the following statement, as quoted in WSJ and many other outlets. This statement is highly misleading. The clinic didn’t start giving blockers and hormones to minors with gender dysphoria until 2008 or 2009, according to what I can ascertain. Boston Children’s was the first to do so in the U.S., and their operation began in 2007. So the statement from CHLA effectively doubles the amount of time that they have been engaging in the medical practices that the lawsuit concerns.Image
It is important for reporters to seek to verify claims made by the subjects of lawsuits. The claim about caring for such kids for 30 years would’ve been pretty easy to fact check.

benryan.substack.com/p/detransition…Image
Read 6 tweets

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