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Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
@benryanwriter
Feb 23, 2023 • 41 tweets • 33 min read • Read on X
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A bombshell article by @writingblock challenges claims by activists that the science supporting the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors is "settled" and that the use of puberty blockers and hormones in transgender kids is "evidence based." 🧵⬇️
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
Many argue that giving puberty blockers and hormones to trans minors is uncontroversial & backed by high-quality science. Block's reporting disputes this. Swedish health authorities, for example, say the risks "currently outweigh the possible benefits". 2/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
@glaad, in its recent protest before the @nytimes building, echoed a common refrain: that "the science is settled" regarding giving puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors. @writingblock's peer-reviewed reporting challenges this claim. 3/ press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
Trans kids has been a minefield topic, w/ activists like @Esqueer_ & lefty pundits like @RottenInDenmark battling heterodox writers @jessesingal @bariweiss @sullydish @LeorSapir & @AbigailShrier & w/ @MattWalshBlog throwing bombs. @JoyceCarolOates has lent her support to kids. 4/ ImageImageImageImage
The prescription of hormones to trans-identifying minors is often framed as a choice of life on meds vs death by suicide. But researchers have not actually shown that hormonal treatment for gender dysphoria impacts death by suicide. 5/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
@HRC said in a press release today that "ALL gender-affirming care is age appropriate and medically necessary." But in the UK, health experts found there's "scarce & inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making" for kids with dysphoria. 6/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
Mark Helfand of Oregon Health & Science University criticized @wpath's recommendations for treating #transgender minors, including a lack of grading system to assess the quality of scientific evidence backing the guidelines. #trans 7/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
At an October meeting of the AAP, @writingblock reports, @DrScottHadland of Harvard Med said, "Ten thousand pediatricians stand in solidarity for trans and gender diverse kids & their families to receive evidence-based, lifesaving, individualized care." 8/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
Gordon Guyatt (@GuyattGH) of McMaster University found "serious problems" with the Endocrine Society's guidelines for treating #trans kids, such as making strong recommendations based on weak evidence--meaning they should not be called "evidence based". 9/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… ImageImage
In contrast to @DrScottHadland, @GuyattGH said, "When there's been a rigorous systematic review of the evidence" about treating #trans kids "and the bottom line is 'we don't know,' anybody who then claims they *do* know is not being evidence based." 10/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… ImageImage
While myriad medical organizations in the US back prescribing puberty blockers & hormones to trans-identifying minors, standards abroad are very different. Sweden did systematic reviews in '15 and '22, found evidence was "insufficient and inconclusive."11/
press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… ImageImage
The Endocrine Society (@TheEndoSociety) commissioned 2 systematic reviews for its clinical practice guideline for treating #trans adolescents with sex steroids and found the quality of the evidence regarding health risks was "low" or "very low". 12/ press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
In sum, @writingblock's reporting suggests that @wpath and @TheEndoSociety's guidelines for treating #trans adolescents are not truly "evidence based", nor uncontroversial, nor do they balance the known and potential risks v benefits of such treatment. 13/ press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… Image
@MattWalshBlog, who doesn't so much debate the science behind care for trans minors as douse the field with gasoline & set it on fire, has made the topic so combustible in Tennessee, he teed up the politicization of #HIV prevention there, I reported:
14/ nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-ou…
@writingblock reviews the history of gender medicine in @bmj_latest. Note that her article was peer reviewed.
15/
 press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/february/t… ImageImage
@writingblock's assessment of the evidence backing standards of care for treating gender dysphoria in #trans minors comes a week after activists (eg: @glaad) and writers have pressured @nytimes to refrain from the type of reporting she has done. 16/ glaad.org/new-york-times…
Other articles finding a lack of high-quality science backing the treatment of trans minors have been published by @nytimes & Reuters, by @emilybazelon @mega2e @chadterhune @RobinRespaut @michelleconlin. 17/
nytimes.com/2022/06/15/mag…
nytimes.com/2022/11/14/hea…
reuters.com/investigates/s…
Myriad writers have criticized @nytimes reporting on #transgender issues, such as @_WrittenByHanna and @jackmirkinson in @thenation: 18/ thenation.com/article/societ…
thenation.com/article/societ…
Scores of @nytimes writers have pushed back against the charge by the paper's guild that its reporting on trans issues caused a hostile work environment, including @GiniaNYT @mattfleg @tripgabriel @apoorva_nyc @powellnyt @jimrutenberg @charlie_savage. 19/
@PressSec of @POTUS weighs in on the onslaught of bills introduced to statehouses this year that target #LGBTQ people:
20/
@ryanlcooper and @RottenInDenmark’s take on @assignedmedia:
@writingblock’s thread:
@jack_turban, MD, who treats trans kids, says there’s a lot of misinformation going around:
21/
@Esqueer_ responds to this thread: Image
The emailed responses to this thread are starting to come in. This is new: now I'm a Nazi and have autism to boot. Image
More charming exchanges with the readers of this tweet thread. Have a good one, @zunetopia. Image
Kindly do not come to this thread disrespectfully. I will not tolerate malicious statements toward anyone and the misgendering of transgender people.
Also, for anyone coming to this thread who thinks they know who I am, what I think or believe or what I'm about, do take note that I do not share my personal opinions about many issues on Twitter. I invite you to read my reporting on LGBTQ issues: benryan.net/lgbtq.html
@HRC will fly an airplane banner down the Hudson River protesting @nytimes coverage of #transgender issues today: Image
@Esqueer_ claims @writingblock can’t count, but the figure she cited in her BMJ article is the total number of minors receiving hormones and puberty blockers during that period, whereas the chart refers only to puberty blockers. Image
On the political front: cbsnews.com/news/texas-bil…
I get a lot of venomous emails, but I’d say this one regarding my tweet thread about the strength of the science behind the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors is one of the most heinous. Sadly for this person’s hopes, I was cured of cancer and have a 5% recurrence chance. Image
Also: it sucks for that person, but no one dies of testicular cancer anymore.
@meetzow wants me to die because I am engaging in science reporting and have illuminated the weakness of the science backing the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.
Image
Also, gay people on Twitter get hit with a lot of tweets like this in the Musk era: @UIgliori Image
People tweet this to suggest that reduced stigma is the sole reason for the apparent tripling in trans identification between older adults & youths. But I think we can agree that gender identity is far more complex and driven by more complex factors than left vs right-handedness. Image
@CISCHASER hopes I die of the cancer I had: Image
If only this @ryanlcooper @TheProspect podcast had brought on academic experts to discuss youth gender care science. Instead, @RottenInDenmark provides a misleading overview that, for example, fails to note Finland & Sweden disagree with the US on this. 1/
prospect.org/podcasts/02-20…
@RyanCooper claims that what @jessesingal says about youth gender care science "makes no sense scientifically." Except Singal knows the science better than just about anyone, as he assiduously demonstrates. And his coverage is way more nuanced than Hobbes claims. 2/
My favorite is @ryanlcooper saying the best thing for science journos to do is: "You go into the studies to talk to the scientists, you don't talk to individual people, who may and probably do have an ax to grind," as he interviews two individual non-scientists about science. 3/
Hobbes himself is extraordinarily ideological, meanwhile. 4/

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More from @benryanwriter

Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Mar 24
100s of NIH research grants have been summarily canceled over the past couple of weeks, on the grounds that they support DEI, trans issues, or are at Columbia. Now Trump is targeting mRNA studies, which scientists tell me could jeopardize research into new cancer treatments, for one, as well as the quest for and HIV vaccine. Many of these grants have nothing to do with DEI per se or are particularly focused on transgender people in particular. They seem to have been flagged simply because they have key words that have drawn the attention, and ire, of DOGE. I only have second-hand reports of what DOGE has been doing inside of the NIH and the NIAID.
Today, a titan of biomedical research called me and was reduced to pleading over and over, “Why are they doing this?” as he watched in fear that his life’s work would be destroyed by the Trump administration.
I spoke with one prominent epidemiologist who said that their skills would not be of use outside of academia and that they’d discussed having to move to some cheap place in the country to be able to survive financially.
Read 5 tweets
Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Mar 12
LEAKED: Trans-Care Training Videos By Beleaguered Top Gender-Clinic Doctor, Part 1

I have obtained 12 hours of videos of top pediatric-gender-clinic physician Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues, including her husband, providing training to mental-health providers on how to treat minors who have gender dysphoria or otherwise identify as transgender or nonbinary.

This is the first of 12 installments I will post during the coming weeks of these videos. Subscribe to my newsletter (link in bio) to receive all of them as I publish them.

A 19-year veteran of the pediatric gender medicine field and one of its leading physician-researchers and advocates, Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the medical director of the gender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. According to figures she provided during this particular video, annual referrals to her clinic surged from just 25 in 2010 to 436 in 2022—following a similar pattern seen in clinics throughout the Western world.

The past six months have been challenging for Dr. Olson-Kennedy, to say the least.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health grant for a long-running research project concerning pediatric gender-transition treatment, one that has received over $10 million to date. In October, The New York Times reported that she has withheld null findings from a study of puberty blockers funded by this grant, doing so for political reasons. The grant is now the subject of a probe by congressional Republicans. In November, however, she asserted in a sworn deposition in a civil case that the Times had mischaracterized her words.

In December, Dr. Olson-Kennedy was sued by a former patient, Clementine Breen, who reported that the gender doctor prescribed her puberty blockers at age 12—on her first appointment, without a psychological assessment—and testosterone at age 13, and then referred her to receive a double mastectomy at age 14. Ms. Breen, now 20, has since detransitioned, reverting to presenting and identifying as a woman.

The Trump administration has unleashed an onslaught against the field of pediatric gender medicine, seeking to wipe it off the map. In recent weeks, the NIH has been canceling research grants related to transgender people, including those conducted with animal models. There is currently a preliminary injunction in place to block the president’s executive order that would freeze federal funds to hospitals that provide gender-transition interventions to those under age 19. Prior to the injunction, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s clinic had “paused” new cross-sex hormone treatments for youth, only to lift the pause a couple of weeks later.

It remains unclear whether the grant for which Dr. Olson-Kennedy is the top investigator has been canceled. But it is no longer listed on the NIH site where active grants are described.

I reached out to Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her co-principal investigators on the grant to ask about its status. I did not hear back.

Prior to the October Times article, Dr. Olson-Kennedy was perhaps best known by the general public for a previous leaked video in which she was giving a training in 2018 to mental health care providers on how to write referral letters for minors seeking gender-transition surgeries. In the video, she expresses exasperation with what she sees as hand wringing over whether natal girls will later regret having their breast removed during adolescence. (At least 1,000 such surgeries have been conducted annually in recent years.)

She says: “What we do know is that adolescents actually have the capacity to make a reasonable, logical decision. And here’s the other thing about chest surgery. If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them!”

Ms. Breen recently reported that she was undergoing reconstructive surgery to provide herself with new breasts. However, it is very unlikely she will ever be able to breastfeed should she have children.

Dr. Olson-Kennedy is also newly the president of USPATH, the U.S. branch of the medical-activist group the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. WPATH, which despite is name is largely a U.S.-based organization, has been besieged by damaging publicity over the past year, in particular after internal documents subpoenaed by Alabama’s attorney general revealed that its leadership was aware that the evidence behind pediatric gender medicine was weak and sought to paper over this fact.

12 hours of leaked Olson-Kennedy training videos

The 12-hour training in what is known as the gender-affirming care method for minors who identify as trans or nonbinary took place in late April 2024—a few weeks after Britain published the Cass Review, which found that this medical field is based on “remarkably weak evidence.” The training was led by Dr. Olson-Kennedy; her husband, Aydin Olson-Kennedy, who has a doctorate in social work and is a transgender man; and licensed clinical social worker Darlene Tando.

I obtained the videos a few months ago.

The training videos are a window into not just the methods of these individuals, but their overall attitudes about gender dysphoria and transgender and nonbinary identification in children. A prevailing attitude they share is one of indignation and irritation with a medical system that demands that children betray a substantial level of distress before they are granted gender-transition medications. Overall, these three favor less gatekeeping and less pathologizing of the mental states and internal lives of the children in their care. If a gender-incongruent child arrives in their care absent any particular distress about their identification as the opposite sex, they believe that that child should be granted the opportunity to medically transition by taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones if the family wishes.

I have edited the videos to snip or crop out images that would identify the participants in the training, whether because of Zoom-chat questions that pop up in the right-hand corner of the screen, or moments when a matrix of the participants is visible. You can watch the video at the beginning of this Substack. Otherwise, I wrote a summary below:
LINK:
LEAKED: Trans-Care Training Videos By Beleaguered Top Gender-Clinic Doctor, Part 1
benryan.substack.com/p/leaked-trans…
I am publishing 12 hours of videos of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy and colleagues in which they train mental-health providers on treating children who have gender dysphoria or otherwise identify as trans.

Subscribe to my newsletter to receive all the videos as I publish them.Image
Video number 1: Johanna Olson-Kennedy on the gender basics
benryan.substack.com/p/leaked-trans…
Dr. Olson-Kennedy opens the video by charting the recent shift in transgender visibility in popular media, which she says has improved dramatically in recent years. Previously, transgender people were frequently presented as sex workers, according to at GLAAD analysis. But these days, TV has benefited from the likes of Jazz Jennings and shows like Transparent and Pose that center on the transgender experience, Dr. Olson-Kennedy says. Having stories about youth in the media in particular, she says, has influenced the seeking of gender-transition treatment by young people.

She expresses concern that the trans kids whose stories have been told in the media are generally white. This is reflective, she says, of the disproportionately white patient population at gender clinics in the U.S. and Europe. “It is important for all of us to think about what those barriers to care are for other communities and work really hard to dismantle those barriers.”

This remark speaks to a common dichotomy among advocates in this medical field: They will at once characterize the number of children receiving these treatments as low (as Dr. Olson-Kennedy does a bit later in the video), emphasizing that the political firestorm over this population is disproportionate to its size, while also decrying how few kids are receiving the treatment.

Since 2021, Dr. Olson-Kennedy says, we’ve seen a “problematic” visibility of trans youth as states have moved to ban these treatments. She shows a Google search she conducted of “transgender youth care” the night before. “All of these six headlines, and there’s many more,” she says, “are negative, and they speak to moves being made to ban access to care.”Image
Read 20 tweets
Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Mar 9
Research indicates that even after undergoing lengthy testosterone suppression and estrogen treatment, natal males who identify as female hold a competitive advantage in women’s sports. This is not just about height. It’s about muscle strength, shoulder and hand size, oxygen processing, etc.

And there are teenage boys who can bear Katie Ledecky, one of the most unbeatable long-distance swimmers in history.Image
*beat Katie
Read 4 tweets
Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Mar 7
The difference between the trans sports question and past battles over interracial and same-sex marriage is that there was never any rational scientific support for opposition to those rights. But research does indicate that trans women maintain a competitive advantage in women’s sports. @mattyglesias @drvoltsImage
See:
So is it “morally repugnant” as @drvolts claims, for @mattyglesias to back trans-girl exclusion from girls’ sports if their inclusion is unfair to c-s girls, per scientific research? Is inclusion more important than fairness?

I would be very interested to know why David Roberts thinks it is fair to include trans girls and women in girls and women’s sports.
Read 6 tweets
Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Feb 10
$544,000-a-Year, Newly Nonbinary @ACLU Executive Makes Incorrect Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine: Will This Impact Landmark Supreme Court Case?

🧵👇I report for the @NewYorkSun: Hired in 2019 as the ACLU’s first DEI chief, AJ Hikes has also emerged at the center of a labor-rights case against the nonprofit that deemed it illegally fired a staffer on unsubstantiated claims of racism.Image
GIFT LINK: $544,000-a-Year, Nonbinary ACLU Executive Makes Incorrect Claims About Pediatric Gender Medicine: Will This Impact Landmark Supreme Court Case?
nysun.com/article/544000…
Hired in 2019 as the ACLU’s first DEI chief, AJ Hikes has also emerged at the center of a labor-rights case against the nonprofit that deemed it illegally fired a staffer on unsubstantiated claims of racism.Image
The @ACLU's 4th highest-paid staffer, AJ Hikes, who was hired in 2019 as its first DEI officer, whose 2023 salary exceeded $540K, and who wields considerable influence as a close advisor to the executive director, has drawn unflattering attention to the storied legal group. Image
Read 20 tweets
Benjamin Ryan Profile picture
Feb 9
How the NIH cuts would decimate pediatrics research at UNC and likely undermine the hospital system:
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Recall how vitally important fertility is to JD Vance in particular. Keeping babies from dying is central to such an aim.
Read 4 tweets

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