Two groups representing LGBTQ+ medical professionals (@GLADDUK and @prism_surgery) submitted a letter of complaint to the prestigious British Medical Journal (@bmj_latest).
The BMJ’s crime: pointing out problems in the “gender affirming care is science-based” narrative. GAC is consensus-based (that is, if you ignore doctors, medical groups, and European health authorities who disagree), but not evidence-based.
Since “the science is settled” on this issue and any questioning of that science is clear evidence of bigotry, the letter demanded an apology.
The two groups also demanded that the BMJ disclose whether the author or the editor harbor “gender critical” beliefs (read: beliefs that question the activist-approved narrative on pediatric gender medicine).
“Gender critical” beliefs, you see, are strictly verboten and those who adhere to them must confess and atone.
BMJ’s editor in chief politely declined the requests, telling the two orgs to fu… I mean, to rediscover their commitment to the scientific process.
Let’s hope American medical journals get inspired.
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🚨While attention has been focused on medical groups backing off from gender surgeries in minors and a $2M detransitioner lawsuit, an important exchange has taken place in Stat News Opinion First between authors and critics of the HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria.
👇
Last week, a group of self-described “pediatric bioethicists” and advocates for pediatric medical transition (PMT), including Yale Medicine’s Meredithe McNamara, criticized the HHS report, writing that “analysis of its poor ethical reasoning remains urgently needed.”
Today, a group of HHS report authors responded, explaining why the report’s reasoning is consistent with widely accepted principles of medical ethics and pointing to serious flaws in the McNamara group’s article.
Thousands of U.S. parents have consented to having surgeons remove their daughters' breasts after being assured that their daughters were at serious risk of suicide otherwise.
Now, the incoming president of WPATH says mastectomy "in and of itself" doesn't prevent suicide.
This is the result of our data analysis of U.S. insurance claims. A bare minimum of 5,200 teen girls had their breasts amputated as part of a "gender-affirming" procedure between 2017 and 2023.
1/ As @abigailandwords correctly notes in @NRO, the @APApsychiatric agreed to participate in the peer-review process and condemned the report for overlooking 16 studies, but the APA itself overlooked the HHS report's evidence review, which included 12 of those studies. In fact, several of them (e.g., Tordoff, Chen, de Vries) were discussed in detail in the main report. Of the remaining 4 studies, 3 were on adults rather than youth, and 1 was published after the HHS Review came out (though the final version does account for it).
#ReadtheReport
2/ Here is a summary of the allegedly overlooked studies cited by @APApsychiatric and where they appear in the HHS Review. It can easily be found in the Supplement, which was published on Wednesday.
3/ The APA had no response to our analysis of studies like Chen (2023) and Tordoff (2022), or to the umbrella review, which is mentioned throughout the report.
The APA did not engage with, and possibly did not even see, the most critical part of the HHS Review.
🚨With a puberty blocker trial looming in the UK, here is why the HHS Review concludes: "administering [pediatric medical transition] to adolescents, even in a research context, is in tension with well-established ethical norms for human subjects research." 1/5
District court vacates Biden-era rule declaring that “sex” in Section 1557 of the ACA includes “gender identity.”
This rule and its antecedents in the Obama years mandated that healthcare providers offer “gender-affirming care.” 1/
2/ The court disagreed with the Biden HHS that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock v. Clayton Country (2020) requires interpreting Title IX (imported into 1557) to mean that sex = gender identity.
Even if that were true, the court adds, Bostock doesn’t compel gender Rx.
3/ The court finds that the Biden HHS exceeded its authority when interpreting Section 1557 as it did.
Interpreting sex as “gender identity” is a legislative act, and thus something only Congress may do.