Thread by @RoisinMichaux

Welcome to @genspect conference Day 2. Michael Biggs, (@stellaomalley3’s “personal hero”) is up first. He’s well known for revealing to the world the shoddy research upon which paediatric gender medicine is based. 1/
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He will be followed by @ZUCKERKJ @cwknews and @sueevansprotect. It’s going to be an intense, expert-y morning. Everyone is in fine form. Me and @anliathluachra couldn’t find a corkscrew in our AirBnb last night so we went to bed early. Feeling very happy about that right now! 2/

Michael Biggs starts with an anecdote from the US trans medicine wars: someone said forcing a gender-non conforming child to go through a natural puberty is "a form of torture", says "trans kids" is a recent phenomenon - "not to say we don't have cross-gender behaviour 3/

Cross-gendered behaviour is normal, says Biggs (a study found, for example, that 6% of girls in a cohort of 4.6k kids displayed "typical boy behaviour")- trans kids is different because it involves social transition. 4/
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It's not invariable that a feminine boy, for example, will grow up to be gay, but there is a very strong statistical association, says Biggs. 5/
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A picture of a very young Judith Butler "the mother of the trans child", appears on the screen. Everyone giggles. Yep, this comes from queer theory, says Biggs. He then points the finger at digital comms, particularly platforms like Reddit, Tumblr etc. 6/
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But of course, puberty suppression is the main culprit and the topic of Biggs' talk. Peggy Cohen Kettenis appears on screen. Biggs highlights papers written by Dutch researchers in 1996/1998 on puberty suppression in teen "transsexuals" (will link later) 7/#GenspectBiggerPicture

The Dutch protocol, age of steps:
12 puberty blockers
16 cross sex hormones
18 surgery
"There was supposedly strict criteria," says Biggs. No comorbidities, family support etc. Key benefit of treatment is that the people can "pass". Obsession with "passing" (especially height) 8/

Biggs calls out the "rhetorical devices" used in the treatment by the Dutch clinicians ("pause button"). 9/
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Number of kids on the Dutch protocol
1990s - one per year
2017 - about 170
UMC Amsterdam overwhelmed by the demand - new site in Utrecht and elsewhere. "A massive increase over time." #GenspectBiggerPicture 10/

Pubertal suppression/transition was gaining media attention. In 1996, the UK's Channel 4 aired a "wrong body" documentary on the "miracle cure" in the Netherlands, where Gooren in UMC Amsterdam said "sometimes you just know that a child has thought about it...." 11/

Typical patients now turning up to gender clinics are adolescent girls, so they are not concerned with puberty blockers. Biggs mentions Jazz Jennings, the western world's most famous "trans kid". Jennings' book is in many US schools. 12/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

Puberty blockers make transition feasible, says Biggs, but social transition locks in transgender identity. It would be difficult for Jazz Jennings to change her mind at 12, he says as an example. 13/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

Puberty as disease or torture: Biggs mentions Annelou de Vries at who took the reins after Cohen-Kettenis retired. When asked why there's been no randomised clinical trial of puberty blockers, she said it would have been unethical to make "trans kids" go through puberty. 14/

Biggs read the long-term outcomes of the Dutch protocol experiment, and that's what got him into this. The data was so unconvincing, and yet this protocol has been followed by clinicians now for 30 years.
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John Money praised Cohen-Kettenis' bravery for her puberty suppression work, says Biggs. 16/
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The results of the Dutch study have never been replicated. The Tavistock did their own study, but only claimed their results were "different from the Dutch". 2 years later, they still hadn't published the results. Biggs forced the issue, and published the results himself. 17/

Biggs lists some of the bad American studies that have attempted to replicate the Dutch protocol - but use different measures, small sample sizes etc.

The results were hard to get hold of. "If you've got good results, you usually publish them very quickly," says Biggs. 18/

Biggs shows rates for teens with osteoporosis - but also lesser-known negative effects including cognitive, which animal experiments shown are not reversible. 19/ #GenspectBiggerPicture

Biggs mentions @wpath's Marci Bowers' claim that any child whose puberty was blocked has never achieved orgasm. She later recanted after Biggs used this in a court case - and revised it saying it was more like 50%
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To conclude: the "trans kid" is a new invention and puberty blockers are a self-fulfilling prophecy. End/
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