The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society, the two most influential US medical societies in pediatric gender medicine, have issued their first known statements on England's Cass Review on the subject, to @WBUR's @OnPointRadio:
STATEMENT FROM AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: Statement from American Academy of Pediatrics President, Dr. Ben Hoffman:
“The AAP’s gender -affirming care policy, like all our standing guidance, is grounded in evidence and science. Pediatricians understand the complexities of gender-affirming care and they know how to counsel families. The goal is not a certain treatment or timeline, but instead to listen to the patient and create a safe environment to address their needs. “What we’re seeing more and more is that the politically infused public discourse is getting this wrong — and it’s impacting the way that doctors care for their patients.
Physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their medical education, training, experience, and the available evidence, freely and without the threat of punishment. Instead, state legislatures have passed bills to ban and restrict gender-affirming care, which means that right now, for far too many families, their zip code determines their ability to seek the health care they need. Politicians have inserted themselves into the exam room, and this is dangerous for both physicians and for families.”
Here is the Endocrine Society's statement on the Cass Review, given to @WBUR's @OnPointRadio. In short, "Medical evidence, not politics, should inform treatment decisions."
STATEMENT FROM ENDOCRINE SOCIETY: We stand firm in our support of gender-affirming care. Transgender and gender-diverse people deserve access to needed and often life-saving medical care.
NHS England’s recent report, the Cass Review, does not contain any new research that would contradict the recommendations made in our Clinical Practice Guideline on gender-affirming care.
The guideline, which cites more than 260 research studies, recommends a very conservative approach to care, with no medical intervention prior to puberty. Estimates indicate only a fraction of transgender and gender-diverse adolescents opt to take puberty-delaying medications, which have been used to treat early puberty in youth for four decades.
• The guideline recommends beginning treatment with puberty-delaying medications that are generally reversible.
• As adolescents grow older and can provide informed consent, then hormone therapy can be considered.
• Our guideline suggests waiting until an individual has turned 18 or reached the age of majority in their country to undergo gender-affirming genital surgery.
Medical evidence, not politics, should inform treatment decisions.
Our Clinical Practice Guidelines are developed using a robust and rigorous process that adheres to the highest standards of trustworthiness and transparency as defined by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine).
Our guideline development panels spend years developing each guideline based on a thorough review of medical evidence, author expertise, rigorous scientific review, and a transparent process.
More than 18,000 Endocrine Society members worldwide have an opportunity to comment on guideline drafts prior to publication.
The Society is in the process of updating the 2017 Clinical Practice Guideline. It was one of six selected for a routine update.
The process will incorporate the latest research and conduct systematic reviews to provide guidance on the safe and effective treatment of gender incongruence and dysphoria from an endocrine perspective.
We agree that increased funding for youth and adult transgender health research programs is needed to close the gaps in knowledge regarding transgender medical care and should be made a priority.
Although the scientific landscape has not changed significantly, misinformation about gender-affirming care is being politicized.
In the United States, 24 states have enacted laws or policies barring adolescents’ access to gender-affirming care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In seven states, the policies also include provisions that would prevent at least some adults over age 18 from accessing gender-affirming care.
Cisgender teenagers, together with their parents or guardians, are deemed competent to give consent to various medical treatments.
Teenagers who have gender incongruence and their parents and guardians should not be discriminated against.
Transgender and gender-diverse teenagers, their parents, and physicians should be able to determine the appropriate course of treatment.
Banning evidence-based medical care based on misinformation takes away the ability of parents and patients to make informed decisions.
Medical evidence, not politics, should inform treatment decisions.
The @AmerAcadPeds never responded to @JamesCantorPhD's scathing fact check of its 2018 policy statement on the affirmative care model for gender distressed children. Instead, it reaffirmed the policy statement in Aug 2023 with no changes. ohchr.org/sites/default/…
The AAP is subject to a lawsuit from a detransitioner, as I wrote for the @NewYorkSun: nysun.com/article/lawsui…
The AAP has become increasingly secretive about its work on the subject of gender distressed children. nysun.com/article/sued-o…
In its statement to @WBUR, the Endocrine Society says that "only a fraction" of gender distressed children receive medical transition. This after @WPATH said in a statement responding to the Cass Review that the majority of such children would do better to medically transition.
I strongly advise people who think that @AlecMacGillis, who wrote one of the finest Covid-era articles critiquing the school closures, is “lying” about their impacts read @DavidZweig’s scathing new book about the lockdowns, An Abundance of Caution.
Zweig makes a very strong case that there was substantial evidence by spring 2020 that lockdowns did not substantially lower COVID morbidity and mortality. And he further makes a very strong case that the lockdowns harmed kids in myriad ways.
I also suggest people stop and consider that Blooskie is just as toxic as X, but in a kind of mirror image.
This is @AlecMacGillis’ heartbreaking article about how the Covid school closures impacted a small town, and how the lack of them in a neighboring town didn’t seem to lead to worse covid outcomes. propublica.org/article/the-lo…
Helping out young people need not be a zero-sum effort. Accurately observing that boys are falling behind in many respects need not divert attention away from the plight of women and girls. The real problem is when people pit the interests of the sexes against one another. Moira Donegan really should go read @RichardVReeves’ work and stop trying to be so divisive and dismissive about a real and serious problem facing boys and young men.
In fact, Moira's attitude, which is essentially, "Screw those boys, the girls need help," is a pervasive bias that is likely part of the reason why boys are struggling! People look at boys and see the patriarchy and something that needs to be pushed down. This is harmful to everyone in the long run, boys and girls alike.
Also Moira Donegan: She made the "Shitty Media Men" list and paid a six-figure settlement to Stephen Elliott over it after he sued her. washingtonpost.com/media/2023/03/…
One of the authors of a just published critique of Britain’s Cass Review on pediatric gender medicine and the systematic reviews on which it was partially based suggests that the authors were “bribed.”
It’s unclear what McLamore means by the comparison of how long peer review took for them, since the Cass Review took four years and was not peer reviewed. But the SRs on which it was based were peer reviewed and published in a journal.
Quinnehtukqut McLamore (they/them) is an assistant professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
“The Cass report’s recommendations, given its methodological flaws and misrepresentation of evidence, warrant critical scrutiny to ensure ethical and effective support for gender-diverse youth.”
Today, I was on a Zoom call by an HIV advocacy group about their efforts to combat the Trump admin's cancellation of HIV research grants. One of the activists presenters said he refused to present if I was on the call, clearly due to my reporting on pediatric gender medicine.
The organizer said he couldn't eject anyone from the call; there were about 80 participants. (This despite the fact that that organizer, a longtime activist, had already ejected me from his HIV-advocacy listserv.) So the activist refused to present and had his colleague present in his place. She made a big point about how he had made an "ethical" stand not to present.
I told everyone via the chat on the Zoom that I stood by my reporting on pediatric gender medicine. Which I do.
The irony is that I am among only a small handful of reporters who maintains a specialty in HIV coverage—I have been writing about HIV for 25 years and started doing work in the field in 1995—and who writes for mainstream outlets. And I just published a major article in NBC News about the cancelation of LGBTQ-related research grants, the very subject of the Zoom call, that was totally sympathetic to the activists' cause.
I see a lot of this in my work, in which HIV activists seek to punish me for my reporting by seeking to stonewall and blacklist me. They go to great lengths. It winds up just being inconvenient for me; I still get my work done. What it does accomplish is it ensures that these activists' voices are not heard in my reporting. And it does not stop me from writing about gender medicine. It boils down to ideological purity on their part. They need to take that stand.
If these activists had their way, I would not publish articles like this that are very critical of the Trump administration and bring attention to the activists’ cause. Some of them tried to get my sources for this piece to join the blacklist against me. nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-ne…
One of the sources for the piece above is a major academic advocate in the transgender space. I’ve interviewed him many times over the years. To his credit, he dismissed the demands from activists to blacklist me and said he’d just ask me himself what the story was with my gender medicine reporting. Imagine that!
This is an apparent contradiction that adults such as myself have trouble reconciling with: that there is an apparent element of adolescent culture today that, at least in certain communities, values and valorizes trans over gay identities.
Erin Reed is thus incredulous at the suggestion in the new HHS report on pediatric gender-transition treatment:
Fact check: There are, in fact, two studies that have found that suicide deaths in gender distressed youths are rare:
The purpose of controlling for specialist psych visits was to determine if having gone to a gender clinic was *independently* associated with suicide death. It was not.
I haven't read this massive tome. But there is a reference to me in it. The footnote in this bit refers in part to a piece Jesse Singal wrote about the time Alejandra Caraballo and Steven Thrasher really came for me.