NEW: Azeen Ghorayshi reports in the @nytimes that prominent gender clinician Johanna Olson-Kennedy of @ChildrensLA has refused to publish data from a study on puberty blockers, fearing that the unimpressive results will be "weaponized" by critics of "gender-affirming care." 🧵
Olson-Kennedy told the Times that the kids didn't improve because their mental health was "in really good shape" at the start of the study.
As Ghorayshi notes, this seems to contradict what Olson-Kennedy et al. reported in 2022 about the study's cohort at baseline.
Olson-Kennedy fears the study's results could be cited by critics of pediatric sex "change" in court cases. She doesn't seem to think that, as a medical researcher and clinician, her primary responsibility is to her current and future patients.
Doctors as agents of lawfare.
Ghorayshi's report is helpful in holding members of the gender Rx industry accountable, but it also has at least three problems.
First, Ghorayshi mentions the reported findings of the Dutch puberty blocking study but not the highly important critique of those findings, nor that systematic reviews (e.g., NICE 2020) have found it to be unreliable due to risk of bias.
Second, Ghorayshi mentions the reported findings of the NIH-funded cross-sex hormone study but doesn't mention that the boys showed no improvement while the girls' improvement was very small. Nor does she mention the authors' HARK-ing and goalpost shifting. Critical problems.
Finally, it's disappointing to see the Times continue to refer to the kids given Rx as "transgender adolescents." This isn't a neutral term. Whether these kids "are transgender," or what it means to say such a thing, is half the debate in a nutshell.
Neutral terms for journalists who want to remain independent of the controversy and not (intentionally or unintentionally) put their thumb on the scale:
Adolescents with gender dysphoria.
Adolescents who identify as transgender.
BREAKING: The New York Times (@nytimes) has just called out the Chair of the Board of the American Medical Association (@AmerMedicalAssn), Dr. David Aizuss (@lasereyedoc), for misrepresenting his organization's recent media statements on pediatric gender medicine.
Here's what happened🧵
On February 3, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (@ASPS_News) published its policy statement acknowledging the low quality of evidence for hormones and surgeries in <19 and recommending that surgeries be deferred to age 19+.
The following day, the American Medical Association told National Review (@NRO) and the New York Times (@nytimes) that it agreed with ASPS on surgeries.
Here is what the AMA's communications officer, Joshua Zembik, told the NYT:
Two articles came out today on pediatric gender medicine and its current political context.
Both are worth reading🧵
In @TheAtlantic, @benappel writes about the difficulties growing up as an effeminate boy. He would later discover that so-called "progressives" were now nudging effeminate boys to interpret their feelings of difference as evidence that they are really girls.
Appel calls for an honest conversation among liberals of how a regressive outlook, now fueling a medical practice, has managed to pass itself off as progressive. And he calls for greater tolerance for gender nonconformity in boys from liberals and conservatives.
NEW: “I’ve been covering this controversy for about a decade from a left-of-center perspective, and I’ve found that anyone who questions these treatments, even mildly, is invariably accused of bigotry.”
🧵on @jessesingal’s important new piece in the New York Times this morning.
For years, LGBT organizations insisted that the science of youth gender medicine was settled, citing an apparent consensus of medical associations.
Now that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has backed away from gender surgeries in <19, with the American Medical Association endorsing the move, there is no longer a consensus. The ASPS also acknowledged the lack of supportive evidence for hormones.
🚨A group of 106 members of Congress wrote a letter to Secretary of HHS RJK, Jr., criticizing the Department's efforts to roll back what they call "medically necessary, evidence-based care" in the form of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones (but not surgeries). 🧵
With surgeries unmentioned, the authors say that endocrine interventions are supported by "every major medical and mental health association in the U.S."
Astoundingly, they claim that "numerous studies and systematic reviews... have confirmed the safety, efficacy, and benefits" of these interventions.
Their only citation is the Utah report, which is not a systematic review.
🚨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.