NEW: The Deposition of Eli Coleman

For the first two articles in this series, I covered the depositions of @Jack_Turban and Meredithe McNamara.

Today’s article in @CityJournal is all about the chair and lead author of @wpath’s latest “standards of care." 🧵 Dr. Eli Coleman, a professor emeritus at @UNM_MEDS and founder of U of M's @Human_Sexuality, which was renamed in his honor, submitted to an 8-hour deposition at the hands of Roger Brooks of @ADFLegal in the context of Boe v. Marshall, the Alabama age restriction lawsuit.

One benefit of the new lawsuit against Johanna Olson-Kennedy is that newspapers will have little choice but to report on it, and on her, and will inevitably reveal to the public one of the darkest and most twisted figures in “gender medicine.”

It is truly something to behold. To give just one example:

https://twitter.com/4th_wavenow/status/1397547754000420864

BREAKING: Johanna Olson-Kennedy, perhaps the top name in pediatric "gender-affirming care" in the U.S., is being sued by a former patient.

@jessesingal reports in @TheEconomist 🧵 JOK does not believe in mental health assessments, Singal reports. "I don't send someone to a therapist when I'm going to start them on insulin," she once explained.

The @ChildrensLA doctor has referred children as young as 12 and 13 for, respectively, hormones and mastectomy.

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.

NEW: On behalf of @ManhattanInst, @ishapiro @JKetcham91 and I filed an amicus brief in support of Tennessee in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court case dealing with state age restrictions for sex trait modification procedures ("gender-affirming care").

🧵 2/ Our brief is a rebuttal to the amicus brief submitted by "Expert Researchers and Physicians" (McNamara et al.), which is a version of the Yale Integrity Project's white paper, which criticizes the Cass Review.

🚨NEW DOCUMENTS in the Alabama lawsuit over sex "change" age restrictions.

Some very interesting facts now coming to light. 🧵 1/ @wpath sought but did not receive the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (@ameracadpeds) endorsement for its eighth “Standards of Care” (SOC8).

In private emails to WPATH a colleague, SOC-8 lead author Eli Coleman said that this was “highly confidential.”

🚨 CRITICAL FINDING

An ongoing @manhattaninst analysis of an all payer, all claims insurance database shows that the 7-year diagnostic persistence rate of adolescent gender dysphoria is between 40-50%.

I discuss this major finding in a new article for @CityJournal 🧵 A central belief justifying medical interventions for gender dysphoric (GD) adolescents is that, unlike childhood GD, GD that persists into (or even arises in) adolescence is almost always permanent. If the condition isn’t permanent, why offer Rx with permanent effects?

🚨NEW: I’ve received a FOIA’d file from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (@waDSHS) about a 17-year-old receiving puberty blockers.

I’ve seen some extreme cases of medicalization in the past, but this one stands out even for a deep blue state. 1/5 The kid is reported to have a “past [of] extensive abuse [including sexual] and neglect” and to have been through “93 different placements,” which include Qualified Residential Treatment Programs. 2/5

"McNamara et al. [the misleadingly titled 'Yale report' criticizing the @thecassreview @Hilary_Cass] is an exceptionally misleading, confused, and fundamentally unprofessional document."

A must-read by @jessesingal, but let me add a few additional details. 🧵 2/ The white paper is a good example of "eminence-based medicine." Its authors seemed to want to use the reputation of @Yale @YaleMed @YaleLawSch to bolster the credibility of the report. But they did so seemingly without first getting the approval of Yale.

BREAKING: The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, an organization representing 92% of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., becomes the first major medical association to break from the consensus over “gender-affirming care” for minors.

This is big news. 🧵 2/ In the U.S., the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries to help kids who feel distressed about their developing bodies has depended on a perceived consensus of medical groups.

🚨 This is an extremely important new report by @writingblock for @TheFP about Planned Parenthood (@PPFA), a leading supplier of on-demand hormones to troubled teens and young adults.

Highlights... 🧵 1/9

thefp.com/p/how-did-plan… 2/ # of PPs offering "gender-affirming" hormones:

2005: 1
2015: 24 (approx.)
2024: 450

Current annual revenue: $2 billion (approx.)

In a new article in @latimes, @MackenzieMays takes aim at @ChoooCole, a prominent detransitioner.

Mays' article is full of errors & misrepresentations.

Here is just one example of how Mays misrepresents the science she herself cites. ⬇️

latimes.com/california/sto… Arguably, Mays' most important empirical claim is that regret is very rare, and that “some studies” show a regret rate of “as little as 2%.”

The study she cites for this claim is Dhejne et al., “An analysis of all applications for sex reassignment surgery in Sweden, 1960-2010: prevalence, incidence, and regrets,” Arch Sex Behav (2014). This is a Swedish study based on data from a national database.

NEW: @ManhattanInst colleagues @ishapiro @JKetcham91 and I have submitted an amicus brief in support of parents suing the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin over its secret gender transition policy.

This is a "Brandeis brief" on social transition.

⬇️⬇️⬇️ 2/ The school district instructed staff that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities [at school]. That knowledge must be earned.”

According to the complaint, a teacher posted a flyer with: “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now.”

1/ This is incredible. In the last 24 hrs, the Biden White House’s lack of message discipline accidentally revealed that its official statements on youth gender medicine are dictated to it by outside transgender activists and pressure groups. 2/

https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1808333209844814288

McMaster University's @Real_Yuan24, an expert in evidence-based medicine, makes some important comments about the "values and preferences" component of clinical guidelines, specifically in the context of gender medicine.

Here is a thread with his observations. 🧵 2/ For context, in EBM evidence alone is not enough for the development of clinical guidelines. When moving from evidence to recommendations, clinical practice guideline developers are also supposed to take into account patient "values and preference" (among other things).

This statement by @AAPPres of @AmerAcadPeds, in response to the interview with Hilary Cass in the NYT times, is so utterly dishonest. It implies that the AAP's position was articulated in response to state age restriction laws. 1/5 The AAP's policy position was published in 2018--well before age restriction laws were first introduced in the states (2020).



@AbigailShrier's Irreversible Damage, which brought the issue to public attention, also didn't come out until 2020. 2/5publications.aap.org/pediatrics/art…

NEW: UCSF's (@UCSF @UCSF_IHPS) Dr. Jack Turban (@jack_turban) claimed at @theDPUnion debate that the Cass-related systematic reviews found moderate quality evidence that puberty blockers improve mental health.

In a new article, I explain why this claim is false.

⬇️⬇️⬇️ 2/ First, Turban confuses quality of studies with quality of evidence. These are distinct concepts in evidence-based medicine, and any clinician opining on the evidence base of medical treatments should understand the difference.

UCSF's (@UCSF @UCSF_IHPS) Jack Turban (@jack_turban) claims that a new systematic review of the evidence for puberty blockers, published alongside the Cass Review (@thecassreview), finds “moderate quality evidence" for the use of these drugs in youth gender medicine.

⬇️⬇️⬇️ In an upcoming article, I explain how Turban confuses quality of studies with quality of evidence—two very different concepts in evidence-based medicine—and ignores the significance of the scoring tool the authors of the systematic reviews used. 2/

I just read the complaint filed by the ACLU of Ohio (@acluohio) asking a state court for temporary injunction against HB68, the new law that restricts “gender-affirming care" to adults only.

What a mess of a document.

⬇️⬇️⬇️ 1. ACLU can’t seem to decide if it’s alleging disparate treatment or disparate impact. These are different theories for why some law or policy may violate civil rights or constitutional provisions.

Andrea Long Chu's (@andrealongchu) March 11th cover story for @NYMag has sparked some thoughtful reflection in liberal journalism.

⬇️⬇️⬇️ Chu’s essay is worth reading. It makes the case for unrestricted minor access to hormones and surgeries, ignores everything we know about child and adolescent psychology, and openly states that humans have no obligation to come to terms with reality.

The Mary Bridge Children's Gender Health Clinic (@Mary_Bridge), which is part of MultiCare health system (@MultiCareHealth) in Tacoma, Washington, and site of whistleblower Tamara Pietzke, offers kids resources on binding and tucking. /1

⬇️⬇️⬇️ Tucking is the process by which boys push their testicles up into the inguinal canal, use their testicle-free scrotum to wrap their penis, and then secure their wrapped penis within their butt cheeks using methods like compression underwear or tape. /2