UNI88 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 31, 2026 4:39 pm
SeattleGriz wrote: ↑Sat Jan 31, 2026 3:31 pm
What doctors recommend it and where are the studies backing it's efficacy? This is where we step out of feelz and into science and medicine.
Study: Gender-affirming hormones improve mental health in transgender and nonbinary youth
Evidence from largest study in U.S. on the impact of gender-affirming hormones, with longest follow-up
What about parents' rights? Or does that only apply if they raise children the way MAQA wants them to, not the right to choose any legal, doctor-recommended care?
Let's just start with this first study you have listed. Critics of this study have said that while it helped how they felt about their physical looks, improvements in depression and anxiety were small. In addition, a significant amount were taking psychotropic drugs and receiving therapy as well. Two huge confounders in which you don't know if they were the reason for improvements or not. And lastly, no control group. These factors alone bring into question the validity of the study.
Then we have Dr Olson-Kennedy listed as a senior author. This is the Dr who got the 10 million dollar NIH grant to follow 95 kids who received puberty blockers. She refuses to publish her findings. It's because the children showed no significant improvement in mental health after two years. That speaks to the integrity of Dr Olson Kennedy. Won't publish a study because she couldn't prove her bias. She's advocating a course of medicine based upon hunches, not quantifiable science. The irony of her mentioning her study combats misinformation (Two different studies, btw).
"The critical results we report demonstrate the positive psychological impact of gender-affirming hormones for treatment of youth with gender dysphoria,” said senior author Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD, Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “Amidst a landscape of misinformation, we hope these findings support the use of timely and appropriate medical interventions for this vulnerable group of adolescents."
I bring all this up, because it leads us to the Cass Review.
The Cass Review, published in April 2024 by Dr. Hilary Cass, was a comprehensive independent review of gender identity services for children and young people in the UK National Health Service (NHS).
Its central conclusion was that the evidence base supporting medical interventions for gender-distressed youth is "remarkably weak" and that children were being treated with a medical pathway (puberty blockers and hormones) based on insufficient data regarding long-term safety and effectiveness
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov ... al-report/
Lastly. The one absolute wild card in all this is the autism aspect. I refer to the "autism" doctors in the field as witch doctors because they are never right. Hell, even other autistics have been wrong when consulted. Autism is such a wild card in this equation.
You do know the gender affirming medical establishment preys upon the autistic? Couple this with parents that will do just about anything if they believe it will help their autistic child and you create a bad choice environment. Dash in some transhausen mom's and it's really bad.
The actual science cannot say gender affirming care, in the aspect of hormone therapy, is a benefit. We'd all be much better off if we went back to our old medical model in which we didn't experiment on our children. Let them age out of childhood and when everything stabilizes as an adult, let them make their own choice. Until then, therapy and assistance where possible.