#endocrine 2020
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evidence-based-activism · 6 months ago
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"Research into trans medicine has been manipulated"
The Sources
A recent Economist* article has described how the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has manipulated research into trans medicine. The article is reproduced here in full by the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). The SEGM also discusses the topic in their discussion on how "WPATH Influence Undermines WHO’s Transgender Guidelines"
*For those who care: The Economist is rated as "least biased" and "highly factual" by Media Bias/Fact Check. While it has varied over time, they currently tend to be preferred by a left-leaning audience.
The Situation
Essentially, unsealed court documents have shown WPATH first commissioned research into trans medicine from Johns Hopkins University (for the "development" of their guidelines) and then prevented the researchers from publishing this research. (Among other ethical violations including undue influence over manuscript contents and requiring researchers to (illegitimately) claim independence from WPATH.)
Presumably their suppression and manipulation of the research occurred because the conclusions reached by the researchers did not meet advance their desired opinions.
This is extraordinarily unethical from a scientific, medical, and political perspective. Strong objections from the researchers involved were documented, but ultimately failed to prevent the limitation of academic freedom and maintenance of scientific integrity. Aside from this, their actions have deprived their own community (trans individuals) from potentially vital information about their medical treatments.
So, the next time someone asks for "proof" that the current standards of trans medicine are not evidence based and may, in fact, be harmful: reply with these sources documenting the unscientific, unethical suppression of such proof. (And, while you're at it, remind them that the burden of proof is on intervention, not the lack of intervention.)
Choice Quotes from the Sources
From the reproduced Economist article:
From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins team’s work.
Ms Robinson [the research director] saw this as an attempt to exert undue influence over what was supposed to be an independent process.
But an email in October 2020 from WPATH figures, including its incoming president at the time, ... made clear what sort of science WPATH did (and did not) want published. Research must be “thoroughly scrutinised and reviewed to ensure that publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender health care in the broadest sense,” it stated.
[The WPATH president has] been named to a World Health Organisation advisory board tasked with developing best practices for transgender medicine
Another document recently unsealed shows that Rachel Levine, a trans woman who is assistant secretary for health, succeeded in pressing wpath to remove minimum ages for the treatment of children from its 2022 standards of care.
From the extended discussion by the SEGM:
The court documents reveal that WPATH leadership was "caught on the wrong foot" when two systematic reviews of evidence regarding endocrine interventions, ... did not provide the kind of support that WPATH was hoping to see. Consequently, WPATH leadership, ... took action to prevent the evidence evaluation team from making public the offending systematic reviews.
The court documents also reveal that WPATH subsequently instituted a new approval policy to ensure that only favorable evidence reviews could be published by researchers engaged in evaluating the evidence: (... WPATH had to approve the conclusions. ... WPATH had ongoing content control over the content of the planned publication. ... WPATH had the final document control.)
The authors were also required to insert into the article a statement that asserted its independence from WPATH, effectively denying that WPATH interference had taken place. [Imagine a drug company exerting this much influence over research into their a drug, and then demanding the researchers lie about this influence.]
[The Baker 2012 review] was the only review to survive WPATH’s approval process, despite "dozens" of reviews being completed by the Johns Hopkins team, as the court documents reveal. [Meaning dozens were suppressed, presumably for unfavorable conclusions.]
The Baker review has an alarming number of irregularities, which bear the marks of WPATH interference, and which deserve a separate spotlight. Here, we will only note that the review's conclusions ... are explicitly contradicted by the actual systematic review findings, which found only "low" and "insufficient" evidence.
The suppressed evidence regarding hormones interventions for all age groups raises questions about what basis WHO is using for its presumption that hormones should be widely available to all adults who seek them [This is of particular concern since several influential members of WPATH - including its president - have been appointed to the WHO board developing clinical guidelines]
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nekotaylor · 2 months ago
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Psychological and Emotional Integration in Full-Time Female Feminization
Full-time female feminization, a process where individuals assigned male at birth transition to live as women, involves significant psychological and emotional changes. This process can be complex and multifaceted, affecting various aspects of an individual’s life.
Emotional Changes
Hormone therapy, particularly estrogen, can lead to emotional changes, such as increased emotional expressivity and sensitivity (1).
Individuals may experience mood swings, anxiety, or depression during the transition process (2).
The emotional changes can be intense, and it may take time for individuals to adjust to their new emotional landscape.
Psychological Integration
Psychological integration refers to the process of aligning one’s internal sense of self with their external expression of femininity (3).
This process can involve exploring and expressing one’s emotions, desires, and needs in a way that feels authentic and congruent with their female identity.
Individuals may need to navigate societal expectations, stigma, and discrimination, which can impact their psychological well-being and integration (4).
Factors Influencing Psychological and Emotional Integration
Social Support: A strong support system, including friends, family, and mental health professionals, can significantly impact an individual’s psychological and emotional integration (5).
Self-Acceptance: Embracing and accepting one’s female identity can facilitate psychological and emotional integration (6).
Coping Mechanisms: Developing healthy coping mechanisms, such as mindfulness, self-care, and stress management, can help individuals navigate the challenges of full-time female feminization.
Mental Health Considerations
Individuals undergoing full-time female feminization may be at a higher risk for mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (7).
Access to mental health resources, including therapy and support groups, is essential for promoting psychological and emotional well-being (8).
Conclusion
Full-time female feminization is a complex and multifaceted process that involves significant psychological and emotional changes. While challenges may arise, individuals can navigate this process with the right support, self-acceptance, and coping mechanisms. Prioritizing mental health and well-being is essential for promoting a positive and fulfilling transition experience.
References
Hembree, W. C., Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., Gooren, L., Hannema, S. E., Meyer, W. J., Murad, M. H., … & T’Sjoen, G. G. (2017). Endocrine treatment of gender-dysphoric/gender-incongruent persons: an Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 102(11), 3869-3903.
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L. A., Tanis, J. E., Harrison, J., Herman, J. L., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. National Center for Transgender Equality.
Ettner, R., Monstrey, S., & Eyler, A. E. (2007). Principles of transgender medicine and surgery. Haworth Press.
Bockting, W. O., & Coleman, E. (2016). Developmental stages of the transgender coming-out process. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18(2), 151-158.
Riggle, E. D., Rostosky, S. S., & Horne, S. G. (2010). Psychological distress, well-being, and coping in LGBTQ individuals. Journal of LGBTQ Issues in Education, 7(2), 147-163.
Klein, K., & Golub, S. A. (2016). Family rejection as a predictor of suicide attempts and substance abuse among transgender and gender nonconforming adults. LGBT Health, 3(3), 193-199.
Hendricks, M. L., & Testa, R. J. (2012). A conceptual framework for clinical work with transgender and gender nonconforming clients: An adaptation of the minority stress model. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 43(5), 460-467.
The Trevor Project. (2020). National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2020.
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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months ago
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Reference preserved in our archive
BY Tyler Harvey
Among the many symptoms that have been reported by people experiencing Long COVID, one of the more recent is an unusual level of thirst. This could mean that the feeling of thirst may keep getting stronger and last longer than usual. Or that even drinking lots of water—the healthiest thirst-quencher of all—doesn’t do the trick.
Stuart Katz, MD, a cardiologist and the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Professor of Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, is a researcher whose Long COVID symptoms lasted for nearly a year. During that time, he began experiencing symptoms of COVID-associated thirst following his initial SARS-CoV-2 infection in December 2020. Dr. Katz says that the excessive thirstiness and other Long COVID symptoms have taken a toll on his quality of life.
He is not alone. A 2023 study published in JAMA found that excessive thirst was one of 12 symptoms most commonly seen in patients with Long COVID. This study is part of a larger research effort called the National Institutes of Health’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative. Using self-reported data from approximately 10,000 Long COVID patients across 85 sites in 33 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the scientists found that 40% reported thirst. In addition to his own experience with Long COVID, Dr. Katz is a RECOVER investigator.
The physiological processes that cause excessive thirst in Long COVID remain unknown. One hypothesis, which Dr. Katz believes should be investigated with experimental studies, proposes that angiotensin II (an endocrine hormone that stimulates thirst) may play a role. SARS-CoV-2 enters cells through a receptor on the cell membrane that also interacts with angiotensin II. A connection may exist between the way in which SARS-CoV-2 enters cells and the lasting symptom of thirst in Long COVID patients, Dr. Katz explains. But more data is needed to establish such a link.
Currently, there are no proven treatments for excessive thirst among patients with Long COVID. In some cases, like Dr. Katz’s, the symptom resolves on its own over time. However, drinking too much water may pose some risk, such as excess urine production or low blood sodium, he warns. Dr. Katz instead recommends consuming ice chips or sucking candy, which has helped some of his patients with heart failure—a condition that can also cause increased thirst. Until more is known, thirst remains a challenge and mystery for scientists and patients alike.
Dr. Katz is using his own experience as a force for good. “My personal experience with Long COVID remains fresh in my mind,” he told me recently. “It provides a strong motivation to complete the scientific work of RECOVER with the hope to better understand what happened to me and how better to help the millions of patients still suffering with Long COVID symptoms.”
Tyler Harvey is an MD/PhD candidate at Yale School of Medicine
The last word from Lisa Sanders, MD: Thirst is one of the strongest of all human motivations—stronger even than hunger. And with good reason. Those who teach wilderness survival refer to the “rule of 3,” which says that a person can live for 3 minutes without air (oxygen), 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Angiotensin II is sometimes known as the thirst hormone. Its release from the kidney triggers the drive to drink. That this is one of the symptoms of Long COVID is yet more evidence of how widespread this virus can travel in the body: lung, heart, brain, and kidneys.
Last year, researchers proposed a group of 12 key symptoms indicative of and possibly diagnostic of Long COVID. Although this tool was not intended to be used for clinical diagnostic purposes, it allowed researchers to assign a point value to each symptom, based on its frequency. They propose that the probability of Long COVID is higher in those who score a total of 12 points once all the symptoms were added up. The 12 symptoms and their points are:
Loss of smell or taste: 8 points Post-exertional malaise: 7 points Chronic cough: 4 points Brain fog: 3 points Thirst: 3 points Heart palpitations: 2 points Chest pain: 2 points Fatigue: 1 point Dizziness: 1 point Gastrointestinal symptoms: 1 point Issues with sexual desire or capacity: 1 point Abnormal movements (including tremors, slowed movements, rigidity, or sudden, unintended and uncontrollable jerky movements): 1 point
I have seen patients who I was certain had Long COVID and who didn’t reach a score of 12, but I think this may be a useful tool for further research. Indeed, thirst is one of the 12 symptoms—so it’s very common in this population.
Study link: jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2805540
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she-is-ovarit · 1 year ago
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Detransitioner news
I have been thinking about detransitioners lately and wanted to compile articles I have been seeing. This will be a longer post and reblogged for part II as I hope to copy and paste brief portions of the articles under each headline.
Law firm for detransitioners opens in Dallas
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In all of the controversy around gender transition, there is one group that is persistently marginalized by both the right and left. They are known as detransitioners — people who decide that they want to return to their birth gender, often after receiving years of interventional care, including surgery, to treat their gender dysphoria. Now, the nation’s first law firm focused solely on representing these patients — many of whom feel abused by a medical system that encouraged their treatment — has opened its doors in Dallas. It could forever change how hospitals and doctors approach what’s known as gender-affirming care.
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Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination. The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?
Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling. Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine. At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)
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Ontario detransitioner who had breasts and womb removed sues doctors
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An Ontario detransitioning woman who had her breasts and womb removed to change her gender to male is suing medical and health practitioners for failing to consider other treatments during her mental health crisis before ushering her on an irreversible journey she regrets. Michelle Zacchigna, 34, of Orillia, Ont., north of Toronto, names eight health professionals, including doctors, psychologists, a psychotherapist and a counsellor in a lawsuit filed in Ottawa. None of the defendants, who work or worked at various clinics and institutions in southern Ontario, responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit prior to deadline. Four of the defendants have filed notices of intent to defend against the suit in Ontario Superior Court, but no statements of defense have been filed. None of the claims have been tested in court. Zacchigna said she faces an uphill battle in her lawsuit. “I’ve been under the impression that all medical malpractice suits are challenging. Doctors win the majority of cases in Canada,” she told National Post. “It’s very much a David vs. Goliath undertaking.” In her statement of claim filed in court in November, Zacchigna says she had difficulty forming relationships with classmates in elementary school and was often bullied. By the time she was 11, she engaged in self-harming behaviour, including cutting her arm with a knife. This continued into early adulthood. When she was 20, she tried to kill herself and she was referred by her family doctor for psychotherapy, where she was treated for social anxiety and clinical depression. She remained unhappy and depressed, and her mental health decline led to her dropping out of university, according to her claim. About a year into therapy, she engaged with an online community around gender nonconformity. “Michelle came to believe that her biological sex of female did not match her true gender identity of male,” her claim says. “She further came to believe that this mismatch between her biological sex and gender identity was causing her feelings of depression, self-harming behaviour and unease in her body, a mental health condition commonly known as gender dysphoria,” her claim states. This was the first time Zacchigna felt she was born in the wrong body, and she had not previously identified as male, her claim says. “However, as a result of what she read on the internet, she became convinced that she was a transgender man, and that once she embraced this new identity, her depression would subside.” Zacchigna started attending a support group in Toronto for people considering gender transition. A counsellor there told her of opportunities to proceed through a medical transition, her claim says. Zacchigna was invited to apply for medical intervention in 2010. The counsellor wrote a recommendation letter outlining a medical history that didn’t fully match her real past, the claim says. The counsellor didn’t recommend any alternatives, or seek confirmation of Zacchigna’s own diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Her regular therapist also wrote a recommendation for transition treatment, saying Zacchigna was an “ideal candidate for hormone therapy,” even though the therapist had no previous transgender clients, according to the claim.
Part II incoming.
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By: Azeen Ghorayshi
Published: May 13, 2024
After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass was hoping to begin her retirement by learning to play the saxophone.
Instead, she took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria.
At the time, in 2020, England’s sole youth gender clinic was in disarray. The waiting list had swelled, leaving many young patients waiting years for an appointment. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints that had spilled into public view. And a former patient had sued the clinic, claiming that she had transitioned as a teenager “after a series of superficial conversations with social workers.”
The National Health Service asked Dr. Cass, who had never treated children with gender dysphoria but had served as the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, to independently evaluate how the agency should proceed.
Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.
Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.”
Dr. Cass’s findings are in line with several European countries that have limited the treatments after scientific reviews. But in America, where nearly two dozen states have banned the care outright, medical groups have endorsed the treatments as evidence-based and necessary.
The American Academy of Pediatrics declined to comment on Dr. Cass’s specific findings, and condemned the state bans. “Politicians have inserted themselves into the exam room, which is dangerous for both physicians and for families,” Dr. Ben Hoffman, the organization’s president, said.
The Endocrine Society told The New York Times that Dr. Cass’s review “does not contain any new research” that would contradict its guidelines. The federal health department did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Cass spoke to The Times about her report and the response from the United States. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What are your top takeaways from the report?
The most important concern for me is just how poor the evidence base is in this area. Some people have questioned, “Did we set a higher bar for this group of young people?” We absolutely didn’t. The real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of pediatric practice.
The second big takeaway for me is that we have to stop just seeing these young people through the lens of their gender and see them as whole people, and address the much broader range of challenges that they have, sometimes with their mental health, sometimes with undiagnosed neurodiversity. It’s really about helping them to thrive, not just saying “How do we address the gender?” in isolation.
You found that the quality of evidence in this space is “remarkably weak.” Can you explain what that means?
The assessment of studies looks at things like, do they follow up for long enough? Do they lose a lot of patients during the follow-up period? Do they have good comparison groups? All of those assessments are really objective. The reason the studies are weak is because they failed on one or more of those areas.
The most common criticism directed at your review is that it was in some way rigged because of the lack of randomized controlled trials, which compare two treatments or a treatment and a placebo, in this field. That, from the get-go, you knew you would find that there was low-quality evidence.
People were worried that we threw out anything that wasn’t a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard for study design. We didn’t, actually.
There weren’t any randomized controlled trials, but we still included about 58 percent of the studies that were identified, the ones that were high quality or moderate quality. The kinds of studies that aren’t R.C.T.s can give us some really good information, but they have to be well-conducted. The weakness was many were very poorly conducted.
There’s something I would like to say about the perception that this was rigged, as you say. We were really clear that this review was not about defining what trans means, negating anybody’s experiences or rolling back health care.
There are young people who absolutely benefit from a medical pathway, and we need to make sure that those young people have access — under a research protocol, because we need to improve the research — but not assume that that’s the right pathway for everyone.
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[ The Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service in London, which until recently was the National Health Service’s sole youth gender clinic in England. ]
Another criticism is that this field is being held to a higher standard than others, or being exceptionalized in some way. There are other areas of medicine, particularly in pediatrics, where doctors practice without high-quality evidence.
The University of York, which is kind of the home of systematic reviews, one of the key organizations that does them in this country, found that evidence in this field was strikingly lower than other areas — even in pediatrics.
I can’t think of any other situation where we give life-altering treatments and don’t have enough understanding about what’s happening to those young people in adulthood. I’ve spoken to young adults who are clearly thriving — a medical pathway has been the right thing for them. I’ve also spoken to young adults where it was the wrong decision, where they have regret, where they’ve detransitioned. The critical issue is trying to work out how we can best predict who’s going to thrive and who’s not going to do well.
In your report, you are also concerned about the rapid increase in numbers of teens who have sought out gender care over the last 10 years, most of whom were female at birth. I often hear two different explanations. On the one hand, there’s a positive story about social acceptance: that there have always been this many trans people, and kids today just feel freer to express who they are. The other story is a more fearful one: that this is a ‘contagion’ driven in large part by social media. How do you think about it?
There’s always two views because it’s never a simple answer. And probably elements of both of those things apply.
It doesn’t really make sense to have such a dramatic increase in numbers that has been exponential. This has happened in a really narrow time frame across the world. Social acceptance just doesn’t happen that way, so dramatically. So that doesn’t make sense as the full answer.
But equally, those who say this is just social contagion are also not taking account of how complex and nuanced this is.
Young people growing up now have a much more flexible view about gender — they’re not locked into gender stereotypes in the way my generation was. And that flexibility and fluidity are potentially beneficial because they break down barriers, combat misogyny, and so on. It only becomes a challenge if we’re medicalizing it, giving an irreversible treatment, for what might be just a normal range of gender expression.
What has the response to your report been like in Britain?
Both of our main parties have been supportive of the report, which has been great.
We have had a longstanding relationship with support and advocacy groups in the U.K. That’s not to say that they necessarily agree with all that we say. There’s much that they are less happy about. But we have had an open dialogue with them and have tried to address their questions throughout.
I think there is an appreciation that we are not about closing down health care for children. But there is fearfulness — about health care being shut down, and also about the report being weaponized to suggest that trans people don’t exist. And that’s really disappointing to me that that happens, because that’s absolutely not what we’re saying.
I’ve reached out to major medical groups in the United States about your findings. The American Academy of Pediatrics declined to comment on your report, citing its own research review that is underway. It said that its guidance, which it reaffirmed last year, was “grounded in evidence and science.”
The Endocrine Society said “we stand firm in our support of gender-affirming care,” which is “needed and often lifesaving.”
I think for a lot of people, this is kind of dizzying. We have medical groups in the United States and Britain looking at the same facts, the same scientific literature, and coming to very different conclusions. What do you make of those responses?
When I was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, we did some great work with the A.A.P. They are an organization that I have enormous respect for. But I respectfully disagree with them on holding on to a position that is now demonstrated to be out of date by multiple systematic reviews.
It wouldn’t be too much of a problem if people were saying “This is clinical consensus and we’re not sure.” But what some organizations are doing is doubling down on saying the evidence is good. And I think that’s where you’re misleading the public. You need to be honest about the strength of the evidence and say what you’re going to do to improve it.
I suspect that the A.A.P., which is an organization that does massive good for children worldwide, and I see as a fairly left-leaning organization, is fearful of making any moves that might jeopardize trans health care right now. And I wonder whether, if they weren’t feeling under such political duress, they would be able to be more nuanced, to say that multiple truths exist in this space — that there are children who are going to need medical treatment, and that there are other children who are going to resolve their distress in different ways.
Have you heard from the A.A.P. since your report was published?
They haven’t contacted us directly — no.
Have you heard from any other U.S. health bodies, like the Department of Health and Human Services, for example?
No.
Have you heard from any U.S. lawmakers?
No. Not at all.
Pediatricians in the United States are in an incredibly tough position because of the political situation here. It affects what doctors feel comfortable saying publicly. Your report is now part of that evidence that they may fear will be weaponized. What would you say to American pediatricians about how to move forward?
Do what you’ve been trained to do. So that means that you approach any one of these young people as you would any other adolescent, taking a proper history, doing a proper assessment and maintaining a curiosity about what’s driving their distress. It may be about diagnosing autism, it may be about treating depression, it might be about treating an eating disorder.
What really worries me is that people just think: This is somebody who is trans, and the medical pathway is the right thing for them. They get put on a medical pathway, and then the problems that they think were going to be solved just don’t go away. And it’s because there’s this overshadowing of all the other problems.
So, yes, you can put someone on a medical pathway, but if at the end of it they can’t get out of their bedroom, they don’t have relationships, they’re not in school or ultimately in work, you haven’t done the right thing by them. So it really is about treating them as a whole person, taking a holistic approach, managing all of those things and not assuming they’ve all come about as a result of the gender distress.
I think some people get frustrated about the conclusion being, well, what these kids need is more holistic care and mental health support, when that system doesn’t exist. What do you say to that?
We’re failing these kids and we’re failing other kids in terms of the amount of mental health support we have available. That is a huge problem — not just for gender-questioning young people. And I think that’s partly a reflection of the fact that the system’s been caught out by a growth of demand that is completely outstripping the ability to provide it.
We don’t have a nationalized health care system here in the United States. We have a sprawling and fragmented system. Some people have reached the conclusion that, because of the realities of the American health care system, the only way forward is through political bans. What do you make of that argument?
Medicine should never be politically driven. It should be driven by evidence and ethics and shared decision-making with patients and listening to patients’ voices. Once it becomes politicized, then that’s seriously concerning, as you know well from the abortion situation in the United States.
So, what can I say, except that I’m glad that the U.K. system doesn’t work in the same way.
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When asked after this interview about Dr. Cass’s comments, Dr. Hoffman, the A.A.P.’s president, said that the group had carefully reviewed her report and “added it to the evidence base undergoing a systematic review.” He also said that “Any suggestion the American Academy of Pediatrics is misleading families is false.”
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mariacallous · 9 months ago
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Chechnya Governor Ramzan Kadyrov is suffering from pancreatic necrosis, a condition that entails part of the pancreas dying, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on Monday. The outlet says the Russian authorities have conducted a “PR campaign” to divert attention from Kadyrov’s health problems and that the scandal sparked by a video of Kadyrov’s teenage son beating up a prisoner in September 2023 was part of this effort. Now, according to the report, the Kremlin is preparing for the worst case scenario by searching for a successor for Kadyrov. Meduza summarizes the main points from these revelations.
Ramzan Kadyrov was diagnosed with pancreatic necrosis in 2019, according to new reporting from Novaya Gazeta Europe. Since then, the outlet says, Kadyrov has undergone “regular procedures,” including surgeries, at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital at least twice a year. In the summer of 2020, after a bout of COVID-19, Kadyrov reportedly developed “serious problems with his endocrine system.” Novaya Gazeta notes that rapid weight loss, which Kadyrov experienced in 2019, is a common early symptom of the condition.
In the spring of 2022, Kadyrov’s health began to “rapidly decline,” Novaya Gazeta writes. He reportedly developed kidney failure and pulmonary edema, or fluid buildup in his lungs, which made it difficult for him to speak and walk.
After his health took an apparent downturn in September 2023, doctors at the Central Clinical Hospital “essentially restored his ability to function,” Novaya Gazeta says. A source in the hospital, however, told the outlet that an MRI conducted on Kadyrov at the time suggested a prognosis that left his relatives “depressed.” A source close to State Duma deputy and Kadyrov ally Adam Delimkhanov paraphrased the family’s reaction as follows: “The leader as we knew him will be gone; [the new] illness will have a serious effect on him. Even if he recovers right now, he’ll no longer be alive or dead.” Novaya Gazeta did not specify what “new illness” the source was referring to.
To divert attention from Kadyrov’s health issues, the Russian authorities reportedly decided to launch a “PR campaign,” which involved Kadyrov meeting publicly with Vladimir Putin and other officials to give the impression that he was active and healthy. According to Novaya Gazeta, the video Kadyrov posted in September 2023 that showed his 15-year-old son Adam assaulting a defenseless prisoner was also part of this distraction effort, as were the numerous awards Adam received in the weeks that followed.
As Kadyrov’s condition has worsened, according to Novaya Gazeta, the Putin administration has begun drafting plans for a possible “forced regime change in Chechnya.” The outlet named former Akhmat Battalion Commander Apti Alaudinov as one possible successor.
Shortly after Novaya Gazeta’s article was published, Kadyrov’s press service released a video showing the governor in a meeting on “issues related to Chechnya’s participation in the special military operation.” In the clip, Kadyrov speaks in a slurred manner and barely moves.
The Russian authorities have not commented on Novaya Gazeta’s reporting. The independent outlet Agentstvo quoted the Chechen opposition figure Ibrahim Yangulbaev as saying that Kadyrov is in a cycle of repeatedly undergoing IV treatment, partially recovering, and then worsening again: “When he looks white, that doesn’t mean that he’s dying.”
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Tracklist:
Tortured Bitch • Black Cloud in the Sky? [NO SPOILERS] • Conduit - (13th Song About *****) - Anything Else. [Unfinished] • Reverie [JH Ligation Experiment 1] • Total Paralysis at the First Notes of Immaterial Crying and Ashamed And Wishing I Could Disappear Into the Lights [JH Ligation Experiment 2] • (Lost Kids) The Juvenile Hormone. I. Endocrine Activity of the Corpora Allata of the Adult Cecropia Silkworm • 2,020 Knives • 2,020 Hands • (From A Different World) The Juvenile Hormone. II. Its Role in the Endocrine Control Of Molting, Pupation, and Adult Development in the Cecropia Silkworm • Glass - Remain[fSl]Rust (,,Fade Away'') • I Don't Want to Hurt You (14) • Wake [Psychography Experiment 24-04-19 I] - World Doesn't Hold Together • Breathe [Psychography Experiment 24-04-19 II] - NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT TR**S SHIT • Someday (Dear ******) - World Doesn't Come Apart • September (***e* **** *a***m* Chambers **** ????) - Distance Holding World Together • Strangers - Silk Thread Growing Through the Glass Tube Bisecting the Abdomen of a Cecropia Moth Hatched in Captivity - DNA - Nothing Here. • broken wires • An Ocean
Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube
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sulkybbarnes · 10 months ago
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Hello ! I have read -per your tags- that you are a fungi biologist !!! First this is very cool, second i have a question about MOLD if its ok :)
Can you eat jam where the mold has been removed ? What is the general rule if there is one behind NO eating bc mold or ok eating if removed ? Im really curious about it +is it true that mold can grow in your body ? (I had a pack of unfortunately moldy tobbaco and a friend insisted on smoking it and i had to use the argument that they would become Moldy From The Lungs to stop them.... but is this true ?)
Anyhow, thank you for your time and keep on fungin' <3
Hey pal! First of all, thank you for the question (and for thinking fungal biology is cool haha), it was absolutely delightful for me to get this. I wish people talked to me about fungi outside of work more often! 🍄
As a disclaimer: my work is mostly molecular biology work on Saccharomyces cerevisiae aka Brewer's Yeast, and occasionally Candida albicans, and neither of these is closely connected to the mold question. I'm by no means a food safety expert either, but with that out of the way:
The short answer is that I would not eat jam with mold on it, even if you remove the mold. I would say that the rule to go by is that if it's a soft food with mold on it, discard the whole thing. If it’s something "hard" like a hard cheese, then it's probably safe to cut away the mold and eat the cheese. I found this little guide that seems quite reasonable and helpful to me, and it’ll tell you more about what types of food grow mold and how to handle them if you scroll to the end!
The long answer: Molds, like a lot of fungi, grow multicellular filaments called hyphae (Brand & Gow, 2009; Brand, 2012) which are only micrometres long. Meaning that you would need a microscope to be able to see them. Think of them as invisible roots or arms that can spread through your food. The fuzzy, green/grey/white manifestation that you see of the mold is a “colony” or in other words a network of cells or hyphae (Miguélez et al., 1999) depending on the organism. If you can see it, it is because it has been growing for a while, and that most likely means that your food is already contaminated with the “roots”. And these aren’t harmless; because depending on the type of mold, they can produce mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are biochemicals the cell makes which can cause serious harm to your health (Gonkowski et al., 2020). They have been known to cause allergic reactions, gastrointestinal issues, and poisoning. This is all dependent on the type of mycotoxin and the concentration of it, and the individual’s health, but I reckon this is the case where you want to be safe not sorry. From Gonkowski et al: “It is known that mycotoxins may act on many internal organs and systems, including, among others, nervous, reproductive and immunological systems, metabolic processes and endocrine glands” (Rykaczewska et al., 2019). In some cases, bacteria can also grow with the mold and cause illness. So, the long answer also boils down to: no, don’t eat it, it’s really not worth the risk.
And, yes, mold can grow in human lungs if the spores are inhaled. Granted that is most likely to happen with immunocompromised individuals as far as I know, but! I would advise against sniffing it at any rate haha.
I'm including the references in the text and at the end for fun, in case you’re interested to read more about this or see the microscopy images in the papers!!
Happy and safe eating 🍄😊
Brand, A. (2012) ‘Hyphal growth in human fungal pathogens and its role in virulence’, International Journal of Microbiology, 2012, pp. 1–11. doi:10.1155/2012/517529.
Brand, A. and Gow, N.A. (2009) ‘Mechanisms of hypha orientation of fungi’, Current Opinion in Microbiology, 12(4), pp. 350–357. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2009.05.007.
Gonkowski, S., Gajęcka, M. and Makowska, K. (2020) ‘Mycotoxins and the enteric nervous system’, Toxins, 12(7), p. 461. doi:10.3390/toxins12070461.
Miguélez, E.M., Hardisson, C. and Manzanal, M.B. (1999) ‘Hyphal death during colony development in streptomyces antibioticus: Morphological evidence for the existence of a process of cell deletion in a multicellular prokaryote’, The Journal of Cell Biology, 145(3), pp. 515–525. doi:10.1083/jcb.145.3.515.
Rykaczewska, A. et al. (2019) ‘Imbalance in the blood concentrations of selected steroids in pre-pubertal gilts depending on the time of exposure to low doses of Zearalenone’, Toxins, 11(10), p. 561. doi:10.3390/toxins11100561.
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anumberofhobbies · 6 months ago
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https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/gov-walz-budget-proposal-seeks-6-3m-for-emerging-long-covid-crisis
Hmm, dunno why that won't make a link. Anyway,
Gov. Walz budget proposal seeks $6.3M for emerging long COVID crisis
The funding is proposed to raise awareness for the condition and improve the availability and quality of care.
Christine Schuster
Mar 29, 2023
"It is also critical that providers are up to date on the latest research, treatments and best practices so that Minnesotans have access to the care and services they need to reduce the impact of long COVID on their lives," he stated. ... In a news release, the agency said the team of 20 clinicians will meet monthly to discuss new research, treatment and current practices in hopes of developing strategies to educate medical providers and improve the access and quality of long COVID care. In a statement, State Epidemiologist Dr. Ruth Lynfield said clinicians report there is currently very little communication among care providers when it comes to long COVID. “We still have a lot to learn about long COVID," she said. "But laying the groundwork to expand awareness about the emerging evidence and the available treatments is an important first step toward improving outcomes for those suffering from the impacts of long COVID.” To better understand the lasting effects of COVID on the lives of Minnesotans, MDH has also launched two post-COVID surveys – one statewide and one in McLeod County. Those survey results are expected to be released later this year and could help the state take further action to address long COVID. ... Emerging evidence suggests that COVID can have lasting effects on nearly every organ and organ system of the body weeks, months, and potentially years after infection, the guidance states. Documented serious post-COVID conditions include cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, renal, endocrine, hematological, and gastrointestinal complications, as well as death. A CDC analysis last year found that long COVID contributed to more than 3,500 deaths in the U.S. from the beginning of 2020 through June 2022.
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thescrumblingmidwife · 1 year ago
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Are charcoal pads actually safe? They seem like the kind of thing to be revealed to be detrimental in like 40 years. My favorite brand just started using charcoal and I don’t know how to feel about it.
Hi Anon,
Not gonna lie, I had to do some digging for this one. I know putting charcoal in everything is very *in* right now, and it's usually unregulated and sometimes potentially problematic (for instance, don't ingest charcoal if you take any medications! It interferes with the absorption of medications). But I had never heard of charcoal pads, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
MENSTRUAL PRODUCT SAFETY
Menstrual products are regulated by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) as medical devices. The FDA does not require manufacturers to label ingredients, nor do they ban the use of known harmful products, and there is no safety standard that needs to be met. The labels "organic" and "all natural" are advertising and not statement of fact. Testing that has been done to check for harmful products has been done by watchdog agencies and independent researchers.
Here's a good rundown:
What is known is that a lot of menstrual products do contain harsh chemicals that are better avoided. Most fall below the threshold of increasing cancer and non-cancer health risks, but a few chemicals to be on the lookout for are benzene, n-heptane and 1,4-dioxane. (Lin et al., 2020), as these can increase cancer risk. Chlorine and other chemicals can cause irritation of the vuvla. Also problematic is the use of phthalates, which are endocrine disrupters (can mess with your hormones) (Gao et al., 2020). Another problem is polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or "forever chemicals," which show up in a lot of products, and never leave your body. The New York Times recently did a testing of 44 products to check for problematic chemicals, and they found that PFAS are present in most products in at least very small amounts, although the lowest levels were found in period underwear and medical-grade silicone inserts.
So, our starting point is that commercially available disposable pads and tampons are already something to be concerned about, because no one in any position of power is doing much to make sure they're safe. They touch mucous membranes, which means there is potential for significant absorption. We can talk in a minute about how to choose the safest products from what's out there.
But let's get back to charcoal!
The purported purpose of the charcoal is to cut down on "period odor," which is not something people around you can detect. This is a case of advertising convincing you there's a problem so they can sell you a solution. The company that manufactures these pads, Kimberly-Clark, does supply ingredient lists and their stated purpose on their website. (It's not clear if this is the entire ingredient list, but it's something.) Interestingly, the function of charcoal is listed only as "A colorant used to color a material." Nothing about odor absorption. The charcoal doesn't come into contact with the vulvar skin or vaginal mucosa, so I don't think the charcoal itself poses much of a risk. I suspect this is more a case of fad-based misleading advertising. Will they harm you? Probably not. Will they do something magical and new? Probably not.
The one upside may be that the use of charcoal in menstrual products reflects manufacturer's response to the market demanding products with more "natural" ingredients and fewer harsh chemicals. But this is something that should be tested.
Yikes, that was a lot.
SO WHAT'S SAFE?
It's important to note that none of the chemical levels in any of these products are so bad that you're going to get cancer from wearing a single pad. The most common risk is vulvar irritation from harsh chemicals. The scariest (but rarer) risk is cumulative exposure over a long period of time for a marginally increased risk of some health issues.
But here are some tips for picking the safest products for your body:
Use a medical-grade silicone insert/menstrual cup (like a Diva cup).
Use reusable period underwear or pads from a reputable brand, like Thinx, and wash them before you use them.
If using disposable pads or tampons, absolutely avoid any with fragrances.
Use the lowest possible absorbency you need - the higher the absorbency, the more the material has been treated.
Try using disposable incontinence pads instead of menstrual pads, as these had lower rates of PFAS and chemicals.
Although there's no way to guarantee it's truthful, try to stick to brands and products that are generally chlorine-free. cotton-based, etc.
If you experience any irritation, redness, or sensitivity, try a new product!
And for those charcoal pads - they don't strike me as being any worse for you than the rest of the Kotex's fragrance-free lineup. It's not as problematic as swallowing charcoal or rubbing the dentin off your teeth with it. You may be right that in 15 years we'll have realized this was like that time we were putting radium in everything, but I doubt it?
Sources:
Lin, N., Ding, N., Meza-Wilson, E., Manuradha Devasurendra, A., Godwin, C., Kyun Park, S., & Batterman, S. (2020). Volatile organic compounds in feminine hygiene products sold in the US market: A survey of products and health risks. Environment International, 144, 105740. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105740
Gao, C. J., Wang, F., Shen, H. M., Kannan, K., & Guo, Y. (2020). Feminine hygiene products-A neglected source of phthalate exposure in women. Environmental Science & Technology, 54(2), 930–937. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b03927
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kokichis-dead-dove-club · 2 years ago
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a whole ass chapter on the endocrine system and not a single mention of trans people
and it's not like this is an old textbook either, this was published in 2020
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egg-tats · 1 year ago
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I understand people who feel healthy walking around in public without a mask (I mean fuck them fr but I understand) but if you have a fuckin cough???? stay home or put on a mask you inconsiderate jackass? everyone masking up in 2020 literally ended a lineage of the fucking flu forever even if you think covid is a Chinese government false flag to steal your endocrine systems or some shit you have to get why that's cool as fuck
we are on like covid variant #100037 and rsv/flu/pneumonia cases are rising and people will show up unmasked and be like “yeah i’ve been sick for days :/” like. ok. Get the fuck away from me then? why are you out here breathing on everything. the very least you could be doing is masking. NOT hacking into open air every two seconds.
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covid-safer-hotties · 1 month ago
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Also preserved in our archive
Ireland specific slant, but Dr. Loscher has some really excellent and eloquent discussion of what long covid is and why it's an existential threat to both people and health systems.
By Michael McHale
A recent scientific paper has highlighted the global effects of long Covid on healthcare systems and wider society, writes Michael McHale
The figures are stark. A condition that affects around 400 million people worldwide. An estimated annual global economic impact of $1 trillion. More than four years on from the onset of the pandemic, a full picture of the impact of long Covid is beginning to emerge.
While getting a grasp on the number in Ireland affected by the condition has been a challenge, what we do know is that its effects on patients are broad and varied.
Symptoms range from neurological dysfunction to gastro-intestinal issues, from cardiovascular health to endocrine and reproductive impacts.
Globally, a recent paper in the journal Nature Medicine assessed the impact of long Covid on wider society. It found that the illness strains health systems and national economies, and threatens progress on health initiatives like the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Professor of Immunology at Dublin City University Christine Loscher believes that, while we’re beginning to see the full range of impacts which long Covid has on the human body, questions remain over how patients will fare into the future.
“What it (long Covid) can affect, we probably have a fairly full picture,” she said. “How that’s going to continue to affect people over time, and whether these things will resolve over time, is probably the thing that we still don’t know.”
The reality of how long Covid is impacting healthcare now is beginning to hit Irish health officials. In June, the Government decided to extend a sick leave scheme for health staff affected by the condition for a further 12 months.
It is thought that around 120 frontline HSE workers are still unable to return to their jobs due to suffering ongoing symptoms of long Covid.
Six public long Covid clinics have also been set up around the country – three in Dublin, and one each in Galway, Limerick and Cork. Most operate one day per week.
However, patients have experienced delays of several months in being seen, with the group Long Covid Advocacy Ireland (LCAI) recently telling the Oireachtas Committee on Health that patients have been left disappointed by the care they received. LCAI estimates that around 350,000 people in Ireland have the condition.
“I think we can definitely do more. The biggest issue around long Covid is that a huge number of people present with a number of different issues,” said Prof Loscher.
“Our health service doesn’t do well on the multidisciplinary front. We need clinics that have a very broad set of clinicians so that people can go to a clinic and have access to an immunologist, a cardiologist, a neurologist. That’s probably where we struggle a bit.
“Hospitals pull multidisciplinary teams together to talk about particular patients when there’s lots of issues going on with the same person. But it’s having a clinic where they’re set up to do that as the norm, rather than doing that for patients when they require it,” she added.
“The idea of setting up long Covid clinics is that people have access to different expertise, but I don’t know if we’re doing that on the scale that is required.” The Nature Medicine paper ‘Long Covid science, research and policy’ argues that a coordinated global research and policy response strategy is required to address the challenges posed by the condition.
In Ireland, DCU’s Covid-19 Research and Innovation Hub was established in 2020 to bring together a number of projects investigating the pandemic’s impact on healthcare, technology, the economy and society.
An international review of the epidemiology of long Covid was conducted by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) last year. It drew from 51 primary research projects but was unable to find any studies on the prevalence of long Covid in Ireland.
The HIQA review advised that the health service should resource multidisciplinary services for long Covid patients, and provide additional resources for existing services, ‘given the additional burden associated with the management of those experiencing an exacerbation of their pre-existing condition and or new-onset conditions’.
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By: Azeem Ibrahim
Published: Aug 23, 2023
We cannot allow activists masquerading as experts to have the final word any longer. An open letter sent to the Wall Street Journal last month came and went without the public attention it sorely deserved.
Signed by 21 leading experts on paediatric gender medicine from nine countries, they wrote to take issue with the US Endocrine Society’s statement that so-called ‘gender-affirming’ care is best for minors presenting with gender dysphoria.
Gender-affirming care is code for the belief that hormones and surgery is the best and primary treatment for gender dysphoria since it purportedly “reduces the risk of suicide”.
The experts minced no words – the belief is “not supported by evidence”. Rather than cherry-pick studies which fit the narrative, the experts used far deeper meta-studies which found evidence of mental health benefits to be of “low or very low certainty”.
The risks for minors of puberty blockers and surgeries, including permanent sterility, regret, and lifelong dependence on repeat surgeries and medication are very real. Furthermore, the experts wrote that the claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review. Even the Endocrine Society’s review found no reliable evidence that hormonal transition prevents suicide, yet they have no qualms promoting it.
This is something that every parent across Scotland, deep in their hearts, knew already to be true. That surgery and hormones are unlikely to resolve the underlying mental unwellness that troubles their children.
We live in a world where gender distress has increased in prevalence by several thousand percent in the last two decades – but to question the longevity of these feelings or to describe them in the context of mental health is denounced as transphobic and as provoking suicide. Parents face ultimatums about the suicide of their children despite their being no good reason to believe that puberty blockers will help them.
As Dr Paul McHugh noted all those years ago, “when children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.”
In the vast majority of cases, the best approach is to love your children and take no medical intervention. Yet, according to The Telegraph, figures show that 98 per cent of children who were given puberty blockers went on to be given cross-sex hormones.
Blockers are dangerous and irreversible in their own right, but they also 'lock-in' children to even more devastating outcomes when they would likely have recovered from the dysphoria without intervention – if only doctors had let them. It is not reality that is causing most of these young people to commit suicide, is it collaborating with a mental disorder with body and mind-altering drugs.
Doctors are supposed to advise treatment on the basis of evidence and fully inform their patients. The Tavistock Clinic scandal shows that even the most (formerly) prestigious institutions were letting children down.
In court, the Government’s Gender Identity Service (GIDS) couldn’t even provide data on the outcomes and consequences of puberty blockers on the minors who were given them. Even if the children were old enough to consent, the consent wouldn’t have been informed.
In order to skirt around questions of consent, we are told convenient myths. Puberty blockers are described as a “physically reversible treatment if stopped” by GIDS. This is an improvement, as until 2020 the claim had been that “treatment with GnRH analogues are considered to be fully reversible”, but it is still scandalously misleading to my mind.
The new definition tacitly concedes that the puberty blockers are not and have never been psychologically reversible – they had been promoted as harmless despite little research having gone into finding out whether this was the case. It also allows the words “if stopped” to do an inordinate amount of linguistic legwork.
The fact that the GnRH drugs shut down large parts of the hypothalamus – the hormonal structure of the brain that regulates our perception of the world around us – should have given clinicians pause for thought before allowing them into the developing brains of children. Indeed, these same GnRH analogues are used for chemical castration. But ideology comes first and children come second.
In many cases, the children affected are girls – now around 75% of them – and many also suffer from autism and other issues which are known to affect socialisation. There are strong correlations between such mental disorders and gender dysphoria.
Parents who attempt to remove vulnerable children from suggestive environments, offer a counter-message, or even attempt to make children more comfortable in their natural sex in the meantime are condemned as transphobic. So are those who insist that minors are not capable of consenting to use chemicals which impact their future so profoundly.
In Canada, a father has been jailed for opposing his child’s gender transition. He insisted that his child, who was 13 at the time, was still a ‘she’ – an utterance which is (quite literally) considered criminal violence in Canada.
He refused consent for her to be given puberty blockers. Dragged through the courts, fined thousands, and imprisoned, the father was unable to stop his child being given not just puberty blockers, but cross-sex hormones, causing them to go through puberty with testosterone and changing his child’s life forever.
In Scotland, children as young as nine have been prescribed puberty blockers. Despite activists' best efforts, minors who want surgery and cross-sex hormones in the UK must wait until the frail old age of 17. This is still a child, but it could be so much worse.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) insist that children as young as nine years old can be given cross-sex hormones. Their ‘guidelines’ also permit mastectomies, implants and prosthetic genitals once these children have been on hormones for 12 months, with no mental health assessment.
Tragically, after 12 months, the risk of cancers, infertility and negative psychoactive effects are already high. It is barbaric to do this to children. Doctors who endorse this course of action should not be trusted. In fact, only a third of WPATH’s ethics committee are medical doctors. As with the Endocrine Society, we cannot allow activists masquerading as experts to have the final word any longer. We need our ethics to be based on compassion and understanding rather than politics.
Paul McHugh's seminal 2014 essay should still serve as a critical point of reference on the use of puberty blockers. McHugh, a distinguished former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital (an institution which was an early pioneer of such surgeries), wrote candidly at a time before the transgender issue became the cultural powder keg it is today.
McHugh identified three subgroups of transgender people who might be given surgery or medication. The first is the opportunist, such as Isla Bryson, who have obvious motives to change sex. The second group are internally and externally suggestible, similarly to anorexia nervosa patients, who are convinced that a physical surgery will fix their psycho-social problems. The third group are often prepubescent children who, in the process of naturally exploring how they fit into the world, begin to imitate behaviours of the opposite sex.
Puberty blockers are obviously not the solution for any of the groups above. It’s too late for the first, inappropriate for the second and unethical and premature for the third. Puberty blockers must be banned.
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p4557 · 2 months ago
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10 RFK Jr. conspiracy theories and false claims, in his own words - The Washington Post
"children’s sexuality and gender identity.
“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disrupters because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” he said on his podcast in 2022, according to CNN.
Experts say there is no scientific evidence to back up Kennedy’s claims, which have also been spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“That’s just leaning into the fear that hormones are going to make our kids gay or transgender. It’s a very old conspiracy theory,” said David Gorski, a Wayne State University professor of surgery and oncology and managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, which debunks misinformation in medicine. “That has no basis in evidence.”
Tablets of ivermectin in May 2021. (Soumyabrata Roy/Getty Images)
Kennedy has falsely touted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective covid treatments
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Kennedy falsely claimed in a July interview last year with Fox News that fewer people would have died of covid-19 if the United States had deployed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Multiple studies have concluded that the antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs are ineffective against covid-19, despite the promotion of the drug by right-wing media.
“We racked up the highest death count in the world. We only have 4.2 percent of the globe’s population, but we had 16 percent of the covid deaths in this country, and that is … that was from bad policy. There’s … countries that did the opposite of what we did — that provided ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, other early treatments to their populations — and had 1/200th of our death rate,” he told Watters, the Fox host.
The FDA has approved ivermectin for treating some parasitic infections, head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea — but not for the coronavirus.
In spring 2020, the FDA authorized the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to treat the coronavirus. But less than three months later, the agency withdrew the drug’s authorization because the medications “were unlikely to be effective.”
Kennedy argued that covid-19 was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people
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“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in a video recorded by the New York Post last July. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
There is no scientific basis to these claims. Scientists and politicians have widely decried Kennedy’s remarks as racist and antisemitic.
Kennedy claims 5G high-speed wireless network is used to ‘control our behavior’
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Kennedy has claimed that 5G high-speed wireless network service is being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” His claims echo long-running conspiracy theories that 5G technology causes harmful effects on health.
During the pandemic, governments in the United Kingdom and the United States issued assurances that the technology was not fueling the coronavirus. Experts have dismissed fears of detrimental health effects, pointing out the technology is no different than existing networks.
Rachel Roubein contributed to this report."
https://archive.is/2024.11.17-114421/https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/11/15/rfk-jr-views-conspiracies-false-claims/#:~:text=children%E2%80%99s%20sexuality%20and,to%20this%20report.
The ascension of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, to the nation’s top health post has alarmed medical experts, who point to his history of trafficking in conspiracy theories as disqualifying to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, whom President-elect Donald Trump selected as health secretary on Thursday, will be charged with a massive portfolio overseeing Americans’ insurance, drugs, medical supplies and food if the Senate confirms him.
“He is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the United States and globally, and he has been at this for 20 years,” said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine beliefs and advocacy work prompted Hotez to write a book about his autistic daughter titled “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism,” said Hotez, adding that he has spoken to Kennedy several times in the past about his views on vaccines.
Kennedy’s spokeswoman previously told The Washington Post that he is not “anti-vaccine.” When asked to respond Thursday to his history of false health claims, she pointed to Kennedy’s statement on X, thanking Trump for picking him and pledging to “Make America Healthy Again.”
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“I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families,” Kennedy wrote.
Here are 10 false health claims Kennedy has publicly made over the years:
What to know
Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism
Kennedy falsely called the coronavirus vaccine the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made’
Kennedy promotes raw milk, stem cells and other controversial or debunked medical treatments
Kennedy argues government employees have an interest in ‘mass poisoning’ the American public
Kennedy has falsely linked antidepressants to mass shootings
Kennedy incorrectly suggests AIDS may not be caused by HIV
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Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism
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Kennedy, who founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, has repeatedly linked the childhood vaccine schedule to autism — a claim that has been debunked by scientists. Kennedy has falsely blamed autism on thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, and decried the number of shots on the childhood vaccination schedule.
“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he said last summer in an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters.
In 2015, Kennedy equated vaccination to the Holocaust at a California screening for an anti-vaccination film: “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” he said. “This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
Because signs of autism may appear around the same time children receive the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, some parents mistakenly link the two events. Vaccine safety experts, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the MMR vaccine is not responsible for recent increases in the number of children with autism.
Kennedy falsely called the coronavirus vaccine the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made’
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At a 2021 state House hearing on a Louisiana Department of Health proposal to require schoolchildren to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, Kennedy proclaimed the vaccine to be the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Health officials say the coronavirus vaccines are safe and effective, saving millions of lives.
At the time, Louisiana State Health Officer Joseph Kanter condemned Kennedy’s remarks as “the intentional spread of health disinformation.” Kanter is now chief executive of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents public health agencies across the country.
Asked by The Post last year about his previous comments, Kennedy’s spokeswoman stood by his remarks in an email that repeated misleading statements about childhood vaccines.
Kennedy promotes raw milk, stem cells and other controversial or debunked medical treatments
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr
@RobertKennedyJr
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FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything… Show more
9:25 PM · Oct 25, 2024
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There is a reason milk is pasteurized.
Raw milk is unsafe to consume, and the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC have strongly advised against consuming it because it can contain dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It can also contain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that is causing an outbreak in dairy cattle and has sickened at least 46 people in the United States. Unpasteurized milk from infected cows can contain high levels of infectious H5N1 virus.
Stem cells, which have shown great promise for potential medical treatments, have also spawned a cottage industry of clinics marketing unproven treatments — some of which have blinded patients.
Paul Knoepfler, a professor of cell biology and human anatomy at the University of California at Davis who tracks questionable stem cell treatments, told The Post he is concerned Kennedy could become an ally of unproven stem cell clinics that have popped up across the United States, potentially exerting pressure on the FDA to back off enforcement actions and allow therapies that are not ready for clinical trial.
Kennedy argues government employees have an interest in ‘mass poisoning’ the American public
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“The agency, the USDA, the FDA have been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate, and they all have an interest in subsidies and mass poisoning the American public,” Kennedy told Fox News in August.
Kennedy has repeatedly spoken about wanting to eliminate industry interests from the government, but public health experts say it is slander to imply that government employees are purposefully harming Americans.
“That’s just an inflammatory statement that has no basis in reality,” Hotez said. “I’ve worked with the scientists at the [health] agencies, at CDC and FDA, at the National Institutes of Health, and they are the most dedicated civil servants the nation has ever seen.”
Kennedy has falsely linked antidepressants to mass shootings
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Kennedy has suggested mass shootings committed by young people are spurred by antidepressants and video games. Federal scientists need to be studying shootings to “see if there is connections to some of the SSRI [antidepressant] and psychiatric drugs people are taking, whether there is connections to video games,” he told Turkish state-owned TRT World in January.
The suggestion that antidepressants are linked to mass shootings has been amplified by right-wing figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. But experts caution there is no credible research linking antidepressants to mass shootings. Studies show only a small percentage of mass shooters were taking medications or suffering from serious mental illness when they committed the crimes.
Kennedy incorrectly suggests AIDS may not be caused by HIV
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Kennedy has repeatedly — and falsely — suggested that the human immunodeficiency virus is not the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The discovery of the connection between HIV and AIDS garnered a Nobel Prize in 2008 and is established science.
“They were doing phony, crooked studies to develop a cure that killed people without really being able to understand what HIV was, and pumping up fear about it constantly, not really understanding whether it was causing AIDS,” Kennedy said in an interview last summer with New York Magazine.
In his 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” Kennedy wrote that he takes “no position” on whether HIV causes AIDS — then dedicated many pages to casting doubt on the science.
Kennedy falsely argues children’s gender identity can be impacted by water
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Kennedy has repeatedly argued that chemicals in the water are changing children’s sexuality and gender identity.
“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disrupters because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” he said on his podcast in 2022, according to CNN.
Experts say there is no scientific evidence to back up Kennedy’s claims, which have also been spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“That’s just leaning into the fear that hormones are going to make our kids gay or transgender. It’s a very old conspiracy theory,” said David Gorski, a Wayne State University professor of surgery and oncology and managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, which debunks misinformation in medicine. “That has no basis in evidence.”
Kennedy has falsely touted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective covid treatments
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Kennedy falsely claimed in a July interview last year with Fox News that fewer people would have died of covid-19 if the United States had deployed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Multiple studies have concluded that the antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs are ineffective against covid-19, despite the promotion of the drug by right-wing media.
“We racked up the highest death count in the world. We only have 4.2 percent of the globe’s population, but we had 16 percent of the covid deaths in this country, and that is … that was from bad policy. There’s … countries that did the opposite of what we did — that provided ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, other early treatments to their populations — and had 1/200th of our death rate,” he told Watters, the Fox host.
The FDA has approved ivermectin for treating some parasitic infections, head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea — but not for the coronavirus.
In spring 2020, the FDA authorized the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to treat the coronavirus. But less than three months later, the agency withdrew the drug’s authorization because the medications “were unlikely to be effective.”
Kennedy argued that covid-19 was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people
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“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in a video recorded by the New York Post last July. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
There is no scientific basis to these claims. Scientists and politicians have widely decried Kennedy’s remarks as racist and antisemitic.
Kennedy claims 5G high-speed wireless network is used to ‘control our behavior’
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Kennedy has claimed that 5G high-speed wireless network service is being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” His claims echo long-running conspiracy theories that 5G technology causes harmful effects on health.
During the pandemic, governments in the United Kingdom and the United States issued assurances that the technology was not fueling the coronavirus. Experts have dismissed fears of detrimental health effects, pointing out the technology is no different than existing networks.
Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.
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fit-ojciec · 4 months ago
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Przegląd ten analizuje wpływ ogólnej aktywności fizycznej na równowagę hormonalną u kobiet. Stwierdzono, że regularne ćwiczenia fizyczne, niezależnie od formy, prowadzą do zwiększenia poziomu estrogenów oraz obniżenia poziomów hormonów stresu, takich jak kortyzol. Badanie podkreśla, że aktywność fizyczna może przyczynić się do lepszego samopoczucia i zdrowia hormonalnego kobiet - Physical Activity and Hormonal Changes in Women: A Review of the Literature (2020) - Endocrine Reviews
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