#gender thalidomide

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir

Published: Apr 4, 2024

Across the United States, thousands of parents have consented to having their children’s puberty stopped with a class of drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists. Known colloquially as “puberty blockers,” these drugs overstimulate the pituitary gland to the point of preventing it from sending signals to the ovaries or testes to start producing the hormones responsible for puberty.

Parents who have consented to these drugs for their children love their kids dearly, but they’ve consented under entirely false pretenses. The doctors who’ve advised them say that puberty blockers are known to improve mental health — that they are even life-saving — and that they are fully reversible and just give kids “time to think.” None of this is true.

Major American medical associations say that “gender-affirming care” for kids is “medically necessary” and “life-saving.” Health authorities Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the U.K. disagree. Last month, the National Health Service of England decommissioned puberty blockers as a treatment of adolescent gender dysphoria. “We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of [puberty blockers] to make the treatment routinely available at this time,” the NHSE explained.

Imagine if American doctors told parents the following truths. The mental health benefits of puberty blockers are highly uncertain, according to multiple systematic reviews of the evidence, the bedrock of evidence-based medicine. The World Health Organization says the evidence is “limited and variable.” There is no research into long-term harms, but some evidence suggests decreased IQ and brittle bones. Permanent sterility is guaranteed for minors who go through full hormonal “transition.” Sexual dysfunction appears to be extremely common as well. Over 93 percent of kids who take these drugs go on to cross-sex hormones, which lead to permanent physical changes including excruciating genital growth, vaginal atrophy and tearing and much higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease.

There is no credible evidence that puberty blockers function as suicide-prevention measures. Finland’s top gender clinician has called the suicide narrative “purposeful disinformation” and “dangerous.” For all these reasons, health authorities in a growing number of countries, including some of the most LGBT-friendly, are now prioritizing talk therapy.

How many parents would consent to puberty blockers under these circumstances? Very few, if any.

It is common for drugs to enter pediatric use after evidence of their success in adult medicine. The opposite happened in gender medicine. It was the failure of “sex reassignment” in adult men to achieve satisfactory cosmetic outcomes and improve life functioning that led a group of clinicians in the Netherlands to propose starting the “reassignment” process in childhood.

Their hypothesis was as technologically appealing as it was ethically dubious: since males could not reverse the effects of testosterone-fueled puberty to pass as women, it would be beneficial to these men to have their puberty bypassed altogether.

The Dutch recognized the dilemma but thought they found a way around it. Relying on their experience using puberty blockers to treat a condition known as central precocious puberty (CPP), they argued that blockers were fully reversible and thus part of the diagnostic process. If it turned out that the kid wasn’t “truly trans,” the drugs would be discontinued and puberty allowed to resume.

Their argument was dubious from the get-go. First, CPP has an objective diagnosis, based on a blood sample, whereas gender transition is based on the adolescent’s feelings and experiences, which are subject to change. In a political climate such as ours, in which mere exploration of the reasons for rejecting one’s body can be labeled “conversion therapy,” differential diagnosis becomes impossible.

As Dr. Jason Rafferty, author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ current policy statement on “gender-affirming care,” has put it, “the child’s sense of reality and feeling of who they are is the navigational beacon to sort of orient treatment around.” The AAP statement has been witheringly critiqued, and Rafferty and the AAP are now defendants in lawsuits by former patients.

Second, in CPP puberty suppression is by definition temporary; the goal is to delay puberty to its appropriate developmental window. In gender dysphoria, a “successful” prescription is where puberty is bypassed altogether. The assumption about reversibility, never tested and highly questionable form the start, proved to be the ethical foundation for the entire Dutch experiment, and it quickly crumbled. Over 93 percent of adolescents who are put on puberty blockers for gender issues continue down the medical pathway to cross-sex hormones. Some go on to surgeries.

Gender clinicians do not see this suspiciously high figure as a reason to rethink their approach. They see no possibility of iatrogenesis — a medical intervention that unintentionally induces harm, in this case by causing gender distress or confusion to persist artificially. On the contrary, they regard the high persistence rate as proof of their own remarkable diagnostic abilities.

More modest and scientifically-minded clinicians and researchers see things very differently. “Blocking puberty,” writes Sallie Baxendale, a professor of neuropsychology and author of an important new study on puberty blockers, “prevents the critical rewiring in the brain that underpins the ability make complex decisions. Puberty blockers may give children time to think but they simultaneously rob them of their developing capacity to do so.”

What is likely happening is that an ongoing youth mental health crisis whose origins predate and have little to do with gender is being misdiagnosed and mistreated with harmful and experimental drugs. Puberty blockers are the definition of a “quick fix” solution.

Researchers incorrectly refer to what the Dutch did as an experiment. In an experiment, falsifiable hypotheses are proposed, alternative interventions are tested, outcomes are monitored and competing explanations for observed results are thoughtfully ruled out.

The Dutch did nothing of the sort, according to a comprehensive scholarly examination of their study. Further, the only attempt to replicate that study, which was done in the U.K., failed. The researchers had to be forced to disclose their disappointing findings. Any scientific-minded person willing to put in the effort and read the literature will come to the same conclusion: Pediatric gender medicine is an industry built on fraud.

During the 2000s and 2010s, the Dutch pseudo-experiment with puberty blockers “escaped the lab” and became entangled in a fast-growing international social movement for transgender recognition. In the U.S., the drugs are being prescribed at numbers far exceeding anything the Dutch could possibly have imagined. Most adolescents referred to pediatric gender clinics are teen girls who have no history of dysphoria in childhood but who do have other mental health challenges that predate their distress with their bodies.

American medicine is no stranger to scandal — lobotomy, “recovered memory” and OxyContin are just a few examples. What makes pediatric gender transition unique is that it has been framed as a nonnegotiable civil right and defended by powerful civil rights groups, the Democratic Party and their ideological allies in the mainstream media.

A key reason for the divergence between U.S. and European medical authorities, as I’ve explained in a previous essay, is the latter’s greater willingness to follow principles of evidence-based medicine, including reliance on systematic reviews. Jack Turban, a prominent American gender clinician, revealed in a deposition that he seems not to know what a systematic review of evidence is.

Another reason is that in the U.S., doctors who practice child “transition” demand and often receive deference as the experts on the evidence for their practices; abroad, such clinicians are seen as having conflicts of interest. When the National Health Service of England appointed the highly respected Dr. Hilary Cass to lead its review of its youth gender service, it did so precisely because she was “a senior clinician with no prior involvement or fixed views in this area.” Sweden and Finland delegated the evaluation of evidence to experts with no personal involvement or stake in pediatric gender medicine.

Parents should never have been put in the position of having to decide whether to “allow” their kids to go through puberty. Those who would put the onus on parents are letting charlatans in the medical profession off the hook. Puberty is difficult for all teens, and it is not a disease. Puberty blockers offer teens in distress — especially girls with history of sexual abuse, autistic kids and gay kids — false hope by casting puberty as optional.

Puberty is a rite of passage from childhood into adulthood, responsible for the development of the body’s major organs and systems and not just its external sexual features. Puberty blockers rob children of their right to an open future.

[meepertonton]

"well why dont we ban tall people in sports too if you want to ban intersex people or trans people??? its just how their body is!! it just means theyre the better athlete!!"

the difference between height or any other host of characteristics is that the advantages imparted by certain disorders of sexual development or just being male are typical for males in general. the same can be said about being larger in boxing, or being able-bodied in general.

there is an obvious categorization that we can make based on these obvious sex differences, and the advantage typically lies in the male category.

being tall is a characteristic anyone can possess, but going through male puberty and developing in a male way almost always an advantage in most sports. its the same reason we have weight classes in boxing.

its like arguing that we should get rid of the Paralympics because its not Usain Bolt's fault that he has legs and they dont

[erebusvincent]

Something is going wrong in our genes. What if the problem isn’t naturally-occurring but rather the result of too many drugs in our systems, particularly those of pregnant women?

Unless drugs cause obvious birth defects—think of the thalidomide disaster of the late 1950s and early 60s that resulted in tens of thousands of babies being born with heartbreaking deformities such as limbless torsos—they seldom make headlines. Even widely used anti-seizure medications, known to cause physical and mental impairments in exposed offspring, are barely known for these effects. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through this whole ordeal it’s that countless millions of you are walking around oblivious to the (sometimes massive amounts of) drugs you were exposed to in utero. Almost all of your records are long gone, and you will likely never know their impact on your development.

…

More importantly, we should consider other common medications that impact hormone signaling and also affect sexual differentiation of the brain. It’s not only synthetic sex hormones that alter how sex hormones work. This also includes anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-epileptic drugs, general anesthesia, and medications used in IVF and assisted reproduction. Add to that a whole soup of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our environment. To some extent, we are all still guinea pigs.

[jh-newman-opn]

ok actually back on this--- @ everyone going "I'd judge them but it's none of my business" my guys. this is not a random hypothetical. this happens. the literature describes it as "femicide", "female feticide" or "infanticide" and it's literally banned under Indian law because the practice (remains!) so widespread. You don't get to be like. "Sure that sounds abhorrent but you're always gonna get a few freaks so we shouldn't require nice normal people like me to give a reason for wanting an abortion bc obviously nobody sane would do this." PEOPLE DO THIS. It's illegal in the UK under the Serious Crime Act of 2015 bc gender testing was being abused to just abort female babies until parents got a boy. It's been observed that in cultures in which sex-selective abortion is seen as acceptable, this leads to neglect and infanticide of female children after they're born.

Y'all are like. western gaze this white privilege that. get out of your blinkered individualist bubbles and be like. wHy Do I CaRE wHaT oThER pEoPLe dO WitH tHeIR bOdiES--- because maybe we should care about other people's lives and wellbeing on a societal level hmmm how about that. Y'all seem perfectly happy with to """control women's bodies"" when it comes to drinking or taking thalidomide during pregnancy but for some reason telling people they maybe shouldn't be killing children that aren't the right sex is unacceptable bc uhhhh freedom I guess. think about that maybe.

This is a bad idea but:

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Welcome to Too Much Information Tuesday.

‘Sushi’ means sour rice.

The ‘prat’ in ‘pratfall’ means ‘buttocks’.

Confidence is silent. Insecurities are loud.

69 has been sexual slang since at least 1790.

Optimists are, on average, cleverer than cynics.

Farmers get the most sex out of any profession.

The Roman Catholic Church is richer than Croatia.

People with bigger brains take more daytime naps.

Earth has lost 50% of its wildlife in the past 40 years.

In the 1870s, New York had a school for aspiring criminals.

Houses in Britain numbered 13 cost £9000 less than average.

Your immune system has the ability to kill you in 15 minutes.

Entomologist John Midgely has just discovered a fly that can’t fly.

A gender-neutral equivalent of ‘sugar daddy’ is ‘glucose guardian’.

Athletes appear larger if they wear a bigger number on their jersey.

'Playing chess with the pope' is an Icelandic euphemism for having a poo.

One in four currently charting pop songs in the UK samples an older song.

In 1805, British manufacturers made a chamber pot containing Napoleon’s head.

45% of men in the UK would be uncomfortable saying “I love you!” to a male relative.

If everyone in the world washed their hands properly, we could save one million lives a year.

Students who complete a ‘Science Of Happiness’ course are happier than those who don’t.

In 2014, a pine tree planted in memory of George Harrison died after an infestation of beetles.

When a group of people are laughing, people tend to look at the person they trust/like the most.

In 1907, French waiters went on strike for better pay, more time off and the right to have moustaches.

According to new research, Vlad The Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, may have been vegetarian.

In 2010, McDonalds mistakenly packed and distributed 5000 Happy Meals with a condom instead of a toy.

When a drone bee mates with the queen, he releases his sperm with such force that it can cause an audible pop.

Due to their many customisation options, there are 383 billion different ways to order a latte at Starbucks.

The average woman absorbs up to five pounds of damaging chemicals a year thanks to beauty products.

Caffeine is made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, the same as cocaine, thalidomide, nylon, TNT and heroin.

When a woman no longer gets frustrated and upset with you, you can almost guarantee that she doesn't care anymore.

When German economist Edgar Jaffé died, D.H. Lawrence sent a letter to his widow saying he was glad Edgar was dead.

Fish from the Phallicthys genus (literally ‘penis fish’) can have phalluses as big as half their total body length. (Crikey!)

John Cena, WWE superstar, has granted more than 400 Make-A-Wish requests, more than anyone in the charity's history.

Scientists say the brain purposely forgets certain memories in order to avoid information overload and emotional hangovers.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has towns called Intercourse and Paradise. It takes six minutes to get from one to the other.

Stephen Hawking once held a party for time travellers. However, nobody came because he sent out the invitation after the party.

50,000 fake PhDs are estimated to be purchased every year in the United States, while only 40,000 PhDs are earned legitimately.

Studies show that by eating a big breakfast, you won’t feel as hungry the rest of the day, which can lead to more nutritional food choices.

According to a new paper in Nature Human Behavior, opposites do not attract. Over 80% of traits in couples were rated as similar and only 3% of their traits were substantially different.

Male palm cockatoos make drumsticks out of tree branches and rhythmically tap them to attract females. When they are done drumming, they tend to throw away their drumsticks.

In 2018, robbers in Belgium were told by a shop owner that he might have more cash for them to steal if they came back at 6:30. When they returned three hours later, they were promptly arrested by police who’d been tipped off.

Some football matches are now filmed with AI-powered cameras designed to track the ball during play. Much to the annoyance of viewers, during a 2020 Inverness Caledonian Thistle vs. Ayr United match, one camera kept confusing the ball with a bald-headed linesman.

Actor Jack Nicholson grew up believing his biological mother was his sister. When his mother got pregnant at a young age, his grandmother (who he thought was his biological mother) raised him as her son. Nicholson didn't find out this information until 1974, when he was already in his thirties.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

[thearbourist]

Children Are Bring Harmed - The Lack of Ethics in "Gender Affirming" Medicine

If you are violating one of the principles of human medicine – first do no harm – it may be wise to reconsider your position on ‘gender-affirming treatment’ regardless of how lucrative it is. “Children are being harmed. Young people are being harmed.  In many ways, this story is not new. From snake oil to thalidomide, from lobotomies to opioids, medicine has a long history of fake cures and…

[incoherentbabblings]

Sometimes I re-read my old undergrad essays from and nodding my head sagely as I read what I assumed made perfect sense at the time but now looking back I can only go wooft if you know what I mean. I both miss being that involved in academia but also thinking I didn't do enough I didn't hold enough of my own opinions. I needed more time in a way. To have a second wack at some of what I wrote knowing what I know now? Argh, that's the problem ain't it?

[vomitdodger]

Oh they would easily do it if there was a profit. Look up the initial grotesque forced smoking of the rhesus monkeys above. “Nothing to see here was the result” or the bad results were buried. Sound familiar? Granted that’s monkeys (which is hideous enough) vs kids being used, but pick any number of historical bad scenarios from the medical and/or marketing community that is commensurate with above: Tuskegee syphilis experiment left ongoing to decades, thalidomide babies, targeted GIs with free cigarettes during WWII to get them hooked, lying/coverup about the addictive nature of opiate medication. They absolutely would do this. And think of it this way…like the meme floating around…a kid can’t vote, drink alcohol, own a gun etc…but they know enough that they identify as another gender and want to permanently alter their body and mind in some twisted gender dysphoria that is supported by the leftists and medical community. Don’t ever think an organization wouldn’t do something that seems ludicrous if there is a profit to be had. Chances are they already doing it.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

To my knowledge testosterone doesn't render you infertile until your ovaries have atrophied from prolonged usage (and you can probably tell because that causes severe cramping). You can easily get pregnant on T, but it's advised to stop taking it during gestation to avoid complications. However, there's no telling what kind of long-term effects this might have on a child that developed in a woman's body that's been altered to an unknown degree, which is pretty concerning.

I once had a disagreement with a nurse friend of mine over my wondering aloud about the possibility that the elevated estrogen levels in the water supply (due to the massive production of birth control pills the past 60 years) that have led to observable birth defects in, for instance, frogs, might also be a contributing factor to the rise of subtler things like gender dysphoria and asexuality in humans.

Her only response was to repeat the Alex Jones "it's turning the frogs gay!" viral moment, even though, as I understand it, Jones was fundamentally correct in the information he was sharing, he just misspoke in the moment by saying 'gay' when he actually meant 'hermaphrodite'.

Thinking she might have some medical reason to dismiss the idea out of hand that I was unaware of, I asked for her to explain more, but she, perplexingly, had nothing more to add. She just entirely rejected the idea out of hand and wouldn't explain why.

It's been something I've been thinking on for a long time after finding out that around the same time thalidomide was being given to pregnant women (late 1950s-early 60s), large quantities of testosterone were also being experimentally given to pregnant women to help with morning sickness. The horrific 10,000+ birth deformities that accompanied thalidomide being administered are well documented, and quickly led to it being taken off the market, but the long-term effects of testosterone - and, in the pill and hormone replacement, estrogen - may have gone unnoticed because of them having no similarly obvious surface physical manifestations. The only example of this I'm aware of being studied is with testosterone given to mothers being linked to autism, which has, after all, itself been defined as the 'extreme male brain'.

I just want to stress my position is not that mass-produced male and female hormones are THE cause of any of the above, only that they may be an underlying long-term factor that is being completely overlooked.

[metamatar]

relevant again.

For example, the number of fingers on a human hand or toes on a human foot is genetically determined: the genes code for five fingers and toes in almost everyone, and five fingers and toes develop in any normal environment. But the heritability of number of fingers and toes in humans is almost certainly very low. That’s because most of the variation in numbers of toes is environmentally caused, often by problems in fetal development. For example, when pregnant women took thalidomide some years ago, many babies had fewer than five fingers and toes. And if we look at numbers of fingers and toes in adults, we find many missing digits as a result of accidents. But genetic coding for six toes is rare in humans (though apparently not in cats). So genetically caused variation appears to be small compared to environmentally caused variation. If someone asks, then, whether number of toes is genetic or not, the right answer is: “it depends what you mean by genetic.” The number of toes is genetically determined, but heritability is low because genes are not responsible for much of the variation.

Conversely, a characteristic can be highly heritable even if it is not genetically determined. Some years ago, when only women wore earrings, the heritability of having an earring was high because differences in whether a person had an earring were “due” to a genetic (chromosomal) difference. Now that earrings are less gender-specific, the heritability of having an earring has no doubt decreased. But neither then nor now was having earrings genetically determined in anything like the manner of having five fingers. The heritability literature is full of cases like this: high measured heritabilities for characteristics whose genetic determination is doubtful.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

The inclusion of sex-specific information in textbooks is dependent on the availability of sex-specific data, but because women have largely been excluded from medical research this data is severely lacking. Even the very basics of sex determination have a sex data gap: since the landmark 1990 paper that identified the Y chromosome as ‘the’ sex-determining region, the female sex has – the irony – been seen as the default. But in this case, the default didn’t mean we focused on the female. Rather, research instead focused on testes development as the supposedly ‘active’ process, while female sexual development was seen as a passive process – until 2010, when we finally started researching the active process of ovarian determination. Most early research into cardiovascular disease was conducted on men, and women continue to be underrepresented, making up only 25% of participants across thirty-one landmark trials for congestive heart failure between 1987 and 2012. 

Women represent 55% of HIV-positive adults in the developing world, and in parts of Africa and the Caribbean women aged five to twenty-four are up to six times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men of the same age. We also know that women experience different clinical symptoms and complications due to HIV, and yet a 2016 review of the inclusion of women in US HIV research found that women made up only 19.2% of participants in antiretroviral studies, 38.1% in vaccination studies and 11.1% in studies to find a cure. 

Because of their routine exclusion from clinical trials we lack solid data on how to treat pregnant women for pretty much anything. We may not know how a disease will take hold or what the likely outcome may be, although the WHO warns that many diseases can have ‘particularly serious consequences for pregnant women, or can harm the foetus’. Some strains of influenza virus (including the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus) have ‘particularly severe symptoms during pregnancy’. There is also evidence that SARS can be more severe during pregnancy. It is of course understandable that a pregnant woman may be reluctant to take part in medical research, but this doesn’t mean that we have to just throw our hands up in the air and accept that we know nothing: we should be routinely and systematically tracking, recording and collating pregnant-women’s health outcomes. But we aren’t – not even during pandemics: during the 2002-4 SARS outbreak in China, pregnant-women’s health outcomes were not systemically tracked and ‘consequently’, the WHO points out, ‘it was not possible to fully characterize the course and outcome of SARS during pregnancy’. Another gender data gap that could have been so easily avoided, and information that will be lacking for when the next pandemic hits.

Like the failure to include women in anatomy textbooks, the failure to include women in medical trials is a historical problem that has its roots in seeing the male body as the default human body, but this traditional bias was radically enhanced in the 1970s, to the great detriment of women’s health, following one of the biggest medical scandals of the twentieth century. In 1960 doctors began prescribing thalidomide to pregnant women who suffered from morning sickness. The drug, which had been available as a mild over-the-counter sedative in many countries since the late 1950s, was considered safe because its developers ‘could not find a dose high enough to kill a rat’. But while it didn’t kill rats, it did affect foetal development (something that in fact the manufacturers knew as early as 1959). Before the drug was taken off the market in 1962, over 10,000 children had been born around the world with thalidomide-related disabilities. In the wake of the scandal, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued guidelines in 1977 excluding women of childbearing potential from drug trials. This exclusion went unquestioned. The acceptance of the male norm went unquestioned. The male norm continues to go unquestioned by many today, with some researchers continuing to insist, in the face of all the evidence, that biological sex doesn’t matter. One public-health researcher revealed that she had received the following feedback on two different grant applications: ‘I wish you’d stop with all this sex stuff and get back to science’, and ‘I’ve been in this field for 20 years and this [biological difference] doesn’t matter’. It isn’t just anonymous notes, either. A 2014 op-ed published in the journal Scientific American complained that including both sexes in experiments was a waste of resources; in 2015 an op-ed in the official scientific journal of the US National Academy of Sciences insisted that ‘focusing on preclinical sex differences will not address women’s and men’s health disparities’.

Alongside insisting that sex differences don’t matter, some researchers advocate against the inclusion of women in research on the basis that while biological sex may matter, the lack of comparable data arising from the historical data gap makes including women inadvisable (talk about adding insult to injury). Female bodies (both the human and animal variety) are, it is argued, too complex, too variable, too costly to be tested on. Integrating sex and gender into research is seen as ‘burdensome’. It is seen as possible for there to be ‘too much gender’, and for its exclusion to be acceptable on the basis of ‘simplification’ – in which case it’s worth noting that recent studies on mice have actually shown greater variability in males on a number of markers. So who’s too complicated now? Beyond the argument that women’s bodies, with their fluctuating, ‘atypical’ hormones, are simply inconvenient research vessels, researchers also defend their failure to include women in trials by claiming that women are harder to recruit. And it is certainly true that, due to women’s care-giving responsibilities they have less leisure time and may find it harder to make, for example, clinic appointments during the school run. However, this is an argument for adapting trial schedules to women, rather than simply excluding them, and in any case, it is possible to find women if you really want to. While reviews of FDA-mandated medical product trials found that women made up only 18% of participants in trials for endovascular occlusion devices (used if your foetal blood vessel hasn’t closed of its own accord) and 32% of participants in studies on coronary stents (which, incidentally, are another device where women have worse outcomes than men), women represented 90% and 92% of participants in facial wrinkle correction trials and dental device trials, respectively. 

- Caroline Criado-Pérez’s Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Daniel Martin

Published: Apr 8, 2024

Children who believe they are transgender may actually have mental health issues, a landmark report is set to find this week.

It is expected to advise that children should not be rushed onto a path to change gender, and that they receive counselling that addresses the mental health issues they may have rather than being put on drugs.

Dr Hillary Cass, a paediatrician, will on Wednesday unveil her long-awaited review into how transgender children are supported and the medical treatment they receive.

It comes amid concern that children are being allowed to change gender in school without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and after the routine prescription of puberty blockers was banned by NHS England.

The Telegraph understands that the report will find that children who think they are trans disproportionately have mental health issues stemming from a difficult family situation or having suffered from abuse. They are also more likely to be neurodiverse.

Counselling to tackle issues holistically

It is expected to suggest that these children need counselling to tackle these issues holistically, rather than them automatically being put on a path to change gender.

The report is expected to warn that it is wrong to assume it is in the best interest of children who think they are trans to change gender, and urge extreme caution over the use of drugs such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to facilitate this, even once someone is over 18 years old.

The review is also said to express concern about a significant rise in the number of young girls wanting to become boys, and say this group needs more support.

On Monday, Downing Street said the Government would act on the basis of the report to ensure children and adolescents were kept safe.

“We have talked about the importance of children and adolescent safety and wellbeing being paramount,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said.

“That is part of previous work such as the NHS announcement to end the routine prescription of puberty blockers, it is behind our robust and clear guidance to schools. It is categorical that social transitioning is not a neutral act and no one should be forced to use preferred pronouns or accept contested beliefs as fact.

“We’ve also said there’s more to do in this area and we will look at the review when it’s published.”

He added: “The Government has taken a number of steps in this area, recognising the effect that social transitioning can have on children and adolescents, and we’ve made clear that single sex spaces must be protected.”

The interim Cass report in 2022 said that children being allowed to socially transition in schools – changing their name and pronouns, and being allowed to use the lavatories and changing rooms of the gender they identify as – was “not a neutral act”.

It also raised concerns about the NHS’s gender identity and development service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust in London.

Children who think they are trans may have other problems

The interim review led NHS England to close Tavistock service and replace it with regional centres that take a more “holistic” approach to treatment and look at other mental health or medical issues they may have.

Dr Cass’s final report is expected to conclude that there could be many complex reasons a child may think they are in the wrong gender.

It is believed to advise therapists that children presenting as trans may have had other complex issues such as a difficult family situation, having suffered from abuse, or having been exposed to pornography too early.

For this reason, cases need to be judged holistically.

The review is also believed to conclude that if you allow a very young child to socially transition they are more likely to grow up to have a fixed trans identity later in life, rather than their gender distress being resolved by other means.

Dr Cass’s report is understood to say that prepubescent children should not be put on the same “pathway” as older adolescents who wish to identify as the opposite gender.

‘Psychological repercussions’

It is expected to warn that children may experience “psychological” repercussions as a result of being allowed to change their name and pronoun to the gender of their choice.

Last month, the NHS announced an immediate ban on prescribing puberty blockers to under-18s unless they are part of a clinical trial. Ministers said the “landmark decision” was in children’s “best interests” and would help to ensure youngsters who feel their gender is not the same as their sex are treated using medical evidence.

However, campaigners have warned of a loophole, as there is nothing to stop transgender children getting hold of puberty blockers from private clinics.

In 2021-22, the NHS reported more than 5,000 referrals to Tavistock, up from just under 250 who were questioning their gender a decade earlier.

[cha0ticg0th]

Thalidomide <- gender neutral name

Formaldehyde <- girl name

Asbestos <- boy name

[americanmysticom]

Flawed CDC Study Wrongly Concludes COVID Vaccines Safe in Pregnancy

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine is based on limited data, poorly matched cohorts and inexcusably low representation of pregnant women in their first trimester.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month recommended women who are pregnant, recently pregnant, who are trying to become pregnant now or who might become pregnant in the future get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The CDC made the recommendation after concluding, in a Jan. 7 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, that data support the safety of COVID vaccination during pregnancy.

By comparing COVID vaccination during pregnancy to those unvaccinated during pregnancy, the agency determined COVID vaccines were not associated with preterm birth or with delivering a child who was born smaller or less developed than expected, also known as small-for-gestational-age (SGA).

In this article, we examine flaws in the CDC study that led to the agency’s wrongful conclusion that COVID vaccines for pregnant women.

First, some background.

Including pregnant women in clinical trials

Pregnancy is a precarious time not just for the expectant mother but most importantly the developing fetus. Expectant mothers are advised not to drink alcohol or caffeinated beverages and not to eat raw foods such as sushi and deli meats.

A lot of medications are contraindicated during pregnancy including simple pain meds like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Ibuprofen), antidiarrheals, decongestants, antihistamines, nasal sprays and expectorants.

Women are advised not to take these medications during pregnancy because they pose potential risks to the developing fetus.

For decades, expectant mothers have been considered a vulnerable group to be shielded from potential harms of research for the sake of their fetuses’ health.

In 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines excluding pregnant women and women “with childbearing potential” from phase I and phase II clinical trials, where new drugs are tested for safety and efficacy.

This view stemmed, in part, from tragedies caused by two now-infamous drugs that were widely prescribed to pregnant women in the mid-20th century: thalidomide, which caused thousands of children around the world to be born with flipper-like limbs and other birth defects, and diethylstilbestrol, which was linked to higher rates of cancer in both mothers and the daughters born to them.

This view changed however in 1993, with the passage of the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, which sought to increase gender and racial diversity in clinical trials.

Federal regulations currently require any study involving pregnant women to meet 10 criteria, including that, “where scientifically appropriate,” data first be collected on pregnant animals and non-pregnant human subjects to assess risk, and that any risk to mother or fetus be “the least possible for achieving the objectives of the research.”

Reproduction toxicity studies in animal models hinted at dangers early on

While the companies developing the COVID-19 vaccines have done preliminary studies in animals, their studies were limited to rodents. The vaccine makers did not conduct studies on non-human primates, recognized as the closest animal models to humans regarding genetics, physiology and behavior.

Nevertheless, Moderna’s own Assessment Report to the European Medicines Agency Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use on March 11, 2021, included a study for reproductive and developmental toxicology on female rats during gestation.

The report noted (page 50: Reproduction Toxicity) an increase in the number of fetuses with common skeletal variations of one or more rib nodules and one or more wavy ribs. Additionally, the number of pups born to vaccinated rats was lower than the number in the unvaccinated rats.

Most importantly, the authors explicitly stated, “In this study, no vaccine dose was administered during the early organogenesis [the period during embryonic development of an animal when the main body organs are formed], to address the direct embryotoxic effect of the components of the vaccine formulation.”

One month earlier, Pfizer reported in its Feb. 19, 2021, Assessment Report to the same committee that pregnant rats demonstrated a greater-than-2x increase in pre-implantation loss in exposed animals compared to controls.

The authors of the Pfizer report further stated (Page 50: Reproduction Toxicity) that “a very low incidence of gastroschisis, mouth/jaw malformations, right-sided aortic arch, and cervical vertebrae abnormalities” occurred in litters of exposed rats, and that these findings were within historical control data.

This finding brings up an important question: Why compare the incidence of these major congenital abnormalities with “historical” controls and not with the controls themselves?

As late as April 2021, the CDC still maintained there was limited data surrounding the safety of COVID vaccines for women who were pregnant or breastfeeding. The agency advised women who were pregnant or breastfeeding to consult with their physician before getting vaccinated.

But were obstetricians made aware of the potential safety signals appearing in animal models?

And how were physicians able to decide whether or not a COVID vaccine was appropriate for their pregnant patients if the CDC wasn’t offering any guidance at that time?

CDC’s latest study: a closer look at the details

Using data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink — a CDC vaccine safety monitoring system the public cannot access — the CDC study identified 46,079 pregnant women with live births and gestational age.

Of those, 10,064 (21.8%) received ≥1 COVID vaccine doses during pregnancy from Dec. 15, 2020, to July 22, 2021.

Nearly all (9,892, or 98.3%) of the pregnant women included in the study were vaccinated during the second or third trimester.

The authors found that among unvaccinated women, the rate of premature births was 7% compared to 4.9% in those who had received either one or both vaccine doses.

The rate of small-for-gestational-age in both vaccinated and unvaccinated mothers was equal (8.2%).

The authors thus conclude that “… receipt of COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy was not associated with increased risk for preterm birth or SGA at birth.”

5 flaws in the CDC analysis

On closer examination, we identified the following five deficits in the CDC study:

Cohorts were not well matched. There were greater than three times more African American women in the unvaccinated group than in the vaccinated group. The CDC acknowledges the African American race is a risk factor for preterm birth and may be as high as 50% greater than in white women.

There were also greater than 50% more mothers in the unvaccinated group classified as having inadequate prenatal care. Obesity, also a risk for preterm birth, was also overrepresented in the unvaccinated group (29% vs 23.9%) compared to the vaccinated.

No adjustment for mothers with a history of preterm birth of SGA. The authors did not address this potential confounder.

COVID infection, another potentially important confounder, was present in the unvaccinated group at a 25% greater incidence than in the vaccinated cohort (3.5% vs 2.8%). There was no mention of when in the pregnancy the infection was detected.Viral infections early in pregnancy are particularly deleterious to the developing fetus. This should have been an important risk factor to quantify independently, especially when establishing a risk-versus-benefit ratio of vaccination.

The CDC data indicate a 7.7% risk of preterm birth in mothers having received one of two vaccines. This represents a 10% greater risk than in unvaccinated pregnancies. This increased risk is not mentioned in the discussion. Moreover, the adjusted Hazard Ratio (aHR) in this population is given as 0.78, indicating a 22% risk reduction in preterm birth in vaccinated mothers, seemingly conflicting with the raw data. (A request for clarification from the corresponding author was not answered).

The most glaring deficit in the CDC analysis is the scarcity of vaccinated mothers who received a vaccine in the first trimester in this study. The risk of untoward outcomes (birth defects, miscarriages) in pregnancy is greatest during the first third of pregnancy, a time when crucial embryonic structures are developing. This is the period of time where maternal health is particularly important, and exposure to toxins, infections and certain medicines must be minimized or eliminated entirely if possible.

Only 172 of more than 10,000 (1.7%) vaccinated mothers in the study received a vaccine in the first trimester. The incidence of preterm birth and SGA were not mentioned in this small cohort because of limited numbers.

Nonetheless, the authors arrive at the stunning conclusion: “CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccination for women who are pregnant, recently pregnant (including those who are lactating), who are trying to become pregnant now, or who might become pregnant in the future (4) to reduce the risk for severe COVID-19–associated outcomes.”

CDC not required to provide access to its data or subject its analysis to peer review

The Vaccine Safety Datalink uses data reported from nine large healthcare organizations, serving only 3% of the U.S. population. The system collects electronic health data from each participating site.

This database is accessible only to researchers outside the CDC and only by request. Requests may be accommodated after a research proposal is submitted and approved by the Research Data Center of the National Center for Health Statistics.

CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports can, as in the case of the agency’s analysis of COVID vaccine safety in pregnant women, be based on data that is not necessarily publicly available.

The agency’s analyses are not subject to peer review. Nevertheless, the reports are often widely cited as the official scientific position.

Conclusions

The CDC’s determination that COVID vaccination is safe in pregnant women is unfounded.

Cohorts were poorly matched. There was an inexcusably low representation of women who were vaccinated early in their pregnancy in their analysis. This is a period where any exposure to medical interventions will have a greater potential for risk to the fetus.

Broadly recommending vaccination for all pregnant women including those who are trying to become pregnant is particularly unwarranted.

This report places the CDC’s purported commitment to its mission of disease control and prevention on full display. The agency’s conclusions arrive more than a full year after the CDC authorized COVID vaccinations and are based on retrospective data alone.

In other words, the CDC is willing (and apparently allowed) to make safety determinations only after the experimental vaccines have been widely and indiscriminately deployed.

This is a shocking departure from the higher standards of prudence that are demanded during pregnancy, a time where two lives are potentially at risk and poor outcomes can lead to a lifetime of potential consequences.

It should be noted that several of the authors of this study reported potential conflicts of interest.

One author reported institutional research funding from Pfizer, and another from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. A third author has a career grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-study-wrongly-concludes-covid-vaccines-safe-pregnancy/

BUY TODAY: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s New Book — 'The Real Anthony Fauci'

[mi6021aidan]

research links

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2020/12/11/puberty-blockers-consent-treatment-analysis-high-courts-ruling/

https://www.contemporaryobgyn.net/view/gnrh-alternative-hysterectomy-uterine-fibroids

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/puberty-blockers-high-court-ruling-under-16s-barriers-keira-bell-case-778622

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1333735295309721600

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/sep/01/thalidomide-scandal-timeline

https://www.oncozine.com/thalidomides-secret-past-the-link-with-nazi-germany/

http://thalidomidestory.com/story/other-notables/historical-figures/hermann-wirtz-sr/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-018-0892-3

https://www.hse.ie/eng/health/az/g/gender-dysphoria/causes-of-gender-dysphoria.html#:~:text=Malfunctioning%20hormones&text=This%20could%20be%20caused%20by,working%20properly%20within%20the%20womb.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 10, 2024

The review into paediatric gender treatment by Dr Hilary Cass has finally been published. Its conclusions should herald the end of “gender-affirming” care in the United Kingdom, and its impact is likely to reverberate around the world. 

The review has shown that 89% of girls and 81% of boys referred to GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) were either homosexual or bisexual. The NHS has been practising gay conversion therapy in plain sight, and this has happened because politicians have been too ignorant or too afraid to do anything about it.

Cass has explicitly noted how fear of standing up to ideologues has resulted in a situation in which “attempts to improve the evidence base have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation from the adult gender services”. We have long suspected that the “gender-affirming” model of healthcare has persisted because its critics were too intimidated to speak out. This has been confirmed by Cass’s final report.

The report finds that vulnerable young people who should have been supported with therapeutic treatment were fast-tracked onto lifelong medicalisation. The risks of puberty blockers are now clear, and Cass notes that there is no evidence to justify them. Most crucially, we now know that the common assertion that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones reduce the risk of suicide is completely false.

Cass refers to the influence on the NHS of the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH), and how its guidelines have been found “to lack developmental rigour”. The recent revelations of the “WPATH files”, internal messages and videos from the organisation, have shown that leading practitioners were aware that children could not give “informed consent” to the treatments they were prescribing. In addition, they were also aware that gay or bisexual youth and those with mental health and autistic conditions were disproportionately affected. More details about the WPATH files can be read here.

Given the significance of WPATH’s influence, now confirmed by the Cass Review, it is remarkable that the BBC has yet to report on the WPATH files. Like the NHS, the BBC has been promoting gender identity ideology as though it were uncontested fact. In the light of the Cass Review, surely an investigation into the ideological capture of the BBC should be initiated. 

School policy is beyond the remit of the report, but Cass notes that “social transitioning” – that is, adopting preferred names and pronouns – can increase the chances of a child proceeding on a “medical pathway”. It would be prudent for the Department for Education to bear this in mind when drafting future guidelines. 

Cass offers an important recommendation for patients aged between 17 and 25. At present. young people who turn 17 are treated as adults and can be prescribed cross-sex hormones without parental consent. Given that the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, the risks here are obvious. Cass had recommended that “NHS England should establish follow-through services for 17-25-year-olds at each of the Regional Centres, either by extending the range of the regional children and young people’s service or through linked services, to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey.”

In light of the Cass Review, we now need an urgent investigation into how ideological zealots were able to dominate the NHS and branches of government to the detriment of children. Those charities who once supported gay rights – most notably Stonewall – have been complicit in this scandal which has mostly harmed gay youth. Any government departments and quangos still associated with Stonewall should sever all ties immediately.

Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party ought to ditch their commitment to a ban on “trans conversion therapy” and recognise that this will effectively stymie the therapeutic efforts of medical practitioners to support gender nonconforming children. The proposed ban on “trans conversion therapy” is tantamount to a new form of gay conversion therapy. You can read my thoughts on this subject here.

Above all, there now needs to be a concerted cross-party effort in parliament to identify those responsible for harming so many children and to hold them accountable for their negligence. The NHS should never have been in the business of practising pseudoscientific methods at the behest of activists, and we must ensure that this never happens again.

Download the Cass Review here.

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Even the BBC hasn't been able to just ignore this.