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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 7 days ago

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By: Benjamin Ryan

Published: Jan 23, 2025

The most rigorous academic analysis to date of the research backing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as treatments for gender-related distress in young people has found it has produced ‘very uncertain’ evidence.

A pair of major new analyses of research into providing gender-transition drugs to adolescents and young adults have indicated that a prevailing orthodoxy in the U.S. medical community — that such treatments are safe and effective for gender-distressed minors — is largely based on “very uncertain” scientific evidence.

The most rigorous such analyses of their kind to date, these new academic papers are the latest reports to cast doubt on the transgender movement’s battle, now on the defensive, to protect minors’ access to ultimately irreversible gender-transition treatments. The new analyses reach the damning conclusion that almost all the research assessing such treatments is decidedly unreliable at anticipating risks and benefits alike, thanks to consistently weak study designs that leave the door wide open for biased and unreliable results.

This sweeping finding echoes the four-year independent assessment of the field of pediatric gender medicine, called the Cass Review, that was commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service and published to great fanfare in April. The nearly 400-page report was anchored on the finding that the field was based on “remarkably weak evidence.”

These critical assessments of the controversial medical practices – which in recent years have been banned for minors in 24 states – stand in direct conflict with a nearly united front among American medical associations who endorse the prescribing of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors experiencing gender dysphoria, which is distress stemming from a conflict between an individual’s sex and gender identity. Prominent societies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have touted such treatments as effective and even life saving – since, advocates claim, gender treatments prevent suicides.

Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a physician and professor at McMaster University in Ontario, effectively begs to differ, having found that there is no such clear-eyed certainty about the impacts of these treatments on young people. Known as the “godfather of evidence-based medicine,” Dr. Guyatt on Thursday published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood a pair of systematic review papers of pediatric gender medicine that are the first of their kind to pool study findings and conduct meta-analyses regarding particular outcomes among young people who have received these interventions.

One of the analyses examined studies on puberty blockers given to youth with gender dysphoria. The other looked at studies of cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults.

Dr. Guyatt and his colleagues concluded in both papers that there is “considerable uncertainty regarding the effects” of each intervention, given that the available research almost entirely yielded evidence of “very low certainty.” Regarding hormone treatment in particular, the authors concluded that “we cannot exclude the possibility of benefit or harm.” The only research finding they considered to be of “high certainty” was that a small percentage of people who started cross-sex hormones subsequently experienced cardiovascular health events.

“These papers come to the same conclusion as many other evidence syntheses — which is that we do not have a good evidence base to suggest that these treatments are effective,” said Dr. Ronny Cheung, a consultant general pediatrician in London. Dr. Cheung is the lead author of a recent peer-reviewed rebuttal to a white paper spearheaded by Yale University pediatrician Meredithe McNamara that sharply criticized the Cass Review.

The publication of these two papers from Dr. Guyatt is certain to provoke a chorus of disapproval among the many fierce defenders of pediatric gender medicine in America in particular, given their response to the Cass Review. That report has led the UK to ban puberty blockers outside of a promised clinical trial; and it has been broadly cited in litigation in the U.S. by opponents of these interventions for minors. Striking back, a coterie of academics such as Dr. McNamara has mobilized to cast doubt upon the report’s methodology and conclusions.

These champions of pediatric gender medicine have asserted in a string of recent publications, most of which have not been peer reviewed, that, for example, Cass has held these medical interventions to an exceptionally and impossibly high evidentiary standard. Pediatric treatments for all sorts of conditions, some of these champions have pointed out, are routinely based on low-certainty or very-low-certainty evidence (as opposed to moderate- or high-certainty evidence).

“It is true that many treatments in medicine have been, and are, used without a satisfactory evidence base. Sometimes this has led to belated evidence gathering in terms of clinical trials, which have subsequently shown benefit,” Dr. Cheung said in an email. “Equally, others have resulted in disastrous outcomes for patients despite the best intentions and biological plausibility. But it is a logical fallacy to say that because many treatments are given without sufficient evidence base, therefore any treatment without sufficient evidence base should be given.”

Moti Gorin, an associate professor of philosophy at Colorado State University said that given the “complexity and vulnerability” of pediatric gender dysphoria cases, “our standards should be very high.”

The Sun asked the lead authors of all of the recent Cass critiques to comment on Dr. Guyatt’s new papers. The sole respondent was Chris Noone, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Galloway, who argued that the new papers comment “on already identified limitations of research on these interventions related to sample size and comparison groups that are inevitable due to the small population, the impossibility of blinded comparison groups, and the ethics of preventing access to these interventions.”

As he has previously, Dr. Noone criticized the particular tool Dr. Guyatt’s team used to score the quality of the evidence, which he said, “given the aforementioned limitations will automatically lead to a judgment of very low certainty in the evidence.”

“The authors fail to articulate how a study of puberty blockers or hormone therapy for young people with gender dysphoria could ever produce evidence that is considered certain” by this tool, Dr. Noone said.

Dr. Guyatt was not available for comment.

The Trans Turning Point

The stakes have never been higher for the beleaguered and politicized medical field of pediatric gender medicine. The Supreme Court is set to rule, probably in June, on the constitutionality of state bans on gender treatments for minors in a case, first marshalled by the ACLU, in which the Biden Administration challenged Tennessee’s law. And while Donald Trump has yet to make good on his campaign promise to further restrict access to pediatric gender-transition treatment, within hours of his inauguration on Tuesday he signed a sweeping executive order attacking what his administration calls “gender ideology” throughout federal law.

This turning point in the history of transgender advocacy writ large follows a decade of dramatic growth in the population of young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria or otherwise identifying as trans, both in the United States and across the Western World. A research letter out of Harvard published in JAMA Pediatrics on Jan. 6 found about one in 1,000 privately insured 17-year-olds received cross-sex hormones between 2018 and 2022; and recent trends suggest this figure was likely considerably higher at the end of that period, especially among biological girls.

Another paper published Thursday in the Archives of Disease in Childhood reported that between 2011 and 2021, diagnoses of gender dysphoria among adolescents in primary care practices in England surged by more than 50-fold. Following a pattern well documented in the United States, diagnosis rates were similar between biological boys and girls until 2015, at which point they split, until the rate among natal girls was nearly twice that of boys in 2021. By that time, about one in 250 youths had such a diagnosis at age 18. Levels of anxiety, depression, and self-harm were high among this overall population, especially the girls.

The 2020s has seen the publication of a slew of systematic literature reviews – the gold standard of scientific evidence – assessing the quality of research and the resulting reliability of the evidence it produces among studies of gender-transition treatments for youths. All these papers have reached essentially the same conclusion: that the evidence backing prescribing gender-transition medications to minors is wanting and highly uncertain.

Such critical findings have led the health authorities in a swath of Northern and Western European nations, including the UK, to reclassify such treatments as experimental and to sharply restrict access to minors — or to at least consider pulling back on such access. In America, which lacks a comparable centralized health authority, medical-practice standards tend to be set by medical associations; and with the exception of one group representing plastic surgeons, those societies have overwhelmingly held firm in their support of such interventions.

The Evidence-Based Medicine Revolution Confronts Pediatric Gender Medicine

With Dr. Guyatt as one of its talismen, the field of evidence-based medicine emerged during the 1990s as a movement to hold scientific evidence to a higher standard. The goal was to assess the likelihood that the findings of research on any particular subject would actually bear out in clinical practice and that the recommendations based on that evidence were arrived upon in a rigorous and transparent way.

The field, for example, sought to confront the fact that, even if multiple studies reach similar findings, this might be due to the fact that they were all biased in a similar way and not because the results were valid. The type of analyses pioneered by Dr. Guyatt are meant to identify potential sources of bias in scientific research and to separate the evidentiary wheat from the chaff.

“Systematic review procedures block opportunities for cherry-picking studies that support only one side of an issue and help ensure all relevant studies are included,” said James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist and sex researcher who has often served as a paid expert hired by states to aid in defending their bans of this treatment. (Dr. McNamara has conversely often served as a paid expert for the other side. Both she and Dr. Cantor have been criticized for never having treated gender dysphoria in a minor.)

“The methods also work to ensure that all studies get evaluated with the same standards, minimizing opportunities to be more critical or favorable with studies on one side,” Dr. Cantor continued. “Because so many authors have been engaging in exactly these kinds of biased tactics when claiming what the science says about the effects of medicalized transition, the anti-bias methods of systematic reviews are even more important than usual.”

For the new paper on puberty blockers published Thursday, Dr. Guyatt and his colleagues scoured the relevant medical literature and settled on 10 key studies to analyze. Those papers, they concluded, “provided very low certainty evidence,” meaning the investigators had very little confidence the findings reflected the true impact of the treatment on gender dysphoria, global function (how well a person functions in daily life), depression, and bone mineral density.

Dr. Guyatt’s puberty blocker paper also highlighted a review paper out of England that recently called into question the veracity of the oft-repeated claim that the treatments are “fully reversible.”

The cross-sex hormone analysis examined 24 studies in which the average participant was younger than age 26 upon starting treatment (the average age ranged from age 15 to 25). These papers, the authors concluded, largely provided very low certainty evidence regarding such treatment’s impacts on gender dysphoria, global function, depression and bone mineral density changes. One study, which had an untreated comparison group, provided simply “low certainty” evidence—meaning the investigators had merely “limited confidence” it reflected the true effect of the treatment—that taking hormones was linked to a somewhat lower odds of having depression.

The only outcome the investigators considered to be of “high certainty,” meaning they were “very confident” it was close to reflecting the treatment’s true impact in clinical practice, was that there was a 4% rate of cardiovascular events among biological females 7 to 109 months after they started testosterone. That was due to a 2019 research letter by Dutch investigators that found that estrogen use in patients who were born male, with a median age of 30, was tied to a nearly doubled rate of stroke and a greater than fourfold higher rate of blood clots; and that testosterone use in biological females, with a median age of 23, was tied to an almost quadrupled heart attack rate.

Dr. Noone said that particular study could not isolate the impact of hormones on such outcomes, and that the heart disease events might have been driven by higher rates of tobacco smoking among trans people or the impacts of anti-trans stigma.

Overall, the design of the puberty blocker and cross-sex hormones literature reviews meant they could provide insights into the quality of life of youth on the drugs, the study authors concluded. But the analyses could not answer questions about the impacts of the drugs, such as whether quality of life or global function is better among those receiving the medications compared with others who were not.

The Battle Over Research Standards

Many advocates of pediatric gender medicine have insisted that randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, of gender-transition treatments for minors are not ethical—because, they argue, the benefits of these interventions are already so well established.

There is broader consensus among research experts that RCTs might not be feasible. For one, it would be impossible to blind such a study, since it soon becomes obvious to any young person whether they are experiencing physical changes indicative of being on hormones or off of blockers. And youth randomized to an untreated control group might be disinclined to remain in a study they saw as providing them no benefit.

All that said, Dr. Guyatt and his colleagues wrote in their new papers that to understand the impacts of both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on young people, “methodologically rigorous studies,” such as those that follow a population over time “are needed to produce higher certainty evidence.” They noted that this includes “RCTs (if ethical)” for blockers in particular.

Thus, the study authors did not insist on “high certainty” evidence, as many critics of the evidence-based approach to assessing pediatric gender medicine often attest, accurately or not, is the topline argument stemming from systematic literature reviews of the field; they called for higher certainty.

Similarly, despite a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting that the Cass Review set the standard at the RCT level, the British report actually made a more general call for improved methodological rigor in studies of these treatments.

Dr. Guyatt’s papers further argued that physicians counseling young people about receiving these interventions have an obligation to communicate to these patients and their caregivers about the very low certainty of the supporting scientific evidence. Acknowledging the crucial role that patients’ so-called values and preferences play in such clinical decision-making, the investigators called upon the authors of clinical guidelines and policy makers to be transparent about “whose values they prioritize when developing treatment recommendations and policies.”

Supporters of minors’ access to these medications often claim that the rate of regret-based detransitioning — in which someone stops gender-transition drugs and reverts to identifying and presenting as their birth sex — among those who started treatment as minors is extremely low. The Cass Review, though, found that due to limited patient follow-up, the true detransitioning rate is unknown.

Approximately two dozen detransitioners have filed lawsuits against their care providers, often claiming to have suffered irreversible harms to their body. Many of these plaintiffs are represented by a Texas firm established by a quartet of former white-shoe attorneys who set up their practice for the sole purpose of representing detransitioners — a population that they anticipate will only grow given the recent surge in trans identification among adolescents.

The authors of the two new analyses found they could reach no conclusions about rates of regret, anxiety or pelvic pain tied to receiving puberty blockers or hormones. Nor could they reach any conclusions about whether cancer was connected to hormone use or whether puberty blockers were linked to the suicide death rate. The analysis on hormones referenced one two-year U.S. study, published in 2023, in which, among 315 persons who started cross-sex hormones between ages 12 and 20, two died by suicide. Dr. Guyatt’s team deemed this association based on very low certainty evidence.

Nor did these analyses provide any substantial insights into a key concern: fertility. Concerns that providing treatment for childhood gender dysphoria with blockers and hormones might cause infertility have motivated many critics of this medical field to call for a higher quality of evidence than might otherwise be acceptable for pediatric medical interventions.

Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who studies pediatric gender medicine, praised Dr. Guyatt’s new analyses as the most “methodologically rigorous systematic reviews” in this field to date. He said that a notable shortcoming of the papers was the limited information they provided about various potential harms of these treatments — a fault he attributed to the wider medical field.

“Gender clinics and clinicians are usually the ones who study medical interventions in this area,” Dr. Sapir said, “And they have little interest or incentive to conduct rigorous, longitudinal studies on the harms of the interventions they adamantly support.”

Following the Science

Dr. Guyatt’s papers are likely to impact ongoing litigation over pediatric gender medicine. Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, made that evident in a statement to the Sun, when he praised the new papers and said they confirmed “that states like Alabama are on firm footing in restricting these treatments for minors and by encouraging the medical community to finally follow the science itself.”

The papers did not, however, call for such bans, rather for better research. Some of the nation’s major pediatric gender care research hubs are in states that have passed such bans, which threaten to end their research entirely.

As Mr. Marshall’s scathing amicus brief to the Supreme Court for the case over Tennessee’s ban laid bare, records that the attorney general subpoenaed from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a prominent transgender medical-activist group, revealed that WPATH suppressed publication of systematic reviews it had commissioned from evidence-based medicine experts at Johns Hopkins University as it developed its 2022 revision to its widely referenced trans-care guidelines.

“It is no great mystery why WPATH acted the way it did,” said Mr. Marshall. In a nod to Dr. Guyatt’s advice for guidelines committees, Mr. Marshall continued: “As these latest systematic evidence reviews confirm, there is woefully insufficient evidence to support WPATH’s strong recommendation that kids be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat their gender-related distress.”

Dr. Guyatt’s papers are likely to be attacked due to their funding source. The research was commissioned by the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, or SEGM, which is a collective of physicians and researchers who are skeptical of the evidence supporting pediatric gender medicine and are regarded as an adversary by the transgender rights movement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has gone so far as to brand SEGM a hate group that traffics in pseudoscience. (The SPLC has itself faced heavy criticism from the right in recent years for expanding its label of hate groups to apply broadly to religious conservatives and other groups that oppose liberal orthodoxy.) However, a three-day conference SEGM held in New York City in the fall of 2023 was almost entirely lacking in politics or any trace of prejudice or animus against transgender people. Instead, it offered a trenchant crash course in evidence-based medicine principles and their application to this field.

That said, SEGM’s critics assert that the organization leans on such intellectual principles as a mere pretext to sow doubt among the public and policymakers alike and, above all, to lend academic credibility to efforts to outright ban these interventions.

In an interview, SEGM cofounder Zhenya Abbruzzese, a health researcher, firmly denied any such political motivation. She further said that Dr. Guyatt’s team kept her organization “at arm’s length” throughout the work on the review papers, and, unlike the Johns Hopkins team’s ultimate arrangement with WPATH, the academic team had full right to publish regardless of the findings.

Speaking to the effort in modern medicine to treat gender dysphoria in young people with blockers and hormones, Ms. Abbruzzese said, “We are operating in the dark. But we don’t have to be.”

She pointed to the robust national health databases in many European nations, in particular in Scandinavia, and argued that researchers could reach at least moderately certain conclusions about the potential impacts of these treatments by conducting research based on those health records.

“It’s time to look at that data in a very rigorous way,” Ms. Abbruzzese said.

Researchers have already conducted such health-database analyses regarding gender transition surgery’s association with mental health outcomes in Swedish adults and cross-sex hormones’ link to suicide deaths in Finnish youths.

Both studies found the interventions were tied to no such benefits.

[ Archive: https://archive.today/GSsQP ]

History will judge this as worse than thalidomide. It's been clear for a long time that there's no evidence supporting the effectiveness of these 'treatments.' The evidence in support is of poor quality, while the evidence against shows that these treatments are not only ineffective but also harmful. Unlike thalidomide, which was withdrawn very quickly, the present day scandal continues on despite everything we already know solely because of suicidal empathy.

#Benjamin Ryan #medical scandal #medical malpractice #medical corruption #gender thalidomide #thalidomide #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #gender affirmation #puberty blockers #wrong sex hormones #cross sex hormones #pediatric gender medicine #systematic review #evidence #science #medicine #evidence based medicine #religion is a mental illness

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zoomzooml · 2 years ago

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[Worldbuilding] Protoforms and sparklings - basics.

Apologies for any translation errors. I'm doing my best to avoid them, but due to the fact that I'm a sleep-deprived human disaster they can still occur. Sorry!

PROTOFORMS

How are they created?

[Text under picture]

Vector Sigma in the depths of the planet creates a new Protoform and gives it a spark. The protoform is a primitive mechanism, resembling a mechanical larva, whose main purpose is to protect the spark during its first period of life.

The protoform digs its way to the surface. The tunnels they leave behind are barrenly small and usually collapse back quickly.

The protoform, after getting to the surface, leaves the underside in the soil, sticks to its place, and grows "roots" that will take up minerals and resources needed to build the actual organism.

The armor becomes a cocoon that grows as the organism inside grows and develops. As the mechanisms and organs of the body become more advanced, it begins to be called Sparkling.

The protoform can also build a cocoon on vertical walls; extremely rarely and only under exceptional conditions on the ceiling.

A fully built sparkling hatches from a cocoon. It is already at its maximum size (not including artificial expansions, rebuilds or upgrades) and has a full range of natural and instinctive abilities, such as transformation or movement.

Medical units with appropriate training perform hygiene and initial examinations and clean up the cocoon's shell, which will later be recycled.

It's worth noting that there were places on Cybertron where emerging organisms were a large percentage of the whole lot. Maturation Centers* were placed there. They were in charge of taking care of the sparklings in the first months of life to detect developmental anomalies, censusing the hatchlings, bringing them into the system and giving them identification (usually numerical), and looking for suitable places to send the young ones, which would provide further care and upbringing.

[*Maturing in terms of physical independence and presence in the census and institute’s system.]

Cursory information about cocoons and protoforms.

TAKING CARE OF THE COCOON

If the cocoon nests in an unsafe place, with nutrient deficiencies in the soil or simply threatening to be trampled, the cocoon should be moved. The first choice should be to transplant to a relatively better, safer place.

However, if the cocoon shows signs of disease it should be quarantined. If it shows difficulty in extracting materials from the soil, it may be necessary to place it in an incubator.

A malnourished or diseased cocoon can be recognized by a dull color of the armor, slowing or stopping of growth or discoloration. The shade of the armor may go gray and/or become covered with pinkish or yellowish spots. The armor may weaken and delaminate, and the roots may wither. The body proper of the protoform (the blob inside armor) also becomes discolored, grayed or yellowed.

If the cocoon is not threatened by anything, it should be left alone, being checked from time to time.

SPARKLINGS

After hatching, sparklings are noted for their many colors, which are usually pastel or near-pastel. As they age, the colors mostly dim or are covered with another color of choice, for aesthetic, cultural or regulatory reasons.

Individuals with several colors appear, usually in ombre-like form. However, they are rare.

The colors of protoformal tissue, like the face, can range in grays (also called blues), reds or, in rare cases, golds.

Probable colors of optics can be found almost anywhere on the color wheel, usually in bright and light shades.

Behaviorism

Young sparklings precociously observe and analyze. They will stay still observing surroundings. At the beginning many of them will not show emotion with their body, face or voice, most likely because they are not yet familiar with function of this and action. If the phenomenon they are interested in moves, they will follow it with their gaze, but they will not move their head unless absolutely necessary. Their staring may be repulsive to some. Learning about the environment seems to take priority over learning about the extent of their own body and capabilities.

Sparklings have full control over their body, but as some actions are instinctive and already coded others must be learned.

When this perennially quiet period of their lives is over the so-called period of heightened activity usually begin, in varying intensity. Now that they've learned the basics from observance it's time for experimentation, experience and exploration, which usually manifests itself in sticking their noses where they shouldn't, touching what they shouldn't, dropping and throwing objects, entering strange, theoretically inaccessible spaces and the like.

For the young, vocalization is rarely the first choice for communication. Rather, they rely on the simple language of the electromagnetic field for their initial period of life, sometimes reaching far into the period of heightened activity. This contains the means for very simple communication and is often supported by body language.

Already at the moment of hatching, the Transformer has information about its alt-mode and the ability to transform. In most cases, it will use this only after it enters a period of heightened activity. The alt-mode information is one of the primal codes, analysis of them is one of the evidences of the evolution of Transformers.

UPBRINGING

The vast majority of offspring are raised in the brood, and raising them is a communal task. Typically, multiple caretakers take turns caring for them, sometimes fulfilling different upbringing functions. If a sparkling manifests unusual talent in a certain field, it may receive individual upbringing by a specialist(s) in that field. [An extension to the topic is planned.]

FROM ME

The colors of these scribbles are completely different on the laptop and on the phone, so I don't know if they are as I think they are. Sorry if I accidentally hurted anyone's eyes lol

#Transformers Cheesy Fan Continuity #TFCheesy #transformers #maccadam #worldbuilding #cybertronian biology #cybertronian culture #long post #sparkling #protoform #my things #plant babies lol

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

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Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana at ProPublica:

Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy. The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.” For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria. Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection. Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus. Neither had wanted an abortion, but that didn’t matter. Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.

ProPublica is telling these women’s stories this week, starting with Barnica’s. Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”

The doctors involved in Barnica’s care at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her case. In a statement, HCA Healthcare said “our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and said that physicians exercise their independent judgment. The company did not respond to a detailed list of questions about Barnica’s care. Like all states, Texas has a committee of maternal health experts who review such deaths to recommend ways to prevent them, but the committee’s reports on individual cases are not public and members said they have not finished examining cases from 2021, the year Barnica died. ProPublica is working to fill gaps in knowledge about the consequences of abortion bans. Reporters scoured death data, flagging Barnica’s case for its concerning cause of death: “sepsis” involving “products of conception.” We tracked down her family, obtained autopsy and hospital records and enlisted a range of experts to review a summary of her care that ProPublica created in consultation with two doctors.

Among those experts were more than a dozen OB-GYNs and maternal-fetal medicine specialists from across the country, including researchers at prestigious institutions, doctors who regularly handle miscarriages and experts who have served on state maternal mortality review committees or held posts at national professional medical organizations. After reviewing the four-page summary, which included the timeline of care noted in hospital records, all agreed that requiring Barnica to wait to deliver until after there was no detectable fetal heartbeat violated professional medical standards because it could allow time for an aggressive infection to take hold. They said there was a good chance she would have survived if she was offered an intervention earlier.

“If this was Massachusetts or Ohio, she would have had that delivery within a couple hours,” said Dr. Susan Mann, a national patient safety expert in obstetric care who teaches at Harvard University. Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion. But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

[...]

“They Should Vote With Their Feet”

Texas has been on the forefront of fighting abortion access. At the time of Barnica’s miscarriage in 2021, the Supreme Court had not yet overturned the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. But Texas lawmakers, intent on being the first to enact a ban with teeth, had already passed a harsh civil law using a novel legal strategy that circumvented Roe v. Wade: It prohibited doctors from performing an abortion after six weeks by giving members of the public incentives to sue doctors for $10,000 judgments. The bounty also applied to anyone who “aided and abetted” an abortion.

A year later, after the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling was handed down, an even stricter criminal law went into effect, threatening doctors with up to 99 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. Soon after the ruling, the Biden administration issued federal guidance reminding doctors in hospital emergency rooms they have a duty to treat pregnant patients who need to be stabilized, including by providing abortions for miscarriages. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fought against that, arguing that following the guidance would force doctors to “commit crimes” under state law and make every hospital a “walk-in abortion clinic.” When a Dallas woman asked a court for approval to end her pregnancy because her fetus was not viable and she faced health risks if she carried it to term, Paxton fought to keep her pregnant. He argued her doctor hadn’t proved it was an emergency and threatened to prosecute anyone who helped her. “Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result,” he wrote to the court.

No doctor in Texas, or the 20 other states that criminalize abortion, has been prosecuted for violating a state ban. But the possibility looms over their every decision, dozens of doctors in those states told ProPublica, forcing them to consider their own legal risks as they navigate their patient’s health emergencies. The lack of clarity has resulted in many patients being denied care. In 2023, Texas lawmakers made a small concession to the outcry over the uncertainty the ban was creating in hospitals. They created a new exception for ectopic pregnancies, a potentially fatal condition where the embryo attaches outside the uterine cavity, and for cases where a patient’s membranes rupture prematurely before viability, which introduces a high risk of infection. Doctors can still face prosecution, but are allowed to make the case to a judge or jury that their actions were protected, not unlike self-defense arguments after homicides. Barnica’s condition would not have clearly fit this exception.

This year, after being directed to do so by the state Supreme Court, the Texas Medical Board released new guidance telling doctors that an emergency didn’t need to be “imminent” in order to intervene and advising them to provide extra documentation regarding risks. But in a recent interview, the board’s president, Dr. Sherif Zaafran, acknowledged that these efforts only go so far and the group has no power over criminal law: “There’s nothing we can do to stop a prosecutor from filing charges against the physicians.” Asked what he would tell Texas patients who are miscarrying and unable to get treatment, he said they should get a second opinion: “They should vote with their feet and go and seek guidance from somebody else.”

The consequences of strict abortion bans are being felt, as Josseli Barnica died as a result of delayed miscarriage treatments in Texas.

#Josseli Barnica #Abortion Bans #Abortion #Texas #HCA Healthcare #Miscarriage #Savita Halappavanar #Texas SB8

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darkmaga-returns · 2 months ago

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10 Shocking Stories the Media Buried Today

The Vigilant Fox

Dec 11, 2024

10 - Hidden Pfizer Report Shows Heart Conditions Getting WORSE Over Time

Nick Hunt has uncovered what regulators are desperate to hide—and the results are jaw-dropping.

Compared to the unvaccinated, vaxxed individuals face:

• A 23% higher risk of acute cardiovascular injury, with the gap worsening over time.

• A 27% higher risk of arrhythmia.

• A 2% higher risk of heart failure, though not yet statistically significant.

• A 30% higher risk of stress cardiomyopathy.

• A 40% higher risk of coronary artery disease, with risks increasing over time.

• A 130% higher risk of myocarditis (within 21 days).

With results like this, it’s no wonder they’re desperately trying to keep this information hidden from the public.

Click here to read the full report.

(See 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

9 - Daniel Penny and his lawyers have announced they are considering SUING corrupt Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for malicious prosecution.

Bragg was also caught colluding with the medical examiner during the trial.

Credit: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1866964225320685977?t=MKTrm7j0gEB5P7uXj5kV3Q&s=19

8 - Jill Biden is now OPENLY MOCKING Kamala Harris’ “joy” line.

The audience even knows what’s going on and breaks out into laughter.

Credit: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1866955333215850722?t=Se6Srnae4ucgzes_ND8-Dw&s=19

7 - Rep. Jeff Van Drew Says Iran is Launching the Drones Over New Jersey

“Iran launched a mothership probably about a month ago that contains these drones … It’s off the east coast of the United States of America.”

Credit: https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1866900820299821256?t=05T9MOZnoUw8Drtd_lyY_g&s=19

6 - The Deputy DoD Press Secretary corrects the record and says that these are NOT Iranian drones, that there is no Iranian “mothership” off the eastern seaboard, and that these drones are not from any foreign entities.

She also claims that these are NOT US MIL drones.

Credit: https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1866931625151320518?t=2fi80xrwxhPX71_BL7uI4A&s=19

While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this page for more daily news roundups.Subscribe

#5 - Moscow Threatens REVENGE After Ukraine Strikes Russia with 6 US-Made Ballistic Missiles

#4 - Lawsuit and Accusations of Rape Against Newsmax Host Ed Henry Unravel After So-Called Victim’s Kinky Sexts Revealed

This case illustrates why we must uphold the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

⚠️ Warning: Explicit Content

#3 - US Postmaster General covers his ears in protest as GA Rep. Rich McCormick blasts him for giving himself an ‘A Grade’ for running USPS.

This is a wild moment. I can’t believe how childish this government official acts.

Credit: https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/1866647908541665525?t=3kphMZpDJf5aFY_utZvz7A&s=19

#2 - FBI Director Christopher Wray has RESIGNED ahead of Kash Patel’s confirmation.

Credit: https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1866923504689467674

#1 - The United Kingdom BANS Puberty Blockers for Minors

This groundbreaking development occurred after experts warned of an “unacceptable safety risk.”

“The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children,” the statement reads. “It recommends indefinite restrictions while work is done to ensure the safety of children and young people.”

Read More: https://dailycaller.com/2024/12/11/uk-bans-puberty-blockers-minors/

BONUS #1 - The View Just Got an Anti-Woke Competitor

BONUS #2 - Judge Jeanine Pirro Sets the Record Straight About Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely

BONUS #3 - Donald Trump’s COVID ‘Game-Changer’ Finds Surprising New Use

BONUS #4 - Ex-Secret Service Agent Warns of Major Attack on Trump Before Inauguration

BONUS #5 - The Most Vaxxed Country on Earth Now Faces a Population Crisis

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mariacallous · 11 months ago

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Last month, nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict was found dead at homethe day after an altercation at school, where they were attacked by a group of their classmates in a restroom.

Benedict, a 16-year-old Indigenous person who used both he/him and they/them pronouns according to friends and family, had been targeted by bullies at their Oklahoma high school because of their gender identity, according to Sue Benedict, who has been identified in various media reports as either Nex Benedict's mother or their grandmother and guardian.

"I didn't know how bad it had gotten," Sue Benedict told The Independent.

Though the school nurse determined that ambulance service was not required following the attack on Benedict, it was recommended that they "visit a medical facility for further examination," Owasso, Okla., police said.

Sue Benedict told Public Radio Tulsa that she took Nex to the hospital for treatment for injuries sustained in the fight, but body cam footage shows a police officer discouraging the family from filing a report, saying that it would open up the family to legal liability.

The officer added that it would be a shame for any of the students to have to deal with a criminal situation for "something so minuscule," though Benedict disclosed that they had experienced bullying for a full year prior to this attack.

The day after the incident, Benedict collapsed at home, and was later pronounced dead.

Owasso Public Schools released a statement to the community, writing, "The loss of a student, a member of the Ram Family and the Owasso community, is devastating," but said it would limit its statements "out of respect and for the confidentiality for all involved."

Following Benedict's death, community members held vigils, LGBTQ+ rights organizations issued statements, and many were left wondering: What happened to Nex Benedict?

Questions over the medical examiner's findings

According to the Oklahoma Medical Examiner's office, Benedict died by suicide.

"From the beginning of this investigation, Owasso Police observed many indications that this death was the result of suicide," the police department saidin a statement, with a summary autopsy report saying that Benedict died after consuming two different types of medication.

Many expressed their condolences following the alleged findings, including President Biden.

"Every young person deserves to have the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are, and feel safe and supported at school and in their communities," Biden said in a statement following the news, adding that Benedict, "a kid who just wanted to be accepted, should still be here with us today."

"In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children," the president added.

Rates of suicide are disproportionately high for transgender youth in comparison to their cisgender counterparts, but transgender people of color face even higher rates of suicide risk.

In a 2023 national survey on LGBTQ+ youth mental health by the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ anti-suicide organization, Native/Indigenous youth LGBTQ+ consistently reported the highest suicide risk among racial and ethnic groups, with nearly one in four Indigenous LGBTQ+ youth reporting attempts on their own lives.

But advocates, supporters, and even Benedict's own family have remained skeptical of the report, which is slated to be released in full within the next 10 days. The autopsy summary did not include the exact amounts of each medication found in Benedict's system.

"Rather than allow incomplete accounts to take hold and spread any further, the Benedicts feel compelled to provide a summary of those findings which have not yet been released by the Medical Examiner's office, particularly those that contradict allegations of the assault on Nex being insignificant," said a press release from the Benedict family attorneys.

The release also showed a section of the summary autopsy report, which reported that while Benedict did not sustain "lethal trauma," they did have multiple injuries to their head, neck and torso, which the lawyers say clearly shows "the severity of the assault."

"There is nothing in this one page document to explain why the medical examiner checked a box," said Sarah-Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, on the decision to list suicide as Benedict's cause of death.

"Media must have learned by now that they need to continue to question what they get from law enforcement and government entities in Oklahoma that have so far failed to protect vulnerable students and responsibly provide any information that is critical for student safety," Ellis said.

Sue Benedict told The Independent that Nex started being bullied at school after Oklahoma's Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill in 2022that forbade trans and nonbinary youth from using bathrooms concurrent with their gender identities.

In 2023, Stitt followed up the bathroom ban with a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth in the state, one of 87 anti-trans bills that passed in the U.S. last year, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.

Just three months into the current year, 523 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures.

And trans youth report that these legal restrictions on their freedom are having direct impacts on their mental health.

According to the Trevor Project's survey,nearly one in three LGBTQ+ youth said their "mental health was poor most of the time or always due to anti-LGBTQ policies and legislation."

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said in a statement, "We must demand better from our elected officials and reject harmful anti-transgender legislation at the local, state and federal levels, while also considering every possible way to make ending this violence a reality."

What happens next?

On March 1, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) notified the Human Rights Campaign that in response to an HRC complaint filed around Benedict's death, the office would be investigating the Owasso public school district for potential violations of Title IX, which prevents discrimination based on sex, and Title II, which stipulates that schools must prevent bullying and harassment.

However, the timeline for the investigation is unknown.

"The goal of an OCR investigation is to determine whether an alleged civil rights violation took place and to decide what district reforms are appropriate based on what the investigation uncovered," Rachel Perera, a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote.

While the OCR can withdraw federal funding from a school district if the investigation finds violations of civil rights law, "enforcement actions are rare," added Perera in her written commentary.

The case could also potentially be referred to the Department of Justice for further action, but what will come out of the investigation and whether its findings will be escalated still remains to be seen.

Many are hoping that Benedict's death could spur further action that aims to deter bullying in schools.

"Reforms creating school environments that are built upon the pillars of respect, inclusion and grace, and aim to eliminate bullying and hate, are the types of change that all involved should be able to rally behind," said the Benedict family's counsel.

But Sue Benedict is still mourning her loss.

"I just want my child back," she said.

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medsocionwheels · 1 year ago

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Medical Sociology 101: What is medical sociology, and how is it distinct from other approaches to studying medicine, health, illness, disability, and healthcare?

Medical sociology is both a social science and a health science—it is one of the social scientific approaches to studying topics in health science. So, how is the sociological approach to studying topics in medicine, health, illness, and disability, distinct from other approaches to examining these topics?

Medical sociologists study health, illness, and healthcare, in terms of social problems and social factors. They are not looking at individual issues, nor are they interested in biological or cognitive factors independent of social factors.

Now, it’s important to note that social problems do, in fact, impact individuals, but sociologists aren’t interested in this impact to the individual as much as they’re interested in the shared impacts of social problems across groups of individuals.   So, sociology is not always useful for understanding personal experience; however, sociological research can give insight as to whether your experience is similar to experiences of other people with shared characteristics. instead of asking something like, “why does this individual patient have this experience” the medical sociologist might instead ask, “are there characteristics shared by many patients with this experience which may predispose an individual to have said experience?” So, here, not asking why this individual patient has the experience, but why does this group of patients have this experience while another group does not.

Medical sociology demonstrates that things like likelihood of health or illness, experiences and perceptions of medicine, health, illness, and disability, who provides health care, how healthcare is provided, and to whom it is provided, and institutional aspects of the healthcare system itself, are not random, but instead, are shaped by social factors. Medical problems become social problems when they are shared by many individuals with some similar characteristic, experience, or circumstance.

Watch Here:

youtube

Originally posted on wordpress:

#sociology #education #medical sociology #medical science #medicine #research #science #higher education #open access #free learning #online tutorials #free college lessons #professor #health #disability #healthcare #social science #Youtube

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moonlight26posts-blog · 2 months ago

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In Baltimore City, MD: 10 y/o stray who loves to sniff, adventure, and has the cutest floppy ears - BARCS, Baltimore MD

If you can help save Wreath's life and offer him a loving foster home, please email [email protected]

Wreath- 10 y/o, unaltered male, 73lbs

Handsome 'Wreath' was brought to the shelter after being found as a stray, wandering the busy city streets all alone. So far in our care, he has been a friendly boy, slow and easy on the leash, and enjoys sniffing around and eating treats. Though sweet, he is also very independent and prefers spending his walks investigating his surroundings. He also seems housebroken.

When tested off-leash in our shelter's play yard, Wreath was gentle and polite with other lowkey and respectful dog pals.

Upon examination, our vets noted that Wreath has grade 2/4 periodontal disease, severe generalized wear and staining of his teeth with pulp exposure, multi-joint arthritis, and several small skin tags. He was started on fatty acids and joint supplements ongoing, and senior bloodwork and a dental cleaning with extractions are recommended. A full medical summary can be provided upon request.

No senior should spend their days in a shelter, and sweet Wreath here is of course no exception. He is currently on stray hold and will be available for rescue pick-up at 6pm on 11/26.

Please let us know if your organization can help!

Thank you,

The BARCS Rescue Team

Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS) New Address! 2490 Giles Rd, Baltimore, MD 21225 [email protected]| (410) 396-4695

Rescue pick-up hours: Monday-Friday: 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m

Adoption hours: Monday-Friday: 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, Inc. (BARCS) | 2490 Giles Rd | Baltimore, MD 21225 US

#dog rescue maryland #dog rescue #dog rescue baltimore maryland #dog adoption maryland #doglover #adopt a dog #cute animals #pets #fostering dogs

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wyola-normiss · 4 months ago

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The Seventh House (horary)

In horary astrology, the 7th house is associated with partnership, marriage and open enemies. When questions are asked about mutual understanding in a relationship, for example:

"When will the relationship with her husband improve?", the astrologer analyzes the position and interaction of the planets in this house. Temporary transits and progressions can indicate periods when there is a possibility of emotional recovery and harmonization.

When it comes to competition, for example, "Is my competitor strong in competition?", an astrologer can examine the 7th house in the context of an opponent to understand how his planets affect the dynamics of the confrontation. The position of the planets, as well as aspects to them, will help determine how competitive it will be in the upcoming trials.

Another frequently asked question is health, as in the case of "Will the doctor cure me of the disease?". An astrologer can consider the 7th house in connection with medical issues by analyzing the planets related to health and their interaction with the 7th house. This can provide clues about how effective the treatment will be and which periods are most favorable for recovery.

When analyzing the 7th house, astrology also takes into account the impact of relationships on the client's life.

For example, the question "How do I communicate better with my spouse?" It can be viewed through aspects of the planets located in the 7th house. The astrologer will investigate which planets are responsible for communication and interaction in order to create a recommendation for improving dialogue and mutual understanding. This can provide an understanding of which specific actions or behavioral changes will help to neutralize conflicts.

We must not forget about the importance of external factors, such as planetary transits, which can affect existing connections. For example, if the transit of Mars activates the 7th house, this may indicate possible conflicts, but also the possibility of resolving them through honest discussion.

An astrologer can also look at the 7th house in the context of Almuten, a planet with a dominant influence in this house, which will allow a deeper understanding of the nature of relationships and their dynamics. Also he may pay attention to the location of planets such as Mars and Jupiter, which may indicate a desire for independence or, conversely, to support and expand joint goals.

The First House (horary)- "I myself"

The Second House (horary) - "My resources"

The Third House (horary) -"Household"

The Fourth House (horary) - "Homeland"

The Firth House (horary) - "creativity"

The Sixth House (horary) - "ailments"

#astrology #horary astrology #astro observations

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beardedmrbean · 11 months ago

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A Minnesota man has been arrested in connection to a homicide case five months after a model was found stuffed in a fridge in a Los Angeles apartment last year.

Maleesa Mooney, 31, was murdered inside her apartment last September and was found with her wrists and ankles bound and a gag around her face. Her cause of death was labelled in an autopsy report as “homicidal violence.”

Magnus Daniel Humphrey, 41, who is on probation for federal narcotics offences, was taken into custody at his Minnesota home on an unrelated federal warrant, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.

Police said Humphrey is the “suspect responsible for the murder of Maleesa Mooney” and have filed murder charges against him.

Humphrey has waived extradition and will be transported back to Los Angeles to face charges, police added.

It is not yet clear what led investigators to connect Mr Humphrey with this case.

Mooney was found dead on 12 September in her apartment on the 200 block of South Figueroa Street after her family requested a police welfare check.

When Mooney’s body was discovered by responding officers, she was found “wedged inside the refrigerator,” with blood pooled on the floor outside of it, the autopsy report, obtained by KTLA, said.

The horrific details from the scene do not end there, however, as the autopsy report also said the model’s wrists and ankles were bound, tied to each other behind her back with a mix of various electrical cords.

An article of clothing was also fashioned to make an “apparent gag” which was stuffed in her mouth,” the report said.

She also had blunt force injuries, such as lacerations, abrasions and contusions, found on her face, head, back and upper left arm, the report said, according to KABC.

However, the injuries she received from blunt force trauma “are generally not considered acutely life-threatening on their own,” but they do acknowledge it was likely she was involved in a physical altercation before she died.

A toxicology test also found traces of cocaine use, but the role of alcohol or drugs in her death “is uncertain.”

Mooney’s sister, Jourdin Pauline, previously told People that at the time of her death, Mooney was two months pregnant.

Mooney’s death was previously reported alongside the death of another LA model, 32-year-old Nichole Coats, who was also found dead in her apartment.

At the time, the similarities between the two deaths, happening to two LA modes, both similar ages, and both in their apartments, made people, including Coats’ family members, suspicious that the cases could be connected.

However, police said in September that there was no evidence that the two cases were linked.

Coats’ death was ruled by the medical examiner as an accident due to “cocaine and ethanol toxicity.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

#nunyas news

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months ago

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By: Benjamin Ryan

Published: Feb 24, 2024

The movement backing gender-transition treatment for children is built on the claim that pediatric medical interventions are not only “medically necessary” – but truly “life saving.”

However, no researchers have ever tried to figure out whether this claim is true.

Until now.

A major new study out of Finland found that providing cross-sex hormones and gender-transition surgeries to adolescents and young adults didn’t appear to have any significant effect on suicide deaths.

What’s more, gender distress severe enough to send young people to a gender clinic wasn’t independently linked to a higher suicide death rate either.

What was independently tied to a greater chance of suicide in young adults?

A high number of appointments with mental-health specialists; in other words, severe mental health challenges.

And so, the researchers concluded two things: One, that suicide deaths were higher, but still rare in gender-distressed young people.

And two, that this group’s higher suicide rate was tied to the fact that they had a higher rate of severe psychiatric problems, not to their gender distress.

What these young people need most urgently, the study authors concluded, is comprehensive mental health care – and not necessarily controversial medical interventions.

This study gets to the heart of a fierce debate: Whether trans-identified youths’ high rate of mental health problems is mostly caused by society’s harsh judgment of trans people.

Or whether, as many skeptics argue, at least some young people might identify as trans as a way of dealing with mental health issues that are not driven by gender identity.

Erica Anderson, a trans woman, psychologist and the former head of USPATH, part of the trans-medicine association WPATH, said the new Finnish study is “going to make a big splash.”

She frowned upon a reportedly common question gender clinics ask of on-the-fence parents: “Would you rather have a living son or dead daughter?”

“It is most unethical to say that kind of thing to parents,” said Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, leader of the new study, published Feb. 17, and top adolescent psychiatrist at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. “It’s not based on facts.”

Dr. Marci Bowers, a gender-affirmation surgeon and president of WPATH, said it was time to refocus the conversation on medical interventions for young people.

Because “suicide is and has always been a poor way of measuring the efficacy of gender-affirming care,” she said.

Dr. Kaltiala’s research findings fly in the face of a vast and powerful coalition of supporters of gender-transition treatment for young people, who all claim it is life saving – including WPATH, major U.S. medical societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the ACLU, and LGBTQ groups like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign.

Dr. Kaltiala was once herself a supporter of gender-transition treatment for adolescents.

She launched one of Finland’s first pediatric gender clinics in 2011, but soon started having doubts.

Since then, multiple teams of researchers have systematically reviewed the available studies about gender-transition medicine for kids.

They all found the science subpar and uncertain.

For her new study, Dr. Kaltiala’s team relied on Finland’s nationalized health records.

They examined records on all 2,083 people who had their first visit to either of the nation’s two gender clinics at age 22 or younger—at 18 on average and as young as eight—from 1996 to 2019.

These researchers put together a comparison group of nearly 17,000 Finns. This included eight people for each gender-distressed person, matched to their age and birthplace.

There was an average of nearly 7 years of health information on each person, through June 2022.

Thirty-eight percent of the gender-distressed youths went on cross-sex hormones or received gender-transition surgeries.

Many started this treatment before age 18, Dr. Kaltiala said.

There were 55 deaths.

Twenty were suicides, including 7, or 0.3 percent, of the gender-distressed youths and 0.1 percent of the comparison group.

The findings that neither going to a gender clinic nor undergoing gender-transition treatment was tied to an independent significant difference in the suicide rate built on a 2023 study by Dr. Kaltiala.

That paper showed that after people received gender-transition treatment, they didn’t then see psychiatric specialists any less often.

This suggested that the treatment didn’t improve their mental health.

“We must not think that gender-reassignment alone is all the help that they need,” Dr. Kaltiala said of gender-distressed youths.

Paul Garcia-Ryan, president of Therapy First, which calls for counseling as the priority treatment for youth gender distress, pointed to guidelines that say journalists and doctors shouldn’t oversimplify suicide or say it’s an expected response to any one factor.

Doing so, Mr. Garcia-Ryan said, might actually cause “or worsen suicidal thoughts in vulnerable young people.”

It remains to be seen whether supporters of access to gender-transition medicine for teens will take the Finnish study’s findings to heart.

GLAAD, for one, has claimed that the “science is settled” regarding the benefits of such treatment.

But the science is complex and ever-evolving.

Groundbreaking and data-driven, these Finnish studies strongly suggest that the time has come to move away from claims that medical interventions are life saving for young people and increase the support for mental health care instead.

https://epi.washington.edu/news/gender-affirming-hormones-and-puberty-blockers-improve-mental-health-in-transgender-youth/

https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/051-1_Jack_Turban_Declaration.pdf

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/518954-vote-for-gender-affirmation-life-and-death-choice/

All of this reporting flouts established guidelines for reporting suicide, which is known to have a social contagion aspect to it.

Make no mistake, the narrative around "trans kid or dead kid" is not simply an accident of people not understanding guidelines for reporting about suicide. It's deliberate.

It's not just about manipulating parents into thinking they're going to lose their child if they don't comply with activist-driven medicalization, although that's certainly an objective.

It's also about terrifying people who think they're "trans" that if they don't get these drugs and surgeries, they'll kill themselves, and any attempts to sanely control this ongoing medical scandal are a calculated attempt to kill them. That's what the mythical "trans genocide" is about.

If we're being truly cynical, it almost seems like they want kids to kill themselves, to create a "Trans Floyd" moral panic and a 2020-like "reckoning."

#Benjamin Ryan #trans or suicide #suicide #mental health #mental health issues #gender ideology #queer theory #gender identity ideology #trans genocide #medical scandal #medical malpractice #medical corruption #religion is a mental illness

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caradoulasupport · 9 months ago

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The Benefits of a Postnatal Doula

How can a doula support you after the birth of your baby?

What is a postnatal doula?

A postnatal or postpartum doula can be defined as a non-medical professional who provides support to new parents and their families. Their focus includes post-birth recovery, changing family dynamics and newborn care. They provide informational, practical, emotional and physical support. It can be difficult to define the role as it is ever-changing and constantly evolving according to the needs of the family at a particular time. Oftentimes it requires a careful observation and response to what is happening in real time, possibly throwing well laid plans out the window after a sleepless night or in response to something unexpected coming up. This is the magic of a postnatal doula - whatever you need support with in a particular moment is exactly the reason for them being there.

The other magic of a postnatal doula is that - yes, they are there to support you to the best of their ability AND they are completely impartial, providing a calm, well-informed undercurrent of evidence-based information to let you assess any tricky situations that arise and come to a decision that suits your family. A postnatal doula who can quickly give you the correct information from reputable sources can prevent new parents from disappearing down the rabbit hole of questionable internet searches!

So when is the ideal time to start thinking about a postnatal doula? Ideally, during pregnancy equal consideration should be given to planning for the postpartum period, or 4th trimester, as in planning for the birth. There is a considerable amount of time and money invested in planning for the ideal birth, however, very often postpartum can be seen as a bit of an afterthought, although it lasts considerably longer than the birth! Some independent antenatal education classes will now focus more on how to prepare for the postpartum period as well as preparing for the birth. The end goal of pregnancy has been portrayed as a healthy mum and baby - however this is just the beginning of the journey for this new family! The postnatal period deserves to be given the same, if not more, consideration as planning for birth.

What measures are currently in place to support the mother once she has given birth?

Once a mother in Ireland has had her baby, she receives a visit from the Public Health Nurse within 72 hours which involves a neonatal examination and a maternal health assessment. This is followed by one postnatal check-up by the GP at 6 weeks post birth. If there is anything that requires further examination or treatment within this 6 week period the mother will be referred for further support, however outside of this period the onus is on the mother to follow up on any issues she may be experiencing. While the postpartum period is defined as the first 42 days after birth (or 6 weeks), it can also be referred to as the 4th trimester, if you consider the first 12 weeks postpartum. The postnatal period can actually last much longer than this, up to 12 months after the birth of the baby. The care that is provided by a postnatal doula can be crucial in filling the gap that currently exists for women in their postpartum care and may be essential in identifying underlying physical or mental health issues that would otherwise be missed in a perinatal health system that is overworked and under-resourced.

The mothers place in society

In today's society the idea of individuation and striving for independence has won out over community and building relationships outside of our immediate nuclear families. We are not supposed to parent in isolation, yet in many parts of the Western world, including Ireland, this is how it is evolving to be - parenting in our own little pockets of isolation. This is a major change from only a few decades ago, where Irish demography was often multigenerational in form, large in size and supported financially by a single male breadwinner.

Where does the mother fit into this society? While it is largely acknowledged that fathers are taking a much more active role in their children’s care than ever before, the main, day-to-day care of the children still remains with the mother. If the mother is not well supported, particularly in the 4th trimester, there is a much greater chance that her mental health will suffer in the long term, and the current 6 week window of care is not sufficient to support mothers and their mental health. Postnatal doulas are very well placed within the community to observe and provide a link between the mother and appropriate healthcare service providers in a timely manner if needed. The postnatal doula can also provide a link to community groups and help the new parents to feel integrated within this community enabling them to feel connected and confident in their new role as parents.

Embracing the 4th trimester as a rite of passage

In Western countries the notion of a “resting period” or a dedicated postpartum period of recovery, which uses traditional remedies and practices to help the mother to recover, is seen as a luxury and possibly a bit self-indulgent. In this social media age there is monumental pressure to “bounce back”, to be out and about with the baby instead of resting and recovering from a huge life event.

Matrescence is defined as the process of becoming a mother, and includes the physical, hormonal, emotional, psychological and relational changes that occur during this process. It was first described in the 1970’s by anthropologist Dana Raphael but as yet is very under-researched although more light is now being shone on this process thanks to emerging research in the area. Matrescence essentially highlights the importance of recognising the rite of passage of motherhood, and the right of every woman to honour their birth story and pass through this liminal space of the 4th trimester with acceptance and a sense of being held and supported by a network around you. One of the greatest benefits of a postpartum doula is this gift of being held as the mother. A doula will listen to, honour and support you through processing your birth experience; validate your feelings and eliminate any sense of isolation, shame or guilt around your personal experience of birth and motherhood or indeed celebrate a joyful birth experience. She will allow you to fully appreciate your birth so that you can then move on without holding on to parts of it that may impact your mental health later in your motherhood journey.

In areas of the world where traditional postpartum recovery practices are the norm the reported cases of postpartum depression are significantly low - Malaysia has a well established tradition of postnatal recovery, where the rate of postpartum depression is only 3.9%. The recent MAMMI study carried out in Ireland looked at maternal mental health in the first year postpartum and found that within this large Irish cohort that one in ten women reported moderate/severe anxiety symptoms (9.5%), more than one in ten reported moderate/severe depression symptoms (14.2%) and one in five reported moderate/severe stress (19.2%). This is in line with a rate of postnatal depression of between 10-15% internationally. This would suggest that the current model of 6 week postpartum care is insufficient to detect and provide adequate support for women’s mental health needs, with long-term implications for women and children.

Mothering the mother - the role of the postnatal doula

Much of the current research on the benefits a doula can provide has been conducted in the US and is primarily focused on the benefits of birth doulas on the type of labour a woman has. However there is also some research emerging on the benefits of postnatal doulas, particularly among those mothers with a low socioeconomic status, and the effects that a doula can have during the postpartum period.

It has been found that the presence of a postnatal doula with a first-time mother greatly enhanced the mothers self-confidence and that postnatal doula care can benefit mothers regardless of their socioeconomic status, particularly if they are supported well during the first month postpartum and have built a good relationship between the mother and her doula from late in pregnancy. Some of the main areas or domains of care that have been observed to benefit from postnatal doula care include:

Emotional support

Physical comfort

Self-care

Infant care

Information

Advocacy

Referral

Partner/Father support

Support mother/father with infant

Support mother/father with sibling care

Household organisation

I believe that one of the most important roles I have as a postnatal doula is within the domain of emotional support. Talking about matrescence and all of the parts of motherhood- including the parts that may carry shame for us - is the only way to help mothers feel less stigmatised and more normal in all aspects of becoming a mother. Of course experiencing matrescence without a support network, and without understanding the complexity of what is happening in your brain as a new mother only adds to feelings of not being enough, not being a “good” mother and a sense of failure that can lead to a diagnosis of postnatal depression. But the question is how much of maternal mental illness is biological and how much is an understandable response to the design of modern parenthood? One way to claim back the rite-of-passage of motherhood is to surrender to it, embrace every part of it and honour the transition that you have gone through as a mother and as parents. Planning for this postpartum period and putting the framework in place that allows you to be nurtured as the mother is fundamental to the process of matrescence. It is time to honour this monumental transition and enter into motherhood empowered, nurtured and with the confidence that the changes that are happening are normal and expected. Mothers should also be supported in such a way that if they do experience mental health issues that require medical support, that they are referred as quickly and efficiently as possible to the right health care professional - postnatal doulas are well placed in supporting families during the 4th trimester and beyond, to link mothers in with appropriate support when needed.

#matrescence #new mum #postpartum #doula

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