Blockers And The Lies

Now the British government has added their two pence. The right-wing conservatives lies on puberty blockers has spread to Britain and Canada…

NHS England to stop prescribing puberty blockers
Children will no longer routinely be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.
BBC News
By Josh Parry
12 March 2024

The decision comes after a review found there was "not enough evidence" they are safe or effective.

Puberty blockers, which pause the physical changes of puberty, will now only be available as part of research.

It comes weeks before an independent review into gender identity services in England is due to be published.

An interim report from the review, published in 2022 by Dr Hilary Cass, had earlier found there were "gaps in evidence" around the drugs and called for a transformation in the model of care for children with gender-related distress.

Dr Cass's review follows a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which saw an increase from 250 per year to over 5,000 in 2022.

•     New youth gender services further delayed
•     Child gender clinic closure leaves uncertain future
•     What does transgender mean and what does the law say?

Puberty supressing hormones - more commonly known as puberty blockers - work by suppressing the release of hormones that cause puberty and are often prescribed to children questioning their gender as a way of stopping physical changes such as breast development or facial hair.

Fewer than 100 young people in England are currently prescribed puberty blockers by the NHS. They will all able to continue their treatment.

NHS England held a public consultation on their usage and last year introduced an interim policy which stated they should only be given as part of research trials or in "exceptional circumstances".

The BIG LIE… “found there were ‘gaps in evidence’”

And the lie has spread to the west coast of Canada to Alberta.

How Alberta’s proposed trans youth rules fit into a polarized international landscape

RCI
By Joel Dryden, Jennifer Lee · CBC News
March 11, 2024


Legislation affecting transgender and non-binary youth and adults expected this fall

It's been a little more than a month since the Alberta government announced a planned fall rollout  of legislation focused around top and bottom surgeries, puberty blockers, hormone therapies and other elements of what's referred to as gender-affirming care.

Canadian doctors, nurses and medical groups  have pushed back against the move, while an open letter was released by 36 Alberta academics, predominantly from law schools, asking the province to reconsider  the changes.

The measures in question — the strictest transgender youth rules  in the country — are part of a fraught, polarized debate that has only recently  entered Alberta's political landscape but have already been subjects of great controversy in Saskatchewan  and New Brunswick .

They have long been the subject of battles fought by lawmakers and courts  in the United States, where gender-affirming care for minors is endorsed by a number of major U.S. medical associations, including the American Medical Association  and the American Academy of Pediatrics .

But though they have long held support from those U.S.-based medical organizations, in recent years, traditionally right-leaning states have taken a different view of the issue. More than 20 states have moved to ban gender-affirming care, according to tracking (new window) by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan organization focused on health policy. Many of those bans are currently subject to lawsuits.

The Republican acid has spread far and wide.

So what the research on puberty blockers? I turn to Pub Med for the research, Pub Med is run by the U.S. National Institute of Health and it is a data base of all federally financed research here in the U.S.

Is puberty delaying treatment ‘experimental treatment’?
By Simona Giordano and Søren Holm
Int J Transgend Health. 2020; 21(2): 113–121.
Published online 2020 Apr 11. doi: 10.1080/26895269.2020.1747768

 

In 2019 five clinicians working at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London in the United Kingdom (UK) resigned (The Times, 2019), and one of the governors of the Trust also resigned (The Guardian, 2019b). Among other reasons, they adduced that puberty ‘blockers’1 are prescribed experimentally to gender diverse youth, without sufficiently robust evidence around efficacy and safety, and without sufficiently robust diagnosis.

One issue that has emerged from these disputes is that there seems to be lack of clarity around whether or not clinicians, patients, families, and policy-makers should consider puberty delaying intervention as experimental, and, if so, in what ways. This concern has also been raised in the academic literature (Biggs, 2019; Henegan & Jefferson, 2019).

In this editorial we unpack and analyze the claim that prescribing puberty delaying medications is experimental and we show that provision of puberty delaying medications to adolescents with gender dysphoria is not experimental, or at least not any more experimental than standard pediatric practice when there are no licensed2 treatment options for a pediatric patient population.

We will analyze three issues in particular: 1) Does the fact that the drugs used for inducing and maintaining puberty delay are prescribed ‘off label’ make the use experimental?; 2) does the fact that the drugs do not have market authorization for puberty delay in gender diverse children make the use experimental?; and 3) does the fact that there are no randomized controlled trials of puberty delay in gender diverse children make the use experimental?

[…]

Conclusions

Puberty delaying medications are currently provided off label to adolescents affected by gender dysphoria and this particular use cannot be investigated by a RCT. We have shown that this does not mean they are experimental drugs or are provided experimentally. Whether or not these (or even approved drugs) are ethically prescribed depends on whether they are likely to serve the patient’s health interests based on the evidence available at the time of prescription.

The published literature provides insight into the likely benefits of GnRHa. In summary, they reduce the patient’s dysphoria (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011, p. 467), reduce the invasiveness of future surgery (for example, mastectomy in trans men; treatment for facial and body hair, thyroid chondroplasty to improve appearance and cricothyroid approximation to raise the pitch of the voice in trans women) (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171); GnRHa is correlated with improved psychosocial adaptation (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2003, p. 171; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011, p. 467) and reduced suicidal ideation and attempts. Hembree noted increased suicidal ideation where blockers were not given (Hembree, 2011; see further, Imbimbo et al., 2009; Kreukels & Cohen-Kettenis, 2011; Murad et al., 2010; Spack, 2008).

In light of the collected and published evidence, it seems that the international clinical community has found a sensible point of balance: GnRHa can be prescribed to adolescents who experience strong and distressing dysphoria. GnRHa is not usually recommended for prepubertal children, when there is still significant uncertainty around the future gender identity development trajectory. The reaction to pubertal development will be part of the clinical assessment. In this way, most likely GnRHa will only be given to those who most likely will choose to continue to transition, but should the patient change their mind, then no permanent changes will have been effected (whereas, should an untreated person transition, permanent changes of pubertal development will only be partially reversible surgically). Parents, clinicians and significant others should continue to be open to the idea that the gender identity development of an adolescent might fluctuate even after puberty and therefore that the provision of gender affirming medical treatment is a separate decision from the earlier provision of puberty delaying treatment.

But this will not stop the lies the right-wing conservatives with their lies. They don’t care what the facts are, they want to stir up their base and create doubt in others.

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Meanwhile down to one of our favorite state to dislike, Florida…

Gov. Ron DeSantis' war on 'woke' appears to be losing steam in Florida
PBS: All Things Considered
By Greg Allen
March 15, 2024


In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis' campaign against ideas he considers "woke" has run into some roadblocks.

A court settlement this week blunted his Parental Rights in Education Act, a law that critics call Don't Say Gay. And earlier this month, a federal court blocked another key measure that DeSantis introduced in 2021 and called the Stop WOKE Act. It marked the beginning of DeSantis' efforts to reshape how Floridians view and teach issues involving race and gender identity.

The Stop WOKE Act banned instruction in schools or mandatory training in workplaces that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed because of their race, sex or national origin. Other bills and regulations soon followed, targeting programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion. For decades, DEI programs as they're known have worked to promote fair treatment of underrepresented groups.

DeSantis believes DEI programs that focus on issues such as race and sexual orientation are unconstitutional and discriminatory. "They call it equity," he said when introducing the Stop WOKE Act. "Just understand, when you hear equity used, that is just an ability for people to smuggle in their ideology."

Politically, the Stop WOKE Act, which was later renamed the Individual Freedom Act was a winner for DeSantis. It helped mobilize conservatives in Florida, helping him win reelection in 2022 by a wide margin. Legally though, it ran into problems.

You have to consider two things. First the Republicans don’t want us educated because educated people think for themselves. The second is the right-wing conservatives believe that being LGBTQ+ is a choice, they do not believe we are born this way. They think one day we sat down and thought “Gee, I want to be trans, it want to be beat-up, kicked upon, discriminated against, and just made to feel like shit.

*****

Remember:

"R" is for reverse.

"D" is for forward.

Don't let them take us back to the 1950s