Read on Twitter
1./ A thread on bad science and medicine gone mad. One of the parties in the appeal against the High Court ruling on puberty blockers is @TheEndoSociety a US-based lobby group for doctors who prescribe hormones. So why might THEY be involved?
https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy
https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy
2./ The Society was founded as the Association for the Study of Internal Secretions by a medical conman Dr Henry Harrower in 1916 to promote gland extracts he claimed could cure almost any disease. Any resemblance to today is strictly coincidental. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/0003-4819-131-9-199911020-00012?journalCode=aim
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/0003-4819-131-9-199911020-00012?journalCode=aim
3./ In an article in 2013 the co-author of the Society's Transgender Guidelines reflected on how important was the Society's adoption. "There was an attitudinal shift to be able to say the Endocrine Society supports this." It would be milked mercilessly. https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/blocking-puberty-in-transgender-youth/
4./ The guidelines would now continually be quoted as medical gospel but how carefully had they been drawn up? What was the evidence behind them? Their co-author was Dr Norman Spack. Here he is talking about an early patient the CEO of @Mermaids_Gender, Susie Green's child. Yup.
5./ He admits in his @TEDTalks that he gave cross-sex hormones to her 13 year old and encouraged genital surgery at 16; an age illegal in the UK & US; and both counter to the Guidelines. Spack became an enthusiast for treating kids with puberty blockers after a trip to Holland.
6./ In the mid 1990s doctors there had begun giving kids GnRH agonists, to "pause" puberty. Spack now advocated for this "Dutch protocol" to be embraced elsewhere. But that approach had serious flaws which are dissected here brilliantly by Michael Biggs.
7./ There had been no animal trials, nor human trials with a control group. Success was wildly exaggerated. The first patient (B) was revealed later to be deeply depressed. Spack though seemed more struck with how the kids looked; which he describes here as ..."beautiful!"
8./ In the 90s most trans patients were male to female. I suspect the "beautiful" transgirl ideal helped skew some doctors' judgement. Here's Spack on the need to block testosterone from changing a "trans girl". He compares two twins in an image "that says it all" he claims.
9./ Is it me or is there almost a revulsion in Spack's description of how the boy twin changed? The photo is carefully selected. The boy looks sullen but the smiling girl looks radiant and stares straight at us. It's as if to say she's been saved from all that awful maleness.
10./This biased photo remained a touchstone for puberty blocker advocates for years. Here's Dr Joshua Safer lecturing to medics about the same image and almost sounding terrified of the effects of testosterone on a young male-bodied kid. Who is Dr Safer?
11./He's the guy who is quoted in the press release from the @TheEndoSociety about the High Court case. He also rewrote Spack's Trans Guidelines for the Society. What's astonishing is how ropey are both doctors' arguments in favour of puberty blockers. Take Spack first.
12./ Get this. His bizarre defence of puberty blockers is that they are the only alternative to giving cross-sex hormones!
And we can't give those at age 10-12 cos kids that age could not possibly understand the radical impact on their bodies and fertility of those hormones.
And we can't give those at age 10-12 cos kids that age could not possibly understand the radical impact on their bodies and fertility of those hormones.
13./ But Spack admits 100% of his patients on blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones. So how can kids consent to PBs if they're the first stage in a lifelong medicalisation that risks their fertility? He claims they know they've been born in the wrong body: absolutely!
14./ Spack stops at nothing to win the argument including wilful exaggerations of the risks from suicide. Even Polly Carmichael from the Tavistock is on the record as saying "trans kids" are at no greater risk of suicide than kids with say mental health issues such as bulimia.
15./ Spack/Safer claim puberty blockers are necessary because 'gender identity' is biologically innate. Their @TheEndoSociety Statement cites 4 pieces of evidence including "associations of certain brain scan or staining patterns with gender identity". https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy/position-statements/transgender-health16./
https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy/position-statements/transgender-health16./
16./ If that sounds convincing wait till u hear Dr Safer talking to fellow medics where he describes the scans as "weak evidence", admits they've never been replicated and throws up his hands, saying "well at least they're pretty pictures". Some bloody evidence!
17./ The other examples are just as weak. He refers to a study of a group of genetic males with Differences of Sexual Development (or "intersex") who were raised socially as girls. At adolescence they decided they were boys. This proves the opposite of what he thinks it does.
18./ It surely proves biological sex is immutable? How could such unconvincing rot have become Endocrine Society policy? In this fascinating podcast endocrinologist @will_malone tells @stellaomalley3 the policy wasn't ever allowed to be challenged. https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/hormonal-interventions-from-fringe-to-mainstream-a-conversation-with-dr-will-malone
https://gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/episode/hormonal-interventions-from-fringe-to-mainstream-a-conversation-with-dr-will-malone
19./ If it had been their evidence might have improved. @TheEndoSociety claims, for example, the fact more identical twins than fraternal twins are both transgender is proof of a genetic link. But would you be surprised if two identical twins both adored football or had bulimia?
20./ You might put it down to the close psychological bonds between many identical twins and the fact that both might respond in the same way to identical parenting issues, shared trauma, the impact of powerful social media or peer influences. In other words...duhh!
21./ Advocates insist blockers have no long-term impact. But we now know from animal trials there IS long-term damage to cognitive function. Punk News ridiculed those trials on sheep. But it was research on sheep that led to the discovery of blockers. https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1338994912902123524?s=20
https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1338994912902123524?s=20
22./ Most advocates of blockers accept there are bone density issues. How does Dr Safer suggest we might solve that? He suggests we give cross sex hormones much earlier "once we're really convinced they're trans for the long term". Yep coming soon to a clinic near you!
23./ @TheEndoSociety had to disavow its founder. Let's hope it will do the same soon with promoters of puberty blockers. They've wreaked havoc with their web of half-truths. Here's Spack arguing surgically constructed vaginas have "fooled gynaecologists".
24./ Where is his acknowledgement of possible pain and problems? His blasé over-optimism is in sharp contrast to the experiences of many trans patients including recently Jazz Jennings. Medicine is always in trouble when it presents one-sided medical miracles. Ask Henry Harrower.
25./ Thousands of kids are being told by doctors who will gain financially they will be happier if they give up their birthright of a normal adolescence. The price many will pay in the future will come back to haunt the Endocrine Society and its members. And us.
