The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.
One Saturday morning in September 2022, Terrence Steyer, the dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, placed an urgent call to a student. Just a year prior, the medical student, Thomas Agostini, had won first place at a university-sponsored event for his graduate research on transgender pediatric patients. He also had been featured in a video on MUSC’s website highlighting resources that support the LGBTQ+ community.
Now, Agostini and his once-lauded study had set off a political firestorm. Conservative activists seized on one line in particular in the study’s summary — a parenthetical noting the youngest transgender patient to visit MUSC’s pediatric endocrinology clinic was 4 years old — and inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of a gender transition. Elon Musk amplified the false claim, tweeting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” That led federal and state lawmakers to frantically ask top MUSC leaders whether the public hospital was in fact helping young children medically transition. The hospital was not; its pediatric transgender patients did not receive hormone therapy before puberty, nor does it offer surgical options to minors.
Medicalization of trans children, even those who are entering puberty or beyond, is a bad idea. There needs to be more research on the safety of puberty blockers and cross sex endogenous hormones for long term medical outcomes including cancer and heart disease risks. Once you are an adult, sure, do whatever you want to your body; but there is a different ethical consideration for minors.
Ideally you will have received a series of vaccines throughout your lifetime. Anti-science people aren’t truly anti-vax: they’re anti-THIS-vax, like their 18th vaccination is somehow the poison.
You’re not a doctor. There have been studies and there will be more.
What about the ethical consideration of teens suffering and killing themselves because of gender dysphoria? Does that not matter?
This isn’t some “nice to have” this is important medical treatment to save lives, improve quality of life, improve outcomes.
Politicians have no fucking business denying healthcare to trans people.
The “they will die if they don’t get gender affirming care” narrative is so harmful. Women who should qualify for gender affirming care (eg, hair removal from PCOS-induced hirsutism) aren’t considered the same way. Do their feelings matter less? Are they really commiting suicide in large numbers because they do not have this treatment (perhaps it’s unaffordable because health insurance doesn’t cover it)?
Do you know a lot of girls with PCOS who are being bullied to the point of violence? Because that’s exactly what happened to the trans girl I grew up with 30 years ago. Long before she ever said she was a girl or presented as a girl in public. When she just “looked like” an effeminate little boy, another child wrapped her scarf around her neck and around a piece of playground equipment and started pulling her off the ground by her throat.
You know why? Because she was wearing a glittery purple scarf. And you know what the school administration did about it? Not one fucking thing. Her mother and my mother had to go on a crusade to even get the incident acknowledged.
Yeah, I wonder why trans kids have such high suicide rates. It’s not magic, you ignorant FART. You’re part of the problem driving these kids to experience high suicide rates.
(Feminism Appropriating Radical Transphobe, for anyone who isn’t familiar with this much more appropriate acronym for a TERF.)
Why does every major medical organization and over a million doctors disagree with you?
Why does every major medical organization and over a million doctors disagree with you?
No, not really and I don’t know what you base that on.
KI, the largest medical research center in Sweden and one of the largest in the world did a systemic study on the research basis of hormone treatment and concluded that treating gender dysphoria in children should only be considered experimental.
Yes really. Your study suggests doing more studies, not that the effects were negative (because if they were, the conclusion would be no further studies.) At the end of the paper, it also pointed out newer studies not included in the 196 studies out of the 10,000 it pretends to have looked it that found the benefits did exist (nd even then, it really only looked at a couple dozen studies exhaustively).
The biases that your study shows are known, and fucking obvious to anyone that has talked to a trans person once in their lifetime: There aren’t many long-term studies. This is due to obvious reasons, like discrimination, lack of support, and higher chance of being murdered, which most people don’t want. The study also seemed to show that the bone density issue wasn’t as pronounced as some nay-sayers seem to think, but they bury that in the data analysis and hide behind a more hardline in the synopsis. Additionally, you can’t really do a randomized approach in this case because of fucking ethical concerns! Obviously!!! Randomly giving out hormones seems like a bad idea, both to people that want it and people that don’t!
But, you don’t really give a shit because you didn’t read the study, and also you hate trans people, and that’s what you actually care about.
Ah yes, you have one ‘health board’ that was conspicuously taken over by TERF ideologues, which then started spouting junk science and ignoring the actual medical professionals. That totally trumps all the reputable medical orgs.
Imagine everything about you is exactly the same, but you were born with the wrong body parts and as a result your had to spend your entire childhood pretending to be the opposite sex. It’s not just some adult choice you make like going to college, it’s you.
Your points are valid, but there are moral implications to both sides and it’s disgusting how ignorant and close-minded idiot politicians and billionaires like Musk are about it while actual medical professionals are trying their best to navigate these complex situations. No science will ever change their minds, this is an extension of an ongoing campaign against all trans people, equating them with “groomers” and dudes trying to sneak into girl locker rooms or win sports games. More distractions from the real enemies of human decency and free societies.
If I were a child now, I would potentially be pushed to be trans or NB. I was a tomboy child with a solid interest in math and science. I had a fraught childhood with a medical surgery pushed on me (it could have waited). If I were presented with this idea, maybe I would have thought it fits me, especially because at least certain segments of the trans theory/argument seems to hinge on enforcing gender roles. Turns out, I’m just a woman in STEM.
Literal right-wing propaganda. “ThEy PuSh KiDs To Be TrAnS.” You’re a disgusting person.
Edit: This user is also a mod on a lemmy.world community! Wtf. Remove this fucker.
Imagine being this stupid. Well, I suppose you don’t have to.
Consider talking to a trans person and how they found their identity, or learning more about the ways gender identity is expressed or how gender influences society, or maybe just touch grass every once in a while instead of being a shitty person pretending to know something you clearly don’t.
It’s a flat out lie that kids are pushed to be trans.
Most kids with gender dysphoria are lucky if their parents even support them at all. If anything the parents push kids away from it, as is the case with my kid’s friend. In the worst cases parents even reject the kid altogether. They think they’re doing the best thing for their kid but in fact it is exactly the opposite.
Trans kids often face bigotry and persecution and violence. And you think most parents, knowing this, would want that for their kid unless it was obviously what the kid wants??
Also keep in mind that just because you were a tomboy but not trans doesn’t mean gender dysphoria doesn’t exist.
If I were a child now, I would potentially be pushed to be trans or NB.
No that’s not how that works. People aren’t “pushed” into becoming trans, let alone into a medical transition. Trans people, especially trans youths, usually have to fight tooth and nail to have their identities taken seriously, and even harder to access healthcare.
especially because at least certain segments of the trans argument seems to hinge on enforcing gender roles.
This is just such tired nonsense. I have never met a community more supportive of people breaking gender norms than transgender and non-binary people.
Medical use of puberty blockers has been approved by the FDA and used since 1993… There were trans participants of the original study who were 13 years old during the trial in 1988 which means the first people to receive this as teens are now 48 years old… Also that trial was based on a lot of information we already had on intersex paitents and people with horomone related endocrine disorders.
There is a lot more long term data than you think. This need for “MORE RESEARCH!” ignores what has already done and is just a tactic to move the goal posts so there never is enough reasonable burden of proof.
There are plenty of studies. The “no studies” thing is a bad faith argument from deliberately misunderstanding the way medical studies work. The theoretical ideal of a double blind study has serious ethical problems when it involves giving a placebo to someone who would be seriously harmed by being denied care, so not all studies are done that way.
I don’t really buy the ‘more medical research’ argument. When is enough enough? Shouldn’t there already be an abundance of cases where there are issues considering these procedures have been going on for decades?
I do, however, buy the significantly less popular argument that these kids might make the wrong decision and then come to regret it later. This goes both ways.
There is actually a fair amount of trans regret that exists where people who transitioned as adults due to a number of factors have to get over the jealousy and regret that comes from comparing their transitions to the ones that other people experienced with transition during puberty. It’s a thing for sure amongst trans femmes particularly because not passing comes with so many downsides and dangers.
It’s useful to remember that a LOT of care is made to ensure that the choice is made with everybody as informed as they possibly can be which is why puberty blockers are used to buy more time before making a decision what puberty is going to look like. The main team for a trans youth involves a specialist therapist, a social worker, a pediatrician and an endocrinologist but nothing happens if the parent or guardian doesn’t sign off. There is a lot to know which is why if you ever meet someone who transitioned early they know their shit.
Those who do come to regret their transition (which is actually a lot lower than almost any surgery due to the care taken beforehand) are also usually not super bitter. Like they acknowledge that their situation sucks do not get me wrong… But most of them know a lot of other trans people because they reach out to find people in their situation. They also see how those people’s lives have been radically changed for the better by the going through the process. The reason a lot of them don’t speak out is because they would be imperiling something that they know is lifesaving for people they know and they have first hand knowledge about the care that was taken on their behalf.
(Or they were able to somehow get semilegal diy hormones while still a minor)
As for detransitioners, I don’t see that as a good reason for not speaking out (not telling them what to do ofc it’s their decision). But staying quiet opens up more space for people who do claim it ruined their lives. So they speak unopposed and get fox news TV spots and book deals and promote more gatekeeping to protect the children. While afaik in reality most people who regret/detransition do it because of transphobia from their relatives or their workplace or smth
There lies the contradiction. How can there be more studies when everyone is fighting against it? You just said two totally opposing things.
I did not. There are many ways the application of hormones can be studied, including to populations who take them for other medical reasons and animal models. The current application of these drugs to children amounts to an wide unregulated medical experiment; typically medical studies require strong oversight from ethics boards.
There are some truly sad stories of childhood detransitioners, like Chloe Cole.
So you’re just making stuff up to get angry about. Big studies show de-transition rates are drastically below rates of regret for most common surgeries, including medically-necessary knee surgery, and cosmetic breast augmentation (which teenage cis girls get, and regret, all the time).
Many de-transtioners are just bullied out of medical care by people like yourself, only to re-transition later. The most common reasons cited for detransition were pressure from a parent (36%), transitioning was too hard (33%), too much harassment or discrimination (31%), and trouble getting a job (29%).
Supporting trans kids is mostly just about clothes/name/pronouns, and the only thing they’re offered is puberty blockers, which were used safely in cisgender children with precocious puberty for decades before people like you started distorting the facts.
You’re just another bigot spreading medical misinformation in a bad-faith attempt to block medical care for a stigmatized minority group, and you should feel bad about it. Shame.
Literal ignorance. There are already studies.
“GnRHa treatment did not seem to have a particularly adverse effect on reproductive function or bone growth.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342775/
Puberty blockers only with social transition until age 18 are the standard of care given to the trans girl I grew up with 30 years ago. She didn’t start exogenous hormones or surgery until she was a legal adult. None of this is new and the people you’re listening to are literally just making things up.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798007
How do you propose doing research other than through informed consent from willing volunteers? Let alone that this whole chain of events even stemmed from a research paper! How are they supposed to do the research you said they need to do, when they’re actively punished for doing it?
If we don’t know then isn’t it a coin toss if the adverse effects of the trans healthcare are worse than the adverse effects of not receiving it? Unfortunately we don’t always have 100% knowledge of how things are going to turn out when it comes to health issues and we have to make the best of what we do know. Which should be left to healthcare professionals and their patients to work out together what is best. Not fucking politicians.
Treating them with/for what?
They’re willfully using vague language because they know talking specifics weakens their argument.
It’s a pretty common tactic these days, so I always ask for specifics or point out that they are not being given.
The headline is misleading because trans teens can still be treated.
I wonder what the same people criticizing trans health care as “mutilation of children” think of intersex babies having genital surgery forced upon them to align their genitals with gender binary ideals.
And just before anyone has a chance to say it, trans healthcare for teens is okay despite them not being able to consent because if they don’t choose quickly then one of the options is going to be forced upon them.
It’s like a child standing on train tracks with a train speeding toward them and the child expressing that they’d like to get out of the way while people telling them “No! You’re not old enough to make that decision!”
It’s like a child standing on train tracks with a train speeding toward them and the child expressing that they’d like to get out of the way while people telling them “No! You’re not old enough to make that decision!”
Awful analogy, even if your point is sound. We should focus on the topic at hand, instead of trying to pivot to literal life-or-death analogies. It’s a tactic people use to derail discussion instead of engage in it. Now instead of focusing on the topic at hand, we need to focus on how accurate your analogy is. It’s more fruitful to just leave the analogy at home and try to have your relevant arguments stand on their own.
Lots of people on these forums will disagree, though.
And besides, the Hospital in the article doesn’t even do surgeries on minors, only hormone treatment. There is no mutilation involved whatsoever.
It’s not, but it happens to males, so no one cares. I certianly wasn’t consulted about it, and have only been ridiculed when I’ve suggested it should have been my choice.
Trans women certainly care. We didn’t ask for a lot of things, but circumcision still adds insult to injury.
The awful truth is that few people want to address fucked up shit. Almost everyone suffers from something forced upon us for no good reason, so if anything we need to support one another and work to end this crap.
You’re ridiculed because everyone knows that 99% of men wouldn’t choose to be circumcised if they had to do it as an adult. Yet because we do it to babies it’s fine.
I am amazed that health companies are not penalized for discrimination on which human beings they treat. Sorry, but that makes no sense.
Well if you decide that it’s religion you can hurt people by deciding that their medical care isn’t something your god approves of. And no you don’t need to find sufficient text or historical justification
Wasn’t there a case before SCOTUS where they held only “closely held beliefs” (or some shit) was allowed?
I can’t find the actual case or verbage but basically it made it possible to force, say, spaghetti monster believers to adopt laws against their beliefs. Essentially paving the way for Christian nationalism.
Penalized? The people in goverment are bigots who want the hospitals to discriminate.
There are constitutional guarantees that preclude it. Just needs someone to take it to court.
the neat part is the American health care system always finds a new way of disappointing everyone.
what’s truly upsetting is that the few trans people that may need to go to that hospital for the fastest health care are going to find out the shitty way they’ve been blacklisted.
there is probably a good legal case against this misinformation but how many trans have the time and energy to fight backdoor politics?
Yeah exactly, I’m trying to afford rent and stave off burnout too. I spent years doing activism but I’m almost 30 and I’m exhausted. And even when we do fight we’re a third of a percent of the population and economically disadvantaged before you take into account the expenses of transitioning (fortunately I’m past most of it, but spending my first years out of college saving up for a $20000 surgery was a serious financial hit)
And all this for what? My state government doesn’t give half a shit what we want. I’ll keep trying to vote them out but they realized they don’t even actually have to do what courts say. The courts won’t actually punish the legislature, just the state coffers if that.
Have they really been ‘blacklisted’, or are they just unable to get certain procedures done?
It can be both. There are cases of paramedics refusing to treat trans women, to the point where they die.
Doctors will also assume that any medical issue you have is due to your hormones and not treat you. I passed a kidney stone on my own because I was hurting in the “wrong” place.
This is the private free market at work.
Long term thinking is what is needed, the reality is that many things like space travel and even construction would be much better if we all recognised that everyone deserves access to have a holistic understanding of things, not like how it is now with engineering theory in the West, half baked practicals, and the flip side of the coin over in the East with lots of hardware availability, old textbooks, but next to no design software or systems level engineering to incorporate with. Sure it’s great to differentiate skill sets but some systems are like Babylon, the less holistic and overlapping knowledge we have, the more communication issues and short term design problems we all come across
