Data in another study [1] shows that 50.5% percent of patients who have been treated with these hormones reported suicidal ideation in the last 12 months, and 37% have reported severe psychological distress in the past month.
The same study later concludes that "This study strengthens recommendations by the Endocrine Society and WPATH for this treatment to be made available for transgender adolescents who want it." (!)
[1] https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/145/2/e20191...?
Perhaps they continued to hormone treatment because they were happy, or perhaps they continued because they had been set on a social and clinical pathway with no off-ramp.
"This is the first study in which associations between access to pubertal suppression and suicidality are examined. There is a significant inverse association between treatment with pubertal suppression during adolescence and lifetime suicidal ideation among transgender adults who ever wanted this treatment. These results align with past literature, suggesting that pubertal suppression for transgender adolescents who want this treatment is associated with favorable mental health outcomes."
The parent cited a report that claims 98% of people are "happy" after receiving hormonal treatment. I thought it was an interesting claim, and someone might have a reason to be very encouraged by that.
Another paper that I cited has data that shows that large percentages of people who have had hormonal treatment are experiencing psychological suffering. It also shows that large percentages of people who have NOT had hormonal treatment are experiencing psychological suffering.
I'm not making any conclusions. I'm just bringing some data.
Have you considered whether that's prior to treatment, or early on, when the treatment had only just begun? It's relevant to know that trans people often have depression and suicidality-related comorbidities, commonly caused by their inability to transition, or access treatments that will help them do so.
The study you linked also said, "those who received treatment with pubertal suppression, when compared with those who wanted pubertal suppression but did not receive it, had lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation"
I'd say being less suicidal is a definition of happy, never mind the evidence of pretty much any trans person saying how literally life-changing access to HRT and affirming medical care has been for them.
Preface: I believe gender dysphoria is real suffering.
From the paper: [1]
Have You Ever Had [Pubertal Suppression] for Your Gender Identity or Gender Transition?
Yes, n=89, of which reported suicidal ideation in the last 12 months: 45 (50.6%)
No, n=3405, of which reported suicidal ideation in the last 12 months: 2204 (64.8%)
The paper [1] concludes "Among transgender adults in the United States who have wanted pubertal suppression, access to this treatment is associated with lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation. This study strengthens recommendations by the Endocrine Society and WPATH for this treatment to be made available for transgender adolescents who want it."
I think the only conclusion we can make, is that we have some sick puppies on our hands, and they need our love and compassion. I do not the data gives us cause for celebration. I do not think the data makes a strong connection between hormonal treatment of children and long-term positive outcomes. I understand there is a chicken and egg problem here.
[1]https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/145/2/e20191...?
You're missing the point entirely, and you're /not engaging in good faith/.
You're absolutely being disingenuous, and the comment was derogatory and inappropriate regardless of how colloquial you may choose to see it as.
"Sick puppies" is condescension and mockery, not levity -- but as you continue to not engage in good faith, it seems you're clearly aware of that. The fact that you are unwilling or unable to engage with serious discussions with even basic respect shows how disingenuous you are.
So no, when it comes to children's lives, there is no "levity" when it comes to referring to them as "sick puppies." Grow up.
You posted over 40 comments in this flamewar and repeatedly broke the site guidelines. That's way over the top, and not at all ok.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Read the abstract. The "included" the people they wanted to include, not at random, not compared to other groups who chose not to go through the procedure. Considering that these researchers receive funding for their chair from a growing multi-billion industry this is even more reasons to be skeptical of the way they "included" their sample.
And that's not even addressing that they did not check if they were "happy", only that they continued to take hormone therapy when they were about 20, that's way too early in adulthood considering that the pre-frontal cortex finishes developing in the late 20s.
And the there's the sunk-cost fallacy that of people not admitting of making a bad and irreversible decision.
And researchers in academia are afraid of opposing the trans actvists.
Secondly, plenty research is funded by "multi-billion industry," or government, or defence. What's your point? You're just finger-pointing without evidence of reason to be "skeptical."
Given how unhappy trans people can be prior to transitioning, if someone did somehow go through the significant hoops needed to transition, and eventually feel the need to destransition -- which is exceedingly rare -- they detransition, they don't just live miserably and accept a "sunk-cost fallacy." That's ridiculous.
As for the hand wavy "the trans activists" boogeyman, please cite sources of researchers in academia being "afraid of opposing" them -- and evidence of who "the trans activists" you're referring to, actually are.
The only issue in academia is so-called "gender critical" academics invalidating the existence of trans people, often violating academic policy in refusing to respect their existence, then shouting loudly when they get called out on it.
Nobody is refusing to research or publish because of fear of "opposing the trans activists" at all -- there isn't some cabal of trans people trying to silence academia, that's ridiculous, and flies in the face of what academia is all about.
I was about to write a whole paragraph about control groups but you can do it by yourself: https://www.britannica.com/science/control-group
In particular: "It is important that every aspect of the experimental environment be as alike as possible for all subjects in the experiment. If conditions are different for the experimental and control groups, it is impossible to know whether differences between groups are actually due to the difference in treatments or to the difference in environment."
> Secondly, plenty research is funded by "multi-billion industry," or government, or defense.
Yes and it has created the "publish or perish" culture which then caused the reproducibility crisis. But that's not the issue here. The real issue is when the funders have a vested financial (and political) interest in one result over the other. The pharmaceutical industry is getting successfully sued years after years for billions of dollars over this kind of stuff. Conflict of interest is a real concern for scientific studies especially in the non-exact sciences.
> Given how unhappy trans people can be prior to transitioning, if someone did somehow go through the significant hoops needed to transition, and eventually feel the need to detransition -- which is exceedingly rare -- they detransition, they don't just live miserably and accept a "sunk-cost fallacy." That's ridiculous.
"If X then surely Y"... You make a lot of statements without backing it up. AFAIK there are no proper studies that has been done on a significant long term lowering of suicide-rates after medical transitioning before adulthood. And you mix up de-transitioning (which is actually impossible to achieve considering the irreversible effects) with the comparison of not transitioning because study (and others) didn't have a control group.
> As for the hand wavy "the trans activists" boogeyman, please cite sources of researchers in academia being "afraid of opposing" them -- and evidence of who "the trans activists" you're referring to, actually are.
It's not "hand waving". There are many examples of when researcher's results portray medical transitioning as a net negative then they face backlash, forced retraction and loss of funding or face character assassination from news articles and social media.
https://4thwavenow.com/tag/petition-plos-one-brown-universit... https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2021/01/21/oxford-union-critic... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7683207/Researcher-...
And if you've been around academia in the recent years then you know this is the case. Being on the bad side of the trans-activists means no funding, no chair and worse.
> The only issue in academia is so-called "gender critical" academics invalidating the existence of trans people, often violating academic policy in refusing to respect their existence,
You prove my previous point... They are "an issue" to be skeptical of gender theory and its applications. If they do not agree, they are "invalidating their existence".
> then shouting loudly when they get called out on it.
You mean like this: https://youtu.be/vMSmUzDt-7U
> Nobody is refusing to research or publish because of fear
Fear is a strong force when the threat is obviously real. Notice how you have to claim that the suppression of academics doesn't exist because you know it's wrong and then flag them as "an issue" and "denying of their existence" by "violating academic policy" at the same time.
> there isn't some cabal of trans people trying to silence academia
If I showed you cabals of people chasing down professors off campus for their views regarding gender would you change your mind?
The irony is that this question (and lots of others related to it) is, in fact, amenable to scientific, truth-finding query. But you stop with "what if" and jump directly to "should".
That's exactly the attitude the linked article is trying to correct.
"this should be"
Youre reflexively trying to impose your values without understanding the science or the reality of what's happening.
I thought secular humanism was supposed to be against religious dogma and woo anyway, not pushing conservative bigotry?
To play the devil's advocate: A minor child cannot provide consent, and that's kind of the problem.
---------------
Edit: To give the idea a little more flesh:
It's the duty of the of the State to represent the well-being of a child, if the children's parents are unable or unwilling to do so.
Let's be hypothetical here and imagine a place where a majority of the People of a State believe "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest, then you could have a situation where the State is compelled to do what was done in Texas.
Are the majority of people in Texas of the belief that "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest? I don't know, but it seems plausible.
Is "gender affirming care", in truth, the best thing for a child? I don't know. I don't know how to even start to approach that question in an acceptable way.
I believe bottom surgeries are all but unheard of for under 18, but there were 203 top surgeries performed on minors in 2021 (safe to assume vast majority of these were either 16 or 17). In comparison, more than 8,000 minors had breast augmentation in 2019. 4,700 girls had breast reduction surgery in 2010 (apologies, these were the newest numbers I could find, clearly after more than a decade it's reasonable to believe there are more reductions than implants). In 2015, there were 7,021 breast reductions for boys.
It seems to me like if the genuine concern was over minors making decisions about their body that aren't reversible, we would be seeing equal and proportional outrage for these other surgeries, right?
Edit for your edit :) Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.
>That's a good devil's advocate, but it's worth pointing out minor children consent (with parental consent, too) to surgeries all the time. Whether that's cancer treatments, surgeries to repair bone fractures, plastic surgeries, etc.
Minor children CANNOT CONSENT. Bottom Line. Minor children cannot consent because they are not given the faculty of consent in common law. A parent's consent is ALWAYS required, and the parent is culpable for that decision.
>Gender affirming care appears to be what's best for kids according to the majority of research and the major medical associations in the US. The experts certainly could be wrong, but generally speaking I prefer having doctors treating me in a hospital and pilots flying my planes.
Our society is not technocratic. "Right and wrong" are decided by the People. Medical experts are not the arbiters of social acceptability or law.
:)
There's a pdf linked below that includes the laws for consent of minors to medical treatment.
The problem is that you missed the point entirely.
Hacker News should just just ban politics-related discussions altogether. What you find "insane" and "monstrous" other people (which are not clinically "insane", just to make it clear) are regarding as being just the opposite.
Either way, neither of those two camps will find a "level-playing" discussion field on this forum, on any internet forum, for that matter, because I'm afraid we're long passed that point. Hence why I believe that the admins of this forum should ban all politics-related talk.
Like, if it wasn't interesting, it wouldn't be politics. Nobody would talk about it. Lacking any controversy, HN would be a very stale place.
There's politics and then there's calling someone "insane" and "monstrous". Honestly, I don't see any way out of that. Yes, calling each other names in the name of politics would make any web forum less stale, I can definitely agree with that, but, again, I don't think that will solve anything.
The rest is purely loaded opines and bigotry. Speaking of which, any reason you accused me of being "hostile" by making a reasoned point, then delete it? Seems rather disingenuous...
Btw, insanity is not a medical term. It's a term to describe your fitness in a legal context.