Doctors are warning families and their gender-confused children that taking “experimental” puberty-blocking and sex reassignment treatments have dire permanent consequences – stressing that there is no significant scientific evidence justifying their use.
Paul Hruz, a professor of pediatrics, endocrinology, cell biology ad physiology at The Washington University School of Medicine, explained at a panel discussion on transgender medicine hosted by the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, that Americans have been deceived into believing that puberty blockers and other transgender treatments are safe and effective – when they are experimental, at best.
Offering more problems, not cures
They set out to distinguish “biological fact from ideological fiction regarding the push for transgender-affirming therapies and the dangers of these emerging treatments,” and address the dilemma Americans are facing in the midst of its “transgender moment” as children need answers from adults – not additional problems.
“As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria,’ parents and physicians alike face difficult questions about human identity and sexuality, as well as mounting pressure to treat children with experimental therapies such as puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones,” the Heritage Foundation announced on its website in regards to the panel discussion, which endeavored to answer the following questions. “But can a boy truly be ‘trapped’ in a girl’s body? Can modern medicine really ‘reassign’ sex? Is sex something ‘assigned’ in the first place? What’s the loving response to a friend or child experiencing a gender-identity conflict?”
As opposed to receiving medical treatment, gender-confused children are actually being used as human guinea pigs according to Hruz.
“Much of what is being done here can be considered experimental treatment,” Hruz insisted, according to The Christian Post (CP). “But that is not how the public is hearing about this and [not] what the patients themselves and the families who are dealing with this issue are being presented with.”
In fact, far from being beneficial, it was argued by Hruz – along with American College of Pediatricians President Dr. Michelle Cretella, Dr. Allen Josephson of the University of Louisville and Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Ryan Anderson – that children suffer from many dangers and long-term consequences as a result of receiving parent-approved hormone therapy and puberty suppression treatments.
“Although a number of mainstream medical societies and organizations have been recommending over the last decade that children who suffer from gender dysphoria be given a puberty-blocking drug and later be treated with cross-sex hormones before potential sex reassignment surgeries, Hruz said that ‘the evidence behind this new treatment paradigm is slim to none,’” CP’s Samuel Smith noted.
No proof required?
Hruz is amazed that so many parents are eager to let their children receive these treatments when there is virtually no real evidence indicating that they work. In fact, quite the opposite is true.
“If you are going to take a standard approach to a treatment condition of any sort – not just gender issues, and make that drastic of a change – one would expect that there was a landmark study that was done … a randomized, controlled trial or a series of very important findings that consistently showed that this is a good idea,” Hruz contended. “The reality is there is no science to back this drastic change.”
He said that even the proponents of transgender treatments in the medical community know that such therapy is not proven to work – by any stretch of the imagination.
“What I am saying to you is widely acknowledged by the experts that are putting this forward,” Hruz continued. “I was just at an International Endocrine meeting last month and the new International Endocrine Society guidelines were being presented and the question was asked: ‘What evidence is there that long-term we are doing good for these individuals?’ These are the people that put forward these treatment guidelines. The answer was: ‘We have no evidence.'”
In fact, Hruz stressed that the most reliable evidence out there regarding gender blockers focuses on the “complications of therapy” – not its “effectiveness.” He said that as children are now starting to self-proclaim themselves as transgender as young as age two, it is shameful that so-called experts are telling parents that transgender therapy is a safe and reversible form of intervention” as they push children to undergo pubertal suppression treatments.
“Repeatedly by the experts, this is presented as safe and fully reversible form of intervention,” the professor impressed. “Yet, there is no clear study that was done in this population,” he said. “It is an off-label use of the medication and to make the claim when you have no data is really an injustice not only for our medical profession but for our entire society.”
Irreparable damage
The “pubertal blockade” is argued to pose many difficulties for children.
“The claim that it is fully reversible is self-contradictory because what you are doing when you do a pubertal blockade is you are interrupting a normal developmental process,” Hruz insisted. “Even if five, six or seven years later you stop that intervention, you cannot go back in time. You have already altered that development. It is incorrect and totally false to say that it is reversible.”
Back in June, Hruz co-authored a report in The New Atlantic that not only talked about the detrimental effects of transgender medical treatments, but about the alarmingly higher frequency in which such procedures are taking place today.
“The Gender Identity Development Service in the United Kingdom – which treats only children under the age of 18 – reports that it received 94 referrals of children in 2009/2010 and 1,986 referrals of children in 2016/2017 – a relative increase of 2,000 percent,” Hruz stated in his article titled “Growing Pains: Problems With Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria.” “The service also reports that it received six referrals for children under the age of 6 in 2009/2010, compared to 32 referrals for children under the age of 6 in 2016/2017 – a relative increase of 430 percent.”
He ended his piece by warning that gender therapy is by no means a cure for the gender-confused, indicating that – if anything – it exacerbates the underlying problem
“While there is much that is not known with certainty about gender dysphoria, there is clear evidence that patients who identify as the opposite sex often suffer a great deal,” Hruz concluded. “They have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide than the general population. Something must be done to help these patients, but as scientists struggle to better understand what gender dysphoria is and what causes it, it would not seem prudent to embrace hormonal treatments and sex reassignment as the foremost therapeutic tools for treating this condition.”
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
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