Anti-gender-affirming-care article in The Federalist (Dec 2024)

Here's a treat from The Federalist a couple days ago.

If you'd like to find it, after https://thefederalist.com/ ...

...type: /2024/12/13/landmark-transgender-scotus-case-could-redefine-medicine/

(I'm trying not to give them SEO value on this one.)

It's written by Dr. Aida Cerundolo, who has practiced clinical emergency medicine for two decades. (Not a specialist in gender-affirming care, it seems.) She's arguing that doctors harm trans kids by affirming their gender.

She says: "Aspirin can be dangerous when taken inappropriately or by those with an allergy, but the risks and benefits have been studied since the 1800s." Since gender-affirming care has not been studied since the 1800s, I guess it fails to meet that standard, if "studied since the 1800s" is the standard. But hormones were synthesized in the early 20th century, so there is a century-long history of humans taking hormones. And there are plenty of medications and surgeries that are more recent than gender-affirming care.

"Conversely, so-called “gender-affirming” treatments have no long-term studies that establish a clear risk-benefit ratio." She doesn't cite a source for that. But then, a study can't be done until the "risk" and "benefit" are defined.

She then gives an example. As the risk of trans people attempting suicide is "a claim used to promote these treatments" (i.e., to allow trans people to live in their gender), she uses that as an example, and says simply: "the evidence so far from multiple systematic reviews does not demonstrate a reduction in suicide." For that, she links to the Washington Examiner (a right-wing news outlet) and the Cass Review (a politicized document in the UK).

Anyway, she says, whereas medications like aspirin are meant to make you healthier, "gender-affirming treatments seek to disrupt a healthy physiology." So it seems she doesn't think there can be any benefit.

Next: "Since it is impossible to diagnose which children will persist with a transgender identity into adulthood," there is an "unmitigable risk of misdiagnosis. Hippocratic oath medicine doesn’t allow this harm to be whitewashed under the premise that it is, as the ACLU attorney indicated, a 'very low' 'one percent.'"

Just consider, she says, "wrong-site surgeries (when a wrong limb or organ is removed)." An organization is investigating it because "that’s a harm rate of 0.00000788 percent — too high for doctors seeking to 'first, do no harm.'"

Of course this is illogical.

1. There is a commission investigating why some surgeries go wrong, not stopping all surgeries because the risk of error is too high.
2. In the case of wrong-site surgeries, the error belongs entirely to the nurse or surgeon (not the person getting surgery), so the commission can investigate what happened (e.g., the nurse wrote wrong information on the notepad, or the surgeon was drunk). Asking why some people change their minds about what they want their body to look like is another question.
3. Not everyone who detransitions has been "harmed" by taking hormones or getting surgery. Some are happy to have had that experience and simply decide they don't wish to continue with hormones or they adjust how they present themselves in the world, not minding that they've had hormones or surgery.
4. There isn't an acceptable risk percentage that applies equally to every kind of healthcare. Knee surgery has a high regret rate, yet surgeons continue to do it, because for whatever reason, that risk is considered acceptable.
5. If indeed 1% of kids regret transition but 99% are living full lives because of it, and if that's an unacceptable risk-benefit ratio, what she's saying is that one cis person matters more than 100 trans people.
6. As she acknowledges, "the stated 'one percent' risk of regret is unverifiable. The rate of detransition is unknown because there is no system in place to measure it." So if there's no evidence that many people are unhappy that their doctors allowed them to access hormones and surgery, whence the concern?