The Cass Review Final Report

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

Ok…and? That’s how science/medicine works. You act based on the current guidelines. Those change over time - obviously.

But when those current guidelines are proven false, you don’t kick and scream and insist they’re right. You change the guidelines. And follow the new ones. That’s how science/medicine works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The gaslighting on nobody saying medicalized care for gender dysphoria is “settled science” is quite remarkable.

About five seconds of searching the Internet produced this from GLAAD, arguing that even the mildest investigation of the actual science by the NYT was “transphobic” because the science is, to quote their use of caps, “SETTLED.”

Specifically GLAAD demands that the NYT stop asking questions about science: “Stop questioning science that is SETTLED.”

https://glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgtbq-allied-leaders-and-organizations/

You completely missed the point of the letter.

They don’t want the NYT to give anti-trans activists a platform to spread lies/misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

What is remarkable about that quote is that literally every single line is either flat-out untrue or at best a hypothesis currently unsupported by sufficient medical evidence.

From a public policy point of view, it is infuriating. How can the government expect people to trust them on any public health issue after this, particularly when it comes to their children? The dereliction of duty by an entity we should be able to trust is horrific.

Public health has actually always been propaganda in large part.

No. That’s not true. There have been many, many examples of truthful and science-based public health efforts that save and improve many lives. Take all the anti-smoking initiatives: these have probably saved thousands of lives over the years. Or the child seat and seatbelt efforts. Or childhood vaccines.

You don’t get to discredit all public health because the current HHS is irredeemably ethically compromised on the issue of medicalized treatment for gender dysphoria in children. But it is absolutely true that overt lying like this adds to an extremely damaging narrative about public health that weakens all efforts overall. The HHS is explicitly lying here, provably so, and that’s incredibly damaging and harmful to all public health. And it is reasonable to be angry about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

Ok…and? That’s how science/medicine works. You act based on the current guidelines. Those change over time - obviously.

But when those current guidelines are proven false, you don’t kick and scream and insist they’re right. You change the guidelines. And follow the new ones. That’s how science/medicine works.

Ok. As soon as we have better guidelines, the medical practitioners will adjust.

Until then, they will stick with the current best practices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been here before:

1.Schizophrenia isn't a medical condition. it's the devil possessing you or you ate a bad clam.
2. Being gay isn't rooted in science because we can't find the gay gene.
3. Women can't be pilots/engineers/mathematicians because their left brain/right brain doesn't work like men's.
4. Mrna vaccines are "untested science."
5. Vaccines cause autism.
6. Women are hysterics and emotionally unstable constitutionally, not because of their hormones.

Throughout history, bigots have used science or lack thereof to claim others are extreme and living in an "alternate reality."

You latch on to one piece of work that agrees with you and wield it like a cudgel, or hug old beliefs because change is just too hard.

I'd be careful about arguing that people who support trans people are the extreme ones living in an alternate reality.

Yes. We have been here before. And soon, “hormones and surgery for children are the best treatment for gender dysphoria” will be #7 on your list.

The science is starting to settle, and you don’t like it. Sorry.

A single review of existing studies, none of which is a double-blind control (because they can’t be done in this situation, both for ethical and for logistical reasons), does not represent “settling science.”

Sorry you don’t like that.

I said STARTING TO SETTLE. Learn to read and not interpret things the way that is convenient to you.

It’s going to take a while. This is just the beginning.

It’s the same with the DEI madness. That is STARTING TO SETTLE as well. Thankfully.

Anti-trans, anti-DEI. Who would have guessed?

Well, you. I’m not anti anything. I’m for a reasonable approach to both. But considering the DEI madness is correcting with schools and organizations beginning to realize that they’re not what they’re cracked up to be and are now pulling back with the blind advancement, it looks like the science on transition for children is following suit. Which is a GOOD thing.

When you start labeling people “anti” whatever because you don’t like what they have to say, you’re not going to get very far with your argument. Especially when solid science is on their side.

“The blind advancement”? Wow.

The PP called it.

You’re right. Should have called it politically driven advancement of something that has not been proven to work. My bad.

Diversity doesn’t “work”? Stop digging your hole.

Learn to read. DEI initiatives don’t work.

Again, wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if some of the angry voices in here decrying the report belong to parents who trusted medical professionals' claims that the science on puberty blockers was settled.

If so, I understand their anger and the fear underlying it. It is terrifying to realize that "experts" misled you on the science, and that you consented to treatments that have not, in fact, been proven to be benign (or reversible).

But I encourage you to read the report. It is publicly available, and free; why not read it? At the least, perhaps you can generate some original criticism, rather than recycling the same three or four objections that are also circulating on other social media. I don't know where those talking points originated, but it's pretty clear that whoever came up with them had not read the entire report.

Literally no one claimed that. Not surprising that someone hyping up this biased report would throw out lazy strawman arguments.

Major medical organizations and organizations advocating for transgender youth just a few years ago were saying that puberty blockers were “fully reversible” and the science around medicalized treatment for transgender youth was settled science. There are many screenshots if you care to look. Of course that’s all been removed now, as it’s obviously inaccurate.

No one was saying it was “settled science”.

DP. Except people were. Activists and laypeople were. Especially as a mechanism to shut down conversations. I remember a specific instance of being told by a particular acquaintance that it was “settled science”.

I mean, just a few days ago CNN was claiming that “mainstream science” agreed that males have no athletic advantages over females (based on a single paper written 7 years ago).

“ But mainstream science does not support that conclusion. A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found “no direct or consistent research” on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, and critics say the bans add to the discrimination trans people face”.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/08/sport/naia-bans-trans-athletes-dawn-staley-reaj

CNN also consistently characterizes gender affirming care as evidence-based and a “gold standard”, depicting it as a scientific consensus (even in articles that are actually reporting on lack of consensus!)

“ Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based individualized care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known.”

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/26/health/endocrine-society-gender-affirming-care-guidelines

1. You are misrepresenting what was quoted in the first CNN article. It did not say that. Just look at the quote you included.

2. Neither article say it’s “settled science”. In fact, the second article is discussing updating guidelines.

“ The committee revising the guidelines has had its first meeting, said chairperson Dr. Joshua Safer. The last time the committee updated its gender-affirming care guidelines was in 2017; it previously revised them in 2009.

“To be clear, we’ve been following our usual guideline process that we apply to anything that we do, whether it’s diabetes or thyroid etc., to transgender medical care,” said Safer, a member of the Endocrine Society who also serves as executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York. “Being the doctors in the room, we look at current data to give appropriate recommendations.””

Huh? the first article literally says it is “mainstream science” that transitioned natal males have no athletic advantage. what does “mainstream science” mean to you?

The second article literally says that gender affirming endocrinolgy care (puberty blockers and hormones) are the “gold standard.” Then yes, they quote the doctors stating the exact opposite - that in fact nothing is “gold standard” and they are reassessing.

I’m looking forwards to CNN stealth dropping all of this verbiage as time goes on and it becomes clear that in fact there is no mainstream scientific consensus or gold standard.

1. Your comment was “males have no athletic advantages over females” which is very different than the quote. Transgender women are not representative of all males. Of course you’re being misleading.

2. The “gold standard” means the current best practices. Which change over time.

[Anonymous]

“ Every major US medical association – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – agrees that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults.”

It’s the current best practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

Ok…and? That’s how science/medicine works. You act based on the current guidelines. Those change over time - obviously.

Those aren’t guidelines. They are statements meant to be taken as factual truth, when of course we know that are all untruthful. We know that, for instance, that the positive value of gender-affirming care is in fact in very serious scientific and medical dispute. We do not have well-grounded evidence that it improves quality of life for children. We do not have well-grounded evidence that it saves lives. Every single statement made in this quote is not a guideline. Each statement is presented as an unassailable fact when we know (and in fact knew at the time) that these statements are anything but factual. They are at best misleading, and that is taking an extremely charitable view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

What is remarkable about that quote is that literally every single line is either flat-out untrue or at best a hypothesis currently unsupported by sufficient medical evidence.

From a public policy point of view, it is infuriating. How can the government expect people to trust them on any public health issue after this, particularly when it comes to their children? The dereliction of duty by an entity we should be able to trust is horrific.

Public health has actually always been propaganda in large part.

Examples (not including COVID)?

public messaging is the cornerstone of public health. that’s a type of propaganda - sometimes good, sometimes bad. the other examples I can think of that are particularly reductive are breastfeeding, dietary guidelines, and screen time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been here before:

1.Schizophrenia isn't a medical condition. it's the devil possessing you or you ate a bad clam.
2. Being gay isn't rooted in science because we can't find the gay gene.
3. Women can't be pilots/engineers/mathematicians because their left brain/right brain doesn't work like men's.
4. Mrna vaccines are "untested science."
5. Vaccines cause autism.
6. Women are hysterics and emotionally unstable constitutionally, not because of their hormones.

Throughout history, bigots have used science or lack thereof to claim others are extreme and living in an "alternate reality."

You latch on to one piece of work that agrees with you and wield it like a cudgel, or hug old beliefs because change is just too hard.

I'd be careful about arguing that people who support trans people are the extreme ones living in an alternate reality.

Yes. We have been here before. And soon, “hormones and surgery for children are the best treatment for gender dysphoria” will be #7 on your list.

The science is starting to settle, and you don’t like it. Sorry.

A single review of existing studies, none of which is a double-blind control (because they can’t be done in this situation, both for ethical and for logistical reasons), does not represent “settling science.”

Sorry you don’t like that.

I said STARTING TO SETTLE. Learn to read and not interpret things the way that is convenient to you.

It’s going to take a while. This is just the beginning.

It’s the same with the DEI madness. That is STARTING TO SETTLE as well. Thankfully.

Anti-trans, anti-DEI. Who would have guessed?

Well, you. I’m not anti anything. I’m for a reasonable approach to both. But considering the DEI madness is correcting with schools and organizations beginning to realize that they’re not what they’re cracked up to be and are now pulling back with the blind advancement, it looks like the science on transition for children is following suit. Which is a GOOD thing.

When you start labeling people “anti” whatever because you don’t like what they have to say, you’re not going to get very far with your argument. Especially when solid science is on their side.

“The blind advancement”? Wow.

The PP called it.

You’re right. Should have called it politically driven advancement of something that has not been proven to work. My bad.

Diversity doesn’t “work”? Stop digging your hole.

Learn to read. DEI initiatives don’t work.

Again, wow.

Enough with the faux outrage. Post some evidence that they improve diversity outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

Ok…and? That’s how science/medicine works. You act based on the current guidelines. Those change over time - obviously.

No, false claims of certainty are not “how science/medicine works.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“ Every major US medical association – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – agrees that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults.”

It’s the current best practice.

And this study is going to change that. Thankfully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if some of the angry voices in here decrying the report belong to parents who trusted medical professionals' claims that the science on puberty blockers was settled.

If so, I understand their anger and the fear underlying it. It is terrifying to realize that "experts" misled you on the science, and that you consented to treatments that have not, in fact, been proven to be benign (or reversible).

But I encourage you to read the report. It is publicly available, and free; why not read it? At the least, perhaps you can generate some original criticism, rather than recycling the same three or four objections that are also circulating on other social media. I don't know where those talking points originated, but it's pretty clear that whoever came up with them had not read the entire report.

Literally no one claimed that. Not surprising that someone hyping up this biased report would throw out lazy strawman arguments.

Major medical organizations and organizations advocating for transgender youth just a few years ago were saying that puberty blockers were “fully reversible” and the science around medicalized treatment for transgender youth was settled science. There are many screenshots if you care to look. Of course that’s all been removed now, as it’s obviously inaccurate.

No one was saying it was “settled science”.

DP. Except people were. Activists and laypeople were. Especially as a mechanism to shut down conversations. I remember a specific instance of being told by a particular acquaintance that it was “settled science”.

I mean, just a few days ago CNN was claiming that “mainstream science” agreed that males have no athletic advantages over females (based on a single paper written 7 years ago).

“ But mainstream science does not support that conclusion. A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found “no direct or consistent research” on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, and critics say the bans add to the discrimination trans people face”.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/08/sport/naia-bans-trans-athletes-dawn-staley-reaj

CNN also consistently characterizes gender affirming care as evidence-based and a “gold standard”, depicting it as a scientific consensus (even in articles that are actually reporting on lack of consensus!)

“ Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based individualized care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known.”

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/26/health/endocrine-society-gender-affirming-care-guidelines

1. You are misrepresenting what was quoted in the first CNN article. It did not say that. Just look at the quote you included.

2. Neither article say it’s “settled science”. In fact, the second article is discussing updating guidelines.

“ The committee revising the guidelines has had its first meeting, said chairperson Dr. Joshua Safer. The last time the committee updated its gender-affirming care guidelines was in 2017; it previously revised them in 2009.

“To be clear, we’ve been following our usual guideline process that we apply to anything that we do, whether it’s diabetes or thyroid etc., to transgender medical care,” said Safer, a member of the Endocrine Society who also serves as executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York. “Being the doctors in the room, we look at current data to give appropriate recommendations.””

Huh? the first article literally says it is “mainstream science” that transitioned natal males have no athletic advantage. what does “mainstream science” mean to you?

The second article literally says that gender affirming endocrinolgy care (puberty blockers and hormones) are the “gold standard.” Then yes, they quote the doctors stating the exact opposite - that in fact nothing is “gold standard” and they are reassessing.

I’m looking forwards to CNN stealth dropping all of this verbiage as time goes on and it becomes clear that in fact there is no mainstream scientific consensus or gold standard.

They reassess everything periodically.

“ “To be clear, we’ve been following our usual guideline process that we apply to anything that we do, whether it’s diabetes or thyroid etc., to transgender medical care,” “

Best practices are the “gold standard” until they are updated.

Medicine is constantly evolving, even “gold standards”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s what a high ranking HHS official has consistently said about puberty blockers & hormones for kids:

“ Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice... The positive value of gender-affirming care is not in serious scientific or medical dispute.”

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/04/30/remarks-by-hhs-assistant-secretary-for-health-adm-rachel-levine-for-the-2022-out-for-health-conference.html

Ok…and? That’s how science/medicine works. You act based on the current guidelines. Those change over time - obviously.

But when those current guidelines are proven false, you don’t kick and scream and insist they’re right. You change the guidelines. And follow the new ones. That’s how science/medicine works.

Ok. As soon as we have better guidelines, the medical practitioners will adjust.

Until then, they will stick with the current best practices.

As a medical practitioner, a study like this would be enough for me to change my practice. It would be enough for many of us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The gaslighting on nobody saying medicalized care for gender dysphoria is “settled science” is quite remarkable.

About five seconds of searching the Internet produced this from GLAAD, arguing that even the mildest investigation of the actual science by the NYT was “transphobic” because the science is, to quote their use of caps, “SETTLED.”

Specifically GLAAD demands that the NYT stop asking questions about science: “Stop questioning science that is SETTLED.”

https://glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgtbq-allied-leaders-and-organizations/

You completely missed the point of the letter.

They don’t want the NYT to give anti-trans activists a platform to spread lies/misinformation.

wow talk about missing the point! the NYTimes is (supposedly) and impartial news organization. they are in fact supposed to report on any and all aspects of issues, including those that activitists are opposed to.