If Dartmouth Health is right that administering puberty blockers and hormones to boys and girls to try to make them look like the opposite sex is medically necessary, safe, and well-researched, then systematic reviews that say otherwise by France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are wrong.
Dartmouth Health’s written testimony against New Hampshire bill HB619 which would end child transing, signed by 21 clinicians including head pediatrician Dr. Keith J. Loud, asserts that “All gender-affirming care (GAC) is safe, age-appropriate, medically necessary, and well-researched.” However, every country that’s conducted a systematic review of the data has concluded that the evidence for these treatments is low and the risks are great.
As a result of its systematic review, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare issued a warning about GAC’s dangers:
These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis. This makes it challenging to assess the risk/benefit for the individual patient, and even more challenging for the minors or their guardians to be in a position of an informed stance regarding these treatments.
The UK conducted a review of the data for gender-affirming care as part of their investigation of the Tavistock, the world’s largest gender clinic which was shut down this year. The resulting report, the Cass Review concluded that “At this stage, the Review is not able to provide advice on the use of hormone treatments due to gaps in the evidence base.”
The Council for Choices for Health in Finland concluded from its study that “Research data on the treatment of dysphoria due to gender identity conflicts in minors is limited.”
The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board stated:
The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-affirming treatment (hormonal and surgical), is deficient and the long-term effects are little known. This is particularly true for the teenage population where the stability of their gender incongruence is also not known.
The two studies Dartmouth Health provided to the NH House Health Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee to support their claim that GAC is evidence-based are fundamentally flawed.
The University of Washington study Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Binary Youths Receiving Gender Affirming Care explored the effects of hormonal interventions on mental health after only one year of treatment. They didn’t find statistically significant improvements among the subjects who received hormone therapy.
The researchers based their claims of the benefits of GAC on the fact that while the treated patients didn’t get much better, those in the control group got worse. They ignored the fact that only 7 of the 92 members of their control group remained until the end of the study, making any inferences of causality irresponsible. The UW knew the study didn’t find causality, but covered up this information.
The other study Dartmouth Health submitted to the committee, Puberty Suppression for Transgender Youth and Risk of Suicidal Ideation was mined data from the 2015 US Transgender Survey, which used mostly online convenience sampling created for lobbying purposes. How accurate was the survey? Among the study’s significant flaws, 73% of those who claimed they had taken puberty blockers reported that they had done so before they were available for puberty suppression. Although the survey excluded those subjects from their final count, why assume the responses from younger participants are accurate?
Not only does Dartmouth Health brush aside consistent and compelling evidence that GAC isn’t safe or evidence-based, but they also blackmail lawmakers with the trans suicide myth recently denounced by a leading expert in gender care: “Our multi-disciplinary program includes pediatricians who understand that banning surgical care to gender-diverse individuals is harmful, and, according to data, can be life-threatening.”
Related: Detransitioner Sues American Academy of Pediatrics for Fraud and Conspiracy
Whether Dartmouth Health’s claims are deliberate deceit or willful ignorance, the consequences are the same. Children are having their fertility destroyed and their health permanently damaged with experimental treatments.
Dartmouth Health Testimony HB619
