Jesse Singal: Transgender Puberty Blocker and Hormone Research Fails to Justify Their Use

Jesse Singal analyzes new research regarding puberty blockers and hormones used by researchers to promote their use. He concerned that the researchers have been dishonest. Here is an excerpt from his article: "Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite.". Here is an excerpt:

All the publicity materials the university released tell a very straightforward, exciting story: The kids in this study who accessed puberty blockers or hormones (henceforth GAM, for “gender-affirming medicine”) had better mental health outcomes at the end of the study than they did at its beginning.

The headline of the emailed version of the press release, for example, reads, “Gender-affirming care dramatically reduces depression for transgender teens, study finds.” The first sentence reads, “UW Medicine researchers recently found that gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents caused rates of depression to plummet.” All of this is straightforwardly causal language, with “dramatically reduces” and “caused rates… to plummet” clearly communicating improvement over time.

. . .

What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.

It’s hard even to figure this out from reading the study, which omits some very basic statistics one would expect to find, but the non-result is pretty clear from eTable 3 in the supplementary materials, which shows what percentage of study participants met the researchers’ thresholds for depression, anxiety, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts during each of the four waves of the study:

Among the kids who went on hormones, there isn’t genuine statistical improvement here from baseline to the final wave of data collection. At baseline, 59% of the treatment-naive kids experienced moderate to severe depression. Twelve months later, 56% of the kids on GAM experienced moderate to severe depression. At baseline, 45% of the treatment-naive kids experienced self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Twelve months later, 37% of the kids on GAM did. These are not meaningful differences: The kids in the study arrived with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems, many of them went on blockers or hormones, and they exited the study with what appear to be alarmingly high rates of mental health problems.

. . .

Despite the fact that two of the authors worked at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where the gender clinic is based, the paper doesn’t include a single word of even informed speculation attempting to explain why some kids accessed GAM and others did not. Nor do the authors seem to notice that by the end of the study, the no-GAM group has dwindled to a grand total of six kids who reported mental health data, as compared to 57 in the group receiving treatment.

Adding intrigue to this situation, the researchers are refusing to release their raw data. Singal does a deep-dive the substantiate his conclusion that the conclusions of the researchers are not substantiated by this research. The problems with this "research" are overwhelming and Jesse Singal offers line and verse on the many questions, lack of questions and holes. Too bad many legacy media outlets lap up unsubstantiated results on this topic produced by so many biased "researchers."

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A Woman Biologist Defines “Woman”

Heather Heying offers this precise definition of woman in her article, I am a Woman and a Biologist. Here's an excerpt:

Women are adult human females.

Adults are individuals who have attained the average age of first reproduction for their species. They have reached the age of maturity. The term adult applies across many species, and is used to distinguish them from juveniles, who are not yet capable of reproduction.

Humans are members of the genus Homo. Our relatives in the genus Australopithecus, now extinct, are sometimes categorized as human as well. Every individual Homo sapiens is a human.

Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).

It’s the definition of that last word—female—that will be difficult for some to accept.

Some people imagine that, because words are a social construct, so too, inherently, are the concepts that they describe. Some words do describe social constructs: offended, justified and controversy, for instance. These things have no reality in the physical universe, or if they do, that reality can be negotiated by social means.

Many words, however, do describe an underlying reality. Words like bulldozer, grasshopper, and woman.

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Amy Eileen’s Hamm’s Quest to Affirm the Reality of Biological Sex

It is so disheartening to see stories like this accumulate. Amy Eileen Hamm's career has been threatened because she will not budge from the believe that biological sex is real. Here's an excerpt from her story at Quillette, titled "I’m Being Investigated by the British Columbia College of Nurses Because I Believe Biological Sex Is Real":

In November 2020, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) informed me that I was under investigation for my “off-duty conduct.” My disciplinary hearing is scheduled to take place from May 30th through June 3rd, and my career as a nurse hangs in the balance. I have been working throughout, apart from a stress leave and various sick days that I have taken to protect my mental health.

The BCCNM is a regulatory body whose stated purpose is to protect the public from harm, and to ensure that nurses and midwives meet defined standards of care and professional responsibilities. It issues a license to practice; and without it, you can’t work as a nurse in British Columbia. I’d never thought too much about the BCCNM before this investigation was announced. I did my job, and believe I did it well. I paid my license fees each year—that was it.

My troubles started when the BCCNM informed me that two members of the public had complained to the organization, to the effect that I am transphobic and so might be incapable of “provid[ing] safe, non-judgemental care to transgender and gender diverse patients.” One of the complainants is a social worker named Alex Turriff, who self-describes as “a passionate social justice advocate … interested in structural violence and oppression [and] influenced politically by Marxism.” The other has been awarded the privilege of remaining anonymous, even as he or she has attempted to ruin my career: The BCCNM apparently agreed with the anonymous person’s belief that I might “retaliate” if I knew who they were.

In my decade-long nursing career, I have never had a patient complaint, or otherwise received any type of workplace discipline. To the contrary, I loved my job and worked my way into leadership roles. I have worked with countless transgender patients. I am not transphobic by any reasonable or defensible definition of that word. Yet I now could lose my job because activists claim that I am a bigot.

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How to be a Human Animal, Chapter 28: Morality and What to Do Next?

This is Chapter 28 of my advice to a hypothetical baby. I'm using this website to act out my time-travel fantasy of going back give myself pointers on how to avoid some of Life’s potholes. If I only knew what I now know . . . All of these chapters (soon to be 100) can be found here.

Why do people do the things they do? How can we make sense of all of this talk about what is "moral," and what is "right" and "wrong." These are an extremely difficult topics. As we already discussed, however, we need to beware systematizers who scold you to based on their mono-rules of morality. That was the main take-away from the previous chapter.

In this chapter, I’ll briefly discuss three approaches to morality that don’t rely on such simplistic rules. The first of these thinkers is Aristotle, who still has so very much to offer to us almost 2,500 years after he lived. His view of what it means to be virtuous is a holistic set of skills that requires lifelong practice. What a change of pace from the mono-rules of other philosophers. I’ll quote from Nancy Sherman’s book, Fabric of Character pp. 2 - 6:

As a whole, the Aristotelian virtues comprise just and decent ways of living as a social being. Included will be the generosity of benefactor, the bravery of citizen, the goodwill and attentiveness of friends, the temperance of a non-lascivious life. But human perfection, on this view, ranges further, to excellences whose objects are less clearly the weal and woe of others, such as a healthy sense of humor and a wit that bites without malice or anger. In the common vernacular nowadays, the excellences of character cover a gamut that is more than merely moral. Good character--literally, what pertains to ethics—is thus more robust than a notion of goodwill or benevolence, common to many moral theories. The full constellation will also include the excellence of a divine-like contemplative activity, and the best sort of happiness will find a place for the pursuit of pure leisure, whose aim and purpose has little to do with social improvement or welfare. Human perfection thus pushes outwards at both limits to include both the more earthly and the more divine.

But even when we restrict ourselves to the so-called ‘moral’ virtues (e.g. temperance, generosity, and courage), their ultimate basis is considerably broader than that of many alternative conceptions of moral virtue. Emotions as well as reason ground the moral response, and these emotions include the wide sentiments of altruism as much as particular attachments to specific others. . .  Pursuing the ends of virtue does not begin with making choices, but with recognizing the circumstances relevant to specific ends. In this sense, character is expressed in what one sees as much as what one does. Knowing how to discern the particulars, Aristotle stresses, is a mark of virtue.

It is not possible to be fully good without having practical wisdom , nor practically wise without having excellence of character  . . . Virtuous agents conceive of their well-being as including the well-being of others. It is not simply that they benefit each other, though to do so is both morally appropriate and especially fine. It is that, in addition, they design together a common good. This expands outwards to the polis and to its civic friendships and contracts inwards to the more intimate friendships of one or two. In both cases, the ends of the life become shared, and similarly the resources for promoting it. Horizons are expanded by the point of view of others, arid in the case of intimate relationships, motives are probed, assessed, and redefined.

Aristotle is talking to those of us who live in the real world, recognizing the complexity of the real world and helping us to navigate as best we can. Again, what a change from the mono-rules!  This real-world applicability and appreciation of nuance is something Aristotle has in common with the Stoics, which we discussed in Chapter 21. 

Here’s another approach, this one from modern times. For a long time, I've been almost obsessed that what we think of as moral is, in a real sense, beautiful and what we think of as immoral is ugly. Based on our reactions to situations that are "moral" and "immoral," there is no possible way that these things are not connected. Such an approach also recognizes that morality is not dictated by any static set of commandments or imperatives. Rather, both morality and art are, at least to some extent, in the eye of the beholder.

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