The American newspaper ‘New York Times’ published this week, on the 23rd, an article about the justification of an influential doctor and advocate of hormone blockers for gender treatments about why she had not published a long-awaited study on medications that stop puberty. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy said it was because of the pre-election environment.
According to the same newspaper, the doctor began her study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and her colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which prevent permanent physical changes, such as developing breasts or having a deeper voice, that could exacerbate their gender anxiety, known as gender dysphoria. .
DR. OLSON-KENNEDY
The doctor runs the largest gender clinic in Los Angeles
Researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. A previous Dutch study had found that puberty blockers They improved patients’ well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called affirmative or gender-affirming theory.
But the American essay did not find a similar trendsaid Dr. Olson-Kennedy. “Puberty blockers did not lead to improvements in mental health,” he said, “probably because the children were already well when the study began.” “They are in very good shape when they arrive, and they are in very good shape after two years,” said the doctor, who runs the largest youth gender clinic in the country at the Pediatric Hospital from Los Angeles.
That finding seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that a quarter of the teens were depressed or suicidal before treatment. In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as health care for this group of adolescents has become a hot topic in American politics, the doctor’s team has not published the data. . When asked why, he said the findings could fuel the type of political attacks that have led to bans on gender-based treatments for youth in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.
“I don’t want our work to become a weapon,” said. «It has to be exactly punctual, clear and concise. And that takes time.
He said he intends to publish the data, but that the team had also been delayed because the National Institutes of Health had cut some funding for the project. She attributed that cut, too, to politics, which the National Institute of Health denied.
Olson-Kennedy is one of the nation’s leading advocates for gender-based treatments for adolescents and has served as a witness in many trials and legal challenges to state bans. He said he was concerned that the study results could be used in court to argue that ““We shouldn’t use blockers because it doesn’t affect them.”referring to transgender adolescents.
Other researchers, however, were alarmed at the idea of delaying results, which would have immediate implications for families around the world. “I understand the fear of it being weaponized, but it’s really important to spread the science,” Amy Tishelman, a clinical psychologist and researcher at Boston College who was one of the study’s original researchers, told the US newspaper.
The ‘Dutch protocol’
In the 1990s and 2000s, doctors in the Netherlands began studying a small group of children who had experienced intense gender dysphoria since childhood. For most of these children, negative feelings dissipate with puberty. For others, puberty made them feel worse. For those who were struggling, researchers began prescribing puberty blockers, which had long been used to treat children whose puberty started unusually early. Dutch scientists reasoned that by preventing the permanent changes of puberty, transgender teenagers would fare better psychologically and fit more comfortably into society as adults.
In 2011, researchers reported on the first 70 children who were treated with the so-called ‘Dutch protocol’. The children were carefully evaluated to ensure that they had persistent dysphoria and that their parents were supportive, and that they did not have serious psychiatric conditions that could interfere with treatment.
These patients showed some psychological improvements after puberty blockers: fewer depressive symptoms, as well as significant decreases in behavioral and emotional problems. All patients they chose to continue their gender transitions by taking testosterone or estrogen.
The findings were highly influential even before they were published, and clinics were opened around the world to treat transgender teenagers with puberty blockers and hormones.
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