A few years later
Another snip from the Times article:
The first trans patient treated with blockers, from age 13 to 18, moved on to testosterone, the male sex hormone. Halting female puberty had offered emotional relief and helped him look more masculine. As the Dutch clinicians prescribed blockers, followed by hormones, to a half-dozen other patients in those early years, the medical team found that their mental health and well-being improved.
“They were usually coming in very miserable, feeling like an outsider in school, depressed or anxious,” recalled Dr. Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, a retired psychologist at the clinic. “And then you start to do this treatment, and a few years later, you see them blossoming.”
Wait. Wait just a minute. Think about this. What else is going on here? Besides the “treatment”? There’s a clue right there in what she says. A few years later. How do they know that’s the treatment working as opposed to teenagers becoming young adults? Am I wrong in thinking it’s a fairly common experience to be better at life after the teenage years? Am I wrong in thinking it matters that the brain isn’t fully developed until age 25? I would really, seriously like to know if they took the passage of time into account in their thinking. The wording of Dr. Cohen-Kettenis certainly doesn’t look that way.
The improvement could be regression or reversion of extreme parameters to the mean (to say it mathematically):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
Lots of countries are grappling with this issue, but it’s hard not to see the impact of the weird, loosely regulated, profit-seeking U.S. health care system.
Dutch researchers: “We have found that puberty blockers can be effective treatment for patients 12 and up who are carefully screened for mental illness and other confounding issues.”
Americans: “Ok, sounds good, we’re gonna have naturopaths prescribe them to six-year-olds.”
Yes, that too.
Funny there aren’t a whole lot of tv ads promoting blockers. Just a matter of time I suppose.
Re tv ads, I don’t think you’ll see them in the near future.
As the NYT article discusses, puberty blockers are not FDA-approved for treatment of gender dysphoria. Doctors are prescribing them “off-label,” which is not inherently bad — lots of medications get prescribed off-label for perfectly sound reasons. E.g., a drug is approved for treatment of Condition A, and there’s some evidence that it’s also effective for Condition B but no drug company has done the required process to get it approved for B (and might never do so, because it isn’t cost-effective), we’re ok with doctors prescribing it for B.
But while drugs can be prescribed for off-label uses, drug companies are not free to promote such uses. So you’re not likely to see ads for them any time soon.
Ah! Thank you for the information, I didn’t know that.
Screechy, happening in Oz now. An excellent drug for diabetics is being exhausted by non diabetics using it for weight loss. My doctor discussed it as a possible treatment, but couldn’t prescribe as I had improved my blood sugar control. Lazy people are using the drug instead of doing the work.