Yes, I have written about this before, but here’s a new Substack from an Australian pediatrician that lays it out very simply for you – pass it on, especially to your legislators who might be, in the coming year, debating this issue.
And here lies my first problem with paediatric gender endocrinologists. They do the exact opposite of all other endocrinologists. The whole point of endocrinology is to treat disease caused by hormone levels being pathologically elevated or depressed. The whole point of endocrinology is to put hormone levels back into the normal range. This is true of every endocrine disease – diabetes, thyroid disease, adrenal insufficiency and so on.
But not when it comes to treating gender diverse children. When a child enters the clinic of a paediatric gender endocrinologist for their first injection of a puberty blocker, they have zero endocrine disease. That child’s hormone levels are all exactly where they should be. Their gonadotropins are normal, their sex hormones are normal for the stage of puberty. They have no disease.
Yet when they leave, the paediatric gender endocrinologist has induced abnormal hormone levels. In that child, a doctor has deliberately suppressed normal hormone levels to treat, not endocrine disease, but that child’s mental distress.
When that child turns 16, that iatrogenic hormone suppression has continued. The paediatric gender endocrinologist then goes one step further, and deliberately introduces exogenous sex hormones. They deliberately raise a female’s testosterone to levels that can only be described as pathological. They deliberately raise a male’s oestrogen levels too. They continue to suppress that child’s own natural sex hormone levels.
They are inducing iatrogenic disease. On purpose. Not as a side effect, but deliberately.
In what other circumstance would this be considered acceptable? Within endocrinology, can you imagine another similar circumstance? If any endocrinologist was to deliberately elevate or suppress a patient’s thyroxine level outside the normal range, they would be subjected to disciplinary action. But it has been deemed acceptable for paediatric gender endocrinologists to do this with gonadotropins and sex hormones. Why?
In what other speciality would this be considered acceptable? A physically healthy child never enters a paediatric gastroenterologist’s clinic and leaves with gastrointestinal disease that wasn’t there before. Why are physically healthy children seeing specialists who treat disease the child doesn’t have?
Everything paediatric gender endocrinologists do is antithetical to both paediatrics and endocrinology.
The aim of paediatrics is to ensure children reach adulthood as healthy as possible. Paediatric gender endocrinologists take physically healthy children and commit them to a lifetime of medicalisation.
We need honesty. We need acknowledgement of the truth. We need to discuss all of the issues with which I have barely scratched the surface here – the huge explosion of girls presenting, the high rates of autism and trauma, the concern over brain maturation, children being treated on this pathway while in the care of protective services, the influence of social media, the stories of those who detransition long after the paediatric gender services are done with them, and above all, consent. Can a child at the age of 11 or 12, when puberty is just starting, consent to this pathway and all of its outcomes both known and unknown? This is the most important question of all.
Related, in case you missed it before: a Twitter account named, “Read some Piaget, please”
From another angle – looking at fantasy. I found this an affecting piece, not only because of its relationship to the trans issue, but also to the truth the author speaks, in her own words and quoting Natalie Ginzburg, in describing the inner life of a child.