John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog highlights an important shift in a major legacy media outlet’s coverage of a controversial topic.
The culture wars are raging, but on at least one front the forces of good are winning. The “trans” ideology is crumbling fast. The latest evidence is this piece in Newsweek, written by two of the authors of the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent paper, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices.”
The authors begin with a ritual denunciation of HHS and an assurance that “we, along with most of the other authors, are liberals.” But they go on to break the news to their fellow lefties:
The approach to pediatric gender distress currently favored in the U.S., which involves the provision of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones sometimes followed by surgery, was rapidly adopted internationally largely on the basis of a Dutch experiment comprised of just 70 adolescents who had been gender nonconforming since early childhood. The vast majority of these patients (62 out of 70) reported being exclusively same-sex attracted (gay).
They relate some of the shortcomings of that meager study, and conclude:
In short, the medical practice now known euphemistically as pediatric “gender affirming care” is based on methodologically weak research that sterilized a group of gay or bisexual youth and left one of them dead.
These are the key paragraphs. Links omitted:
While it may sound jarring to readers who have, reasonably, deferred to U.S. medical societies and civil rights advocacy groups on this issue, there is no longer any legitimate scientific controversy about the weak evidence underlying the purported benefits of the “gender affirming” model for youth. Readers may also be surprised to learn that the first countries to restrict these practices were politically progressive Finland and Sweden, whose socialized health care systems are widely admired. It was these Scandinavian social democracies—not U.S. red states—that were first to conduct systematic reviews and conclude there is no reliable evidence supporting pediatric medical transition.
