Latest news with #AlexByrne
New York Post
12 hours ago
- Health
- New York Post
Standing up to bullying, unscientific transgender activist mob
Almost no one does wicked things in the knowledge that what they are doing is wicked. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that in order to do something truly evil, a person needs to believe that what they are doing is good. Until somebody steps in and says 'no.' This week there was an extraordinary development in one of the great medical and social scandals of our time. Advertisement Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at MIT. This week he outed himself as one of the authors of the review published last month by the Department of Health and Human Services. Or rather he outed himself after being hounded and exposed by demonic maniacs online. The review goes over treatments of so-called 'gender dysphoria' in minors. Advertisement The fact that the authors of the DHHS review even tried to remain anonymous tells us a lot about the toxicity of this whole debate. The review itself is considerate and moderate. It weighs up the actual evidence and simply suggests that American authorities should align with the emerging consensus among experts and politicians in Europe. Which is that things have been done in the name of treating 'gender dysphoria' are a medical and ethical nightmare. For over a decade now, the 'be kind' brigade has been insisting that 'trans' should be the next civil rights issue of our age. No less a graveyard of thought than Time magazine had a cover in 2014 saying that transgender issues should be 'America's next civil rights frontier.' Advertisement That is a very loaded way to present a complex issue. After all, talk about 'civil rights' brings two particular struggles to mind. The first is the struggle to ensure that ethnic minorities — in particular African-Americans — have equal rights to everyone else in the United States. That issue was addressed and answered by force of moral argument six decades ago. The second issue that it brings up is the fight for gay rights, which also started some six decades ago. Since that time, the moral argument of the gay rights movement has also been accepted. Advertisement Nobody today wants to be a bigot who removes rights from black Americans or gay people. But by presenting the complex issue of trans as the inevitable next step in a campaign for ever more rights, our societies in the West took a mad turn. After all, the acceptance of other arguments were based on the idea that the people getting their rights were equals — and that society would not need to change itself or alter its fundamentals in order to grant these rights. The moral force of both movements were founded on the basis of 'Just like us.' And that is how they succeeded. The 'trans-rights' movement, by contrast, turned everything completely on its heads. They insisted not just that some people feel that they have been born in the wrong body, but that nobody is born with any discernible biological sex. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters They insisted that because some people feel a confusion about their sexual identity nobody has a fixed biological identity. That — as some of us said from the start — was madness. It would be like the gay rights movement saying 'We're here, we're queer — and as a result there is no difference between men and women.' I doubt the gay rights cause would have succeeded if that was the track that campaigners chose. Advertisement But that was where the trans movement went. And of course the landmine which they trod on — and which was gone along with for far too long — was the explosive issue of children. As the DHHS review notes, the whole idea of 'gender affirming care' (note how manipulative that phrase is) was based on unbelievably weak evidence. Even before you get to issues of life-changing surgery, there was the imposition of 'puberty blockers.' These could be handed out after minimal consultation to any child who simply felt concern about the onset of puberty and worried about the changes to their body. They were handed out with no long-term studies of their effects. Advertisement Too few professionals warned that these medications could cause lifelong sexual disfunction, infertility and much more. The ones that did raise alarms or even questions were hounded by the dementors of our age — both online and off. But how did anyone think a child could make an informed decision about such a measure? Studies from Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries have confirmed what many of us said, which is that young people — including those who might grow up to just be gay — would be 'trans-ed' by the health industry. And live to deeply regret it. 'Gay conversion therapy' may have become a taboo. But converting gay people into approximations of the opposite sex became deemed 'progressive.' Advertisement We were told that if a child who had 'gender dysphoria' was not medicated with cross-sex hormones, or did not have a double-mastectomy then a range of things would happen. We were told that 'trans children' (another fallacious category) would 'kill themselves.' Or that any criticism of such procedures was 'disappearing' or even 'genociding' trans people. I have lost count of the number of American parents I have spoken to who were told by doctors that they had to 'trans' their child and were given the slogan if, say, the child was a biological male, 'Would you rather have a trans daughter or a dead son?' Parents were literally bulldozed into agreeing to life-altering surgeries and medical experiments being run on their children. Advertisement Now a smidgen of sanity has been brought to the debate. Future generations will look back at this period and marvel at what we allowed. They will coo with amazement that we gave life-altering drugs and performed life-altering operations on young people not old enough to vote, drive or drink alcohol. But we can already tell why it happened. It happened because pseudo-science was waved by crazed progressives bullies, who in the name of 'kindness' did things that were wicked beyond words.
New York Post
17 hours ago
- Health
- New York Post
Researcher behind Trump-ordered gender dysphoria report outs himself, doubles down that medical transitions for minors isn't ethical
An anonymous researcher behind a bombshell Trump-ordered review of transgender treatments on minors has outed himself as a liberal MIT professor — as he doubled down on the report's findings that medical intervention on underage kids isn't 'empirically or ethically justified.' Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at the elite Massachusetts school, revealed in a Washington Post op-ed Thursday that he was among the nine co-authors of the sweeping Department of Health and Human Services report published last month that found gender dysphoria among young patients should be treated with therapy instead of transition treatments. Byrne, who described himself as 'hardly a fan of the current administration' and noted he'd never voted Republican, insisted the HHS' Gender Dysphoria Report wasn't 'written by zealots busily grinding axes' — despite outraged critics on the left immediately ripping the review. Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at MIT, was among the nine co-authors of the sweeping report published last month that found gender dysphoria should be treated with therapy instead of transition treatments for children. Instead, he argued that the report — which was sparked by one of Trump's early executive orders but written by a liberal majority — offered up a 'sober examination of what by any standards are drastic medical interventions for physically healthy minors.' 'After surveying all the evidence, and applying widely accepted principles of medical ethics, we found that medical transition for minors is not empirically or ethically justified,' Byrne wrote, noting that the findings were in alignment with scores of other reports commissioned by health authorities in other countries — including the UK. 'The review describes how the medicalized 'gender affirming care' approach to treating pediatric gender distress, endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, rests on very weak evidence,' he continued. 'Puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones compromise fertility and may cause lifelong sexual dysfunction (among other adverse effects); surgeries such as mastectomies remove healthy tissue and carry known risks of complications. Medical procedures always have downsides, but in this case no reliable research indicates that these treatments are beneficial to minors' mental health.' Byrne, who described himself as 'hardly a fan of the current administration' and noted he'd never voted Republican, insisted the HHS' Gender Dysphoria Report wasn't 'written by zealots busily grinding axes'. AP Among the transgender interventions in children that were scrutinized in the HHS report included the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries. The report, which is still undergoing a peer-review, fueled immediate outrage among liberals and trans activists when it was published. Byrne acknowledged much of the fury stemmed from the authors remaining anonymous — a move he said was made amid fears of 'personal attacks or professional penalties' given the divisive nature of the gender dysphoria treatments debate. He was adamant though that the cohort could 'produce a rigorous, well-argued document' given the wide-ranging expertise of those involved — including experts in endocrinology, psychiatry, health policy and general medicine. 'The hostile response to the review by medical groups and practitioners underscores why it was necessary. Medicalized treatment for pediatric gender dysphoria needs to be dispassionately scrutinized like any other area of medicine, no matter which side of the aisle is cheering it on. But in the United States, it has not been,' he said. 'It deserves to be read by people of all political leanings. Whether its early critics bothered to do so is unclear.'
Washington Post
a day ago
- Health
- Washington Post
I co-wrote the anonymous HHS report on pediatric gender medicine
Alex Byrne is a professor of philosophy at MIT. In May, the Department of Health and Human Services published a comprehensive review of treatments for gender dysphoria in minors that was swiftly criticized, in part because the names of its authors were withheld. I am one of the authors. As Health and Human Services said upon publication, the review is going through the peer review process, for which anonymity is preferred. My co-authors and I discussed additional reasons for anonymity, including that disclosure might distract attention from the review's content or lead to personal attacks or professional penalties. Those who have raised concerns about the field of pediatric gender medicine are well aware of the risks to reputations or careers.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Trump admin is trying to push a conversion therapy by another name on trans kids
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report about youth gender care last week that cautions against the use of medical interventions in gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers, for minors. It instead recommends something called 'exploratory therapy,' a controversial form of psychotherapy which has been compared by many to a kind of conversion therapy by a kinder name. One especially concerning fact about this report is that HHS did not disclose the names of those involved in putting it together, nor information about who was consulted for the report, raising questions over what potential biases should be accounted for. The HHS report joins the United Kingdom's Cass Review — which has been similarly denounced by prominent researchers and practitioners dealing in transgender care — as a major national report on youth gender medicine for which no expert contributors have been named. Transfeminine jurist and bioethicist Florence Ashley, who has authored numerous academic papers on trans-related health care, (including a 2022 report titled "Interrogating Gender-Exploratory Therapy" published in Perspectives on Psychological Science) shared on BlueSky that a meta analysis of the appendix of the HHS report, which you can access through EXIF data by opening the appendix in NotePad, shows the name Alex Byrne, an MIT philosophy professor who posts anti-trans messages nearly every day on social media. It's unclear whether, or to what extent, Byrne played a role in the report, and my questions to him about this went unanswered. It's notable that the HHS report mentions the Cass Review, which was led by British pediatrician and former chair of the British Academy of Childhood Disability Hilary Cass, who according to New York Times reporting has 'never treated children with gender dysphoria,' 198 times in its 400 pages. This apparent reliance on the Cass Review as a kind of blueprint for its findings could also explain how such a lengthy report was produced in the three or so months since Trump ordered its creation in a Jan. 28 executive order. Typically, a medical report of this scale takes years to complete. The aforementioned Cass Review took four years to complete, for example. Major medical associations in the U.S. have denounced the report, including the American Association of Pediatrics, which said in a statement: 'For such an analysis to carry credibility, it must consider the totality of available data and the full spectrum of clinical outcomes rather than relying on select perspectives and a narrow set of data. This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care. As we have seen with immunizations, bypassing medical expertise and scientific evidence has real consequences for the health of America's children. AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways. The report prioritizes opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.' On its face, the 'exploratory therapy' the report encourages as a primary form of treatment for children with gender dysphoria might not appear so bad. It's also important to note that therapy is already a major requirement for gender transitions of people of all ages, and especially for children, although it generally looks quite different. Proponents of exploratory therapy describe it as simply exploring a teenager's life in search of potential 'causes' of any gender dysphoria. The problem is there is no legitimate science with another explanation for gender dysphoria other than it is a naturally occurring trait among a tiny proportion of the population. The HHS document claims that exploratory therapy is meant to help trans youth 'come to terms' with their birth sexed body as an end goal. There's no data presented on the efficacy of this approach beyond guesswork by proponents of this therapy. There are no studies presented to show how the exploratory therapy approach might impact suicidality in trans teens. We know from past history that victims of conversion therapy, where their true self is denied and overruled by doctors with an anti-LGBTQ agenda, are at very elevated risk for suicidality. The report's own findings show how natural gender dysphoria is in those who present with it. In one section, its authors state that about 90% of gender dysphoric youth who go on puberty blockers end up 'graduating' to cross sex hormones when they are older (a finding backed up in multiple studies) and can make a more mature and permanent decision. When I see that 90% number, I see a process that is working at correctly identifying which youth with gender dysphoria are actually just naturally trans. Yet, the report states that puberty blockers may act as a 'gas pedal' for further medical interventions. 'The perception of PBs has shifted — from being seen as a reversible 'pause button' to more like a 'gas pedal' that accelerates medical transition,' reads a key passage from the report. 'Social transition in childhood may have similar effects, with some low-quality studies suggesting the majority of children who socially transition before puberty progress to medical interventions. These patients 'are likely [to] seek blockers or hormones.'' Social transition is the process wherein a trans youth may try a different haircut, name and pronouns. But these statements can only be true if you desire fewer trans youth to transition. The report authors' solution to this so-called problem is gender exploratory therapy. On its face, exploratory therapy is, according to its proponents, meant to help a young person experiencing gender dysphoria 'come to terms' and accept their birth sexed body. Practitioners of exploratory therapy believe that gender dysphoria has a wide range of causes, from childhood sexual trauma, to the discredited idea that being trans is socially contagious, to just typical pubertal discomfort with body changes. Many of these proposed 'causes' were also used to justify conversion therapy in gay and lesbian teens 30 years ago. It's hard to not conclude that practitioners of exploratory therapy simply do not believe that trans minors should be allowed to transition, since there's no endpoint to exploratory approaches that can result in a patient accessing gender-affirming care. It's an approach designed to run out the clock on a teenager's natural puberty, potentially trapping them in a sexed body they never wanted until they may be able to transition as adults. Compare this with the gender-affirming approach, which lets a teen take the lead on how they are feeling about transitioning. Does it seem too scary right now? OK, let's wait. Do we want to try puberty blockers to see how it feels for a while? Let's try. Do we want to stop all this gender treatment altogether because it feels like too much? That's fine, too. There's a major misconception about the gender-affirming approach. Critics have misinformed the public into thinking that the affirming approach automatically affirms that every child who shows up in a gender clinic is trans and launches them into a full and immediate medical treatment. This simply doesn't happen. The process for accessing this care is long and arduous. Teens must express their gender dysphoria persistently, consistently and insistently over a long period of time, often for years, to even get a gender dysphoria diagnosis. The bare contempt this report's anonymous authors hold for transgender people is astounding to take in, even for someone like myself who has spent the last decade covering trans issues. We already have a solid system for carefully identifying youth with gender dysphoria and guiding them through a fairly simple, but lengthy and emotional medical transition process. I suggest we leave the analysis to the true experts, whose years of research and abundance of medical studies have provided the public with the comprehensive, medically sound treatment plans we already have in place — rather than unnamed authors who provide little evidence for what very much appears to be bad-faith findings. This article was originally published on
