Latest news with #gendermedicine
National Post
19-05-2025
- Health
- National Post
Mia Hughes: Nova Scotia ignores growing evidence against youth gender affirming care
In recent years, a clear pattern has emerged in paediatric gender medicine: every country that has reviewed the evidence for interventions such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for adolescents has found it to be exceptionally weak, and responded by shifting towards cautious, psychotherapeutic care. In sharp contrast, Nova Scotia has just announced an expansion of its paediatric gender services to ensure that youth across the province can access these controversial medical treatments. Article content Article content Article content So, who is getting it right? The growing list of nations that have conducted years-long investigations into their gender clinics, commissioned gold-standard systematic reviews, and ultimately acted to protect children from unproven interventions? Article content Article content Or, is it Canadian provinces like Nova Scotia — which have done none of the above, allow ideology to guide public health policy, and continue to follow the increasingly discredited World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an activist association posing as a medical authority, known for suppressing inconvenient evidence and letting politics shape its guidelines? Article content The evidence for the puberty suppression experiment has been shaky from the beginning, and the rationale highly questionable. Yet, it went largely unchallenged until 2020, when Finland became the first country to apply the brakes after a thorough review of the science. Sweden soon followed, then Norway, Denmark, and England. More recently, Brazil, Chile, Queensland, and Alberta have joined the retreat, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just released the most scathing review to date. Article content Article content In short, every jurisdiction that has scrutinized this medical protocol has come to the same conclusion — there is no reliable proof of benefit, and the risks are too serious to allow the experiment to continue. Article content Article content For every Canadian province except Alberta to remain steadfastly committed to this treatment model as the dominos fall globally requires an extraordinary level of willful blindness. This is evident in our federal government's ongoing failure to commission an independent review of our paediatric gender clinics, and in our provincial health authorities, which continue to trust WPATH despite a deluge of revelations in recent years that the group has abandoned scientific rigour, evidence-based practice, and the Hippocratic Oath. Article content Equally troubling is that most of Canada's top media outlets choose to ignore this scandal, instead acting as mouthpieces regurgitating activist misinformation. The CBC's coverage of Nova Scotia's announcement is a case in point. Written by a trans-identified reporter, Andrew Lam, the article parrots outdated ideological talking points — such as the long-debunked claim that puberty blockers are fully reversible — as if it was settled science. The piece contains no mention of the international pivot away from this medical approach. This kind of reporting helps to create the conditions for policy decisions like the coming expansion of services in Nova Scotia.
Wall Street Journal
12-05-2025
- Health
- Wall Street Journal
Trump Tells the Truth About ‘Trans' Children
The most striking thing about the Department of Health and Human Services's report on gender medicine is how humane its conclusions are ('The U.S. Catches Up on Gender Medicine,' Review & Outlook, May 8). Most notably, it acknowledges that transgender ideology has a particular kind of victim: children who are gay or lesbian. As a gay physician, I can attest to two things. First, gay boys and lesbian girls usually don't conform to gender roles. Second, the medical establishment now assumes that gender nonconformity means a child is transgender. This isn't merely an insult to many kids' identity—it leads to a medical assault on their bodies and minds, in the form of hormones that have irreversible effects and invasive surgeries that lead to permanent scars.
National Post
09-05-2025
- Health
- National Post
Mia Hughes: Canada must launch review of paediatric gender clinic practices
Article content On May 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a bombshell 409-page report laying bare the troubling state of paediatric gender medicine. This moment presents yet another opportunity for Canada to reckon with a medical scandal that has long gone unaddressed. Article content Article content The HHS report highlights the exceptionally weak evidence used to support puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for youth who identify as transgender, exposing how ideology dominates over science in the field of gender medicine. Its conclusion is damning: the medical establishment has failed vulnerable young people. Article content Article content The review was commissioned by an executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump, whose directive was laced with politically charged and inflammatory language. In sharp contrast, the report itself is measured and grounded in evidence. Its recommendations echo the cautious, evidence-based approach to gender-affirming care now taking hold across much of Europe, contradicting the ideological positions of all major medical associations in the U.S. and Canada. Article content Article content Acknowledging the political controversy surrounding the issue, the as-yet anonymous authors move past slogans and ideology to deliver a methodical, yet scathing, assessment of the current state of paediatric gender medicine. At the heart of the report is an 'umbrella review' that synthesizes all the existing systematic reviews for these interventions, including those conducted in Sweden, Finland, England, and Canada. Unsurprisingly, like every one of those prior systematic reviews, the HHS review concludes that the evidence is of 'very low' quality. That's because the research in this field, particularly surrounding claims that hormonal and surgical interventions improve mental health or reduce suicidality, is methodologically weak, lacking control groups or long-term follow-up. Meanwhile, the known risks of such interventions — infertility, reduced bone density, disrupted psychosocial development, and impaired sexual function — are not theoretical. They are documented outcomes of these interventions. Article content Article content Until now, the typical response to this lack of evidence has been to call for more research, but the HHS report makes clear that, given what we already know, further research cannot ethically be justified. It does so by invoking the Nuremberg Code — the bedrock of international research ethics — citing that the anticipated results justify the performance of the experiment — and the Belmont Report which report emphasizes that no trial should proceed unless the intervention has a 'favourable risk/benefit profile.' In paediatric gender medicine, every systematic review to date has found that the risks outweigh any potential benefits, making further research unjustified. Article content Article content Echoing the U.K.'s landmark Cass Report, the authors call for gender dysphoria to be 'de-exceptionalized,' meaning therapists need to approach treating these young people in the same way they would any other distressed patient. Instead of viewing them as 'transgender adolescents' in need of powerful hormones and drastic surgeries, the report suggests that therapists should help these young people 'develop self-understanding, engage with emotional vulnerability, and build practical strategies for managing distress.'
