Scholars must show ‘willingness to question assumptions, to seek new evidence, and to resist pressure to conform,’ professor says
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who co-authored a report critiquing “gender affirming” mastectomies and cross-sex hormones for children lamented the cancel culture that deters many scholars from speaking out on the issue in an opinion piece Thursday.
Writing at the Washington Post, philosophy Professor Alex Byrne called for the re-ignition of the “scientific spirit — a willingness to question assumptions, to seek new evidence, and to resist pressure to conform from our in-group.”
Byrne was one of nine scholars who wrote a review for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about “treatments for gender dysphoria in minors,” published in May.
Their report found that, despite receiving support from a number of major medical organizations, the hormones and mastectomies done on children who are believed to be transgender are not supported by evidence.
“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 wrote.
The language used to describe these treatments is often “Orwellian,” too, he wrote:
“Gender-affirming top surgery” sounds entirely positive, and papers over the salient fact that the breasts of physically healthy teenagers are removed. Patients who undergo irreversible surgery and later regret it are said to have “dynamic desires for gender-affirming medical interventions.” The usual words to indicate a young patient’s sex are disallowed: female children are “individuals assigned female at birth” or “trans boys,” and are never simply “girls.”
In the report, none of the scholars were named, first, because “anonymity is preferred” during the peer review process, and, second, because of cancel culture, he wrote.
“Those who have raised concerns about the field of pediatric gender medicine are well aware of the risks to reputations or careers,” Byrne wrote, noting the “aggressive activists” in the LGBTQ movement.
Byrne said a majority of the scholars who wrote the review, including himself, are politically liberal.
Some feared that the Trump administration would “try to control the content of the review or even alter it pre-publication; that worry proved unfounded,” he said.
However, the scholars’ report quickly met with backlash from other liberals, he wrote:
Mere hours after publication, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Susan Kressly, claimed that the review was undermined by reliance on “a narrow set of data.” A glance at the evidence synthesis (or even just the separate appendix) by anyone familiar with evidence-based medicine would show that this complaint is preposterous. The hypocrisy is blatant: the AAP’s policy statement for the treatment of gender-dysphoric youth is unsupported by its own citations.
Equally baseless was the statement issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health the day after the review’s publication, saying it “misrepresents existing research.” If it does, why not clinch the case with some examples? Yet none were provided.
Their response is another example of why the scholars did not attach their names to the paper, Byrne said.
It should not be that way, he wrote. The medical field has made mistakes and will continue to in the future – the solution is to make it easier to acknowledge and correct past wrongs, the professor wrote.
“What we should do is promote a culture which makes it easier to turn back,” he wrote. “Such a culture is animated by the scientific spirit …”
“That is exactly what has been missing from the debate over youth gender medicine, and we liberals must take some blame. The more liberals who can rise above tribal loyalties and publicly dissent, the better,” he wrote.
In January, President Donald Trump issued his “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” executive order, which criticized “maiming and sterilizing … impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
It directs government agencies to stop funding the procedures and prevent institutions that receive federal funds from committing the surgeries or handing out the drugs.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A child who identifies as transgender puts on makeup; Rushay/Shutterstock
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