(Pexels)
By Laurel Duggan
Daily Caller News Foundation
Medical professionals and advocates for cross-sex medical procedures downplay the risk of regret by ignoring or minimizing the existence of “detransitioners” and people who came to regret their transitions, researchers told Reuters.
WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
Some medical professionals believe it’s taboo to discuss or acknowledge individuals who regret their cross-sex medical interventions, because it could create the impression that patients with gender identity issues aren’t capable of making their own medical decisions, according to Dr. Kinnon MacKinnon, an assistant professor of social work at York University who’s now researching the subject. MacKinnon, who is transgender, once held these beliefs too, but has since come to view detransitioners‘ stories as a crucial tool for improving transgender healthcare and helping patients avoid regret.
“I can’t think of any other examples where you’re not allowed to speak about your own healthcare experiences if you didn’t have a good outcome,” MacKinnon told Reuters.
MacKinnon had previously assumed that people only destransitioned due to experiences of discrimination or lack of support from family or friends, but the research project intended to investigate such cases upended those assumptions, according to Reuters. Many of the detransitioners MacKinnon spoke to for research said transition hadn’t resolved their underlying mental health struggles, that their gender identities were in flux throughout treatment and that doctors weren’t equipped to help them.
Listening to the science means being willing to question your prior assumptions when confronted by new data.
An in-depth investigation into detransition and the state of the research, also featuring @redetranscanada https://t.co/O31YiKywek pic.twitter.com/4k9fyBb3RH
— Kinnon Ross MacKinnon – MSW, PhD (@Kinnon_Ross) December 22, 2022
“People are terrified to do this research,” Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, a clinical psychologist and co-author of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) new Standards of Care, told Reuters. She said MacKinnon’s work was some of the most extensive research on the subject to date, but that the hostile response to the work shows why so few researchers are willing to conduct similar projects.
MacKinnon’s research was met with hostility from the transgender medical establishment; an LGBT advocacy group refused to promote an event presenting the findings, and one Canadian health provider refused to participate, citing threats to institutions that offer cross-sex treatments to children, according to Reuters.
While there has never been a long-term study on transgender patients to determine how many of them regretted transitioning, according to Reuters, some advocates and doctors continue to insist that regret is exceedingly rare.
“Stories with people who have a lot of anger and regret” about transitioning are over-represented and don’t reflect “what we are seeing in the clinics,” Dr. Jason Rafferty, a child psychiatrist who helped write the American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement in support of cross-sex medical interventions, told Reuters. He said detransitioning was a “very invalidating term for a lot of people who are trans and gender-diverse.”
“These patients are not returning in droves,” Dr. Marci Bowers, gender surgeon and president of WPATH, told Reuters, adding that regret is “very rare,” she told Reuters.
“Highest you’ll find is 1% or 1.5% of any kind of regret,” Bowers said.
Some studies have found the regret rate to be as high as 25%, according to Reuters.
The systematic review of transition regret data that advocates often cite only counted patients who had undergone surgeries and omitted patients who had only taken puberty blockers and/or hormones. The study’s data stretched back to 1989, long before medical transitions became common and readily available.
Similarly, a Dutch study released in October, which found that 98% of adolescents who underwent puberty blockers before hormones continued treatment after four years, can’t be appropriately applied to the American medical model because it studies patients who underwent year-long comprehensive assessments before starting treatments, according to Reuters. This approach is increasingly rare in the U.S., where the medical establishment views delays to medical treatments as a dangerous form of gatekeeping.
“There’s a real need for more long-term studies that track patients for five years or longer,” MacKinnon told Reuters. “Many detransitioners talk about feeling good during the first few years of their transition. After that, they may experience regret.”
MacKinnon did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The “Climate Change Cult.” The “Anti-Racism Cult.” The “Cult of Wokeness.” The “LGBTQ Cult” and its predatory offspring targeting America’s children, the “Transgender Cult.” The “Cult of Abortion.” The “COVID Cult.” The “Cult of Globalism.” “TikTok Cults.” Every month the list grows.
To right-thinking Americans attempting to make sense of a nation seemingly gone mad, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the irrational, deranged – and often demonic – leftwing political and cultural movements currently capturing the minds of millions of Americans are nothing short of full-fledged cults.
Although the high priesthood of all these leftwing religious cults – i.e., university professors, academics and other Marxist ideologues and activists – may be true believers, the people actually wielding REAL POWER do not believe any of it. To them, these leftwing cults conveniently serve to disguise and distract “the rabble” from what the leader class is REALLY up to, which is the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and glory for themselves, and a total transformation of America and the world.
All of this and much more is explored in a powerful, insightful and absolutely unique way in the latest issue of WND’s acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “HOLY WAR: Defeating the growing cult of leftism and its total war on Christianity.”
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
The post Medical establishment downplays risk of regretting sex changes, researchers say appeared first on WND.
