It depends with the downsides are of both having chemo and not having chemo.
Possibly, it depends on why, if its due to new overwhelming scientific evidence then sure, if its due to extensive political pressure than no.
But lets step back a bit. You consider yourself a conservative. In many areas you have come down hard on govenment interference in the lives of the citizens. But for some reason in this case you want the government to come in and over rule everyone involved imposing their will dictatorially on everyone involved, without any consultation with the affected parties. How can you as a conservative support this?
For the cases in question, you have
On the side of those in favor of giving puberty blockers: The children themselves, their parents, their personal doctors, and the medical establishment who have studied the issue extensively carefully evaluating all the pros and cons.
On the side against it you have: politicians, religious leaders, random aggrieved bloggers, and a few scattered dissenting researcher (often with political motives). None of whom have spoken with or know anything about the children in question, and most of whom have little if any medical expertise.
What possible conservative rationale would there be to enforce the will of the second group on everyone over that of the first group? You know that boogeyman that the Republicans tried to spread that Obamacare would come between you and your doctor? This is the reality.
It’s curious that one side is required to provide
and the other side gets to have
I wonder how you decided which side gets the impossible level of certainty and which side gets to handwave their argument.
Do you understand that going through puberty as the gender you don’t identify with can have long term negative consequences?
Here’s a pretty good take on it.
Reed sounds like a crank.
Bari Weiss’ Free Press is the perfect place for her then.
Ah, I hadn’t realized Free Press was associated with Weiss. Makes perfect sense now.
Whenever Maggie links to an article, the first thing I do is go to the main page to see what kind of far-right crap they put out, and who is behind the site. Free Press is yet another “We dare to print the crap that every other far-right fishwrap is putting out!” site.
But there is a risk of the kid lamenting the side effects of chemotherapy. Seriously, chemo is horrible. It’s even possible for chemo to kill the patient-- You can’t get much more “long term negative effects” than that. The side effects of chemo are orders of magnitude worse than the side effects of puberty blockers.
You are talking about the possibility of death, but he is talking about something far, far worse-the possibility that someone might want to be a girl!
Isn’t that up to the doctor to decide? Isn’t that why he said, “if their doctor thinks its warrented” rather than “sell them over the counter”?
Yep, that’s what it always ends up coming down to.
First, I think it is a conservative position to protect children. And also a liberal one. There are two issues with the above. While I am all for listening to the professionals, they seem to be moving to a more conservative position. In the UK, Australia, and some Scandinavian countries anyway. They were a bit ahead of the U.S. on this, so I’m keen for us to learn from them. Also, the cite I shared with Miller is from a progressive woman who has been on the front lines. Did you read that link. Very interesting.
Also, I fear that there has been a move to embrace everything trans that is not healthy. I used the word “fad” upthread. Not a good word, but I’m struggling with how best to describe it. In a well-meaning attempt to be accepting, I think the culture in the U.S. has been moving way too fast. We have people bringing very young kids to drag shows, and we have parents in progressive places like Hollywood with more seemingly trans kids than seems to make sense if this is a 'born-in-the-wrong-body" issue.
The people most to the left politically seem to be driving the U.S. trans bus. And that’s concerning, as ideology seems to be the driving source. We have gay groups who are advocating to slow down with the transitioning of children and even they have a hard time being listened to or not being ignored altogether.
So, I think the conservative thing to do is to move slowly and make sure our good intentions are not working the kids’ best interests.
And what’s wrong with that?
Be specific.
Did you know that a side effect of most childhood chemotherapy is a risk of a different cancers in adulthood?
You’re using the same dishonest tactics that anti-vaxxers use, focusing on the relatively uncommon risks while completely ignoring the substantial benefits. No medical benefit is risk-free. I know a lot of parents of trans teens and young adults and while some of them were skeptical at first, they are all extremely pleased and relieved at how much happier and well-adjusted their children are now that they aren’t suffering from gender dysphoria.
Pissing off the wowsers. Better a boy be dead by his own hand than wind up with a small penis because he delayed his adolescence when he wasn’t sure.
It’s the coservative habit of talking out both sides of their ass meme I’ve aluded to before.
So you conclude that your gut feelings and fears about this should be given the weight of law behind them?
What about the feelings of the parent who sees her child suffering a severe identity crisis and scared shitless about coming puberty that will radically change her son’s body in ways that he doesn’t want and will affect his life forever. Do her feelings have any weight?
Did you read Miller’s rebuttal? There is no evidence for any of her claims.
Exactly. My mother has gone through chemotherapy for breast cancer three times. When she was diagnosed the third time, about ten years ago, she initially was going to refuse going through chemo again, as she remembered just how sick she’d gotten from the earlier chemo treatments; her oncologist talked her into it, saying, “the new chemo drugs don’t have nearly the same side effects any more,” and “if you were my mother, I’d very much hope that you did the chemo.”
So, my mom once again embarked on the chemo therapy, but it did, indeed, make her very ill once again, and she only got partway through the six-month series when she said, “enough,” and stopped it.
In addition to the short-term illness that chemo had inflicted on her, my mom has struggled for years with low red blood counts. Traditional treatments for anemia have done little to help, and her doctors now suspect that three sets of chemo treatments damaged her bone marrow, and impaired her body’s ability to create enough new red blood cells.
So, yes, there’s definitely a non-zero issue with chemo, even with its benefits in fighting cancer.
I’m glad you brought this up, as it’s a constant issue. Seriously, if you are open to opposing views, many cites for those things are going to be from places that are new. Your positions, along with most posters here, align fairly tightly with MSM sources, and as you might guess, they don’t make a habit of publishing things that don’t agree with. So, citrus are going to come from places that operate outside of your comfort zone.
A good example isa Hunter’s laptop. ALL of your trusted sources buried it, downplayed it, or tried to explain it away. So, if I wanted to cite an opposing view back in 2020, it would have been The NY Post, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, etc. All cites that you would have reflexively balked at. Later, cites to articles to Glen Greenwald or Matt Taibi might have been more successful, but I’m not even sure about that.
Ditto for information about Covid. Medical experts from Johns Hopkins, Stamford, Oxford and other previously trustworthy places were kept off the MSM networks. So, again, if I wanted to substantiate a point by citing them, you would have had your panties in a similar twist. All because where the cites reside are not in your comfort zone.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen The Social Dilemma, but I HIGHLY recommend it, to everyone. We’re all in silos and their getting smaller and smaller: https://www.thesocialdilemma.com
This AGAIN?? Fuck you, and the laptop you rode in on.
Thanks to those “early cites”, it is now absolutely, conclusively impossible to get any information at all about that laptop, because the chain of custody has been utterly destroyed. And what does this have to do with people trying to protect children from the Republicans trying to kill them, anyway?