That’s exactly what i was going to say. The manufacturer lied to doctors about the risks. That’s clearly wrong. In fact, i hope some of those guilty are convicted of felony charges.
There are certainly channels other than doctors where trans people get medical information. An internet acquaintance who recently had extensive facial surgery to look more feminine shared a link to a site where she reviewed her cosmetic surgeon, and shared photos. I poked around the site, and I’ve never seen more photos of vaginas before … But there was lots of chatter about risks, costs, downsides, etc. If you can find these articles, I’m sure that potential patients can, too. God knows that trans people talk with each other about the costs and benefits of the hormones they are taking. There really isn’t a cover up. There’s tons of information.
That’s a great post and I’m glad to see you reveal your heart of heart secret.
This article is long but well worth the time to read, and specifically the concerns of some gender care physicians who feel their peers are fast tracking kids for medical interventions.
Regarding oxy, the idea that docs were misinformed about it is a joke. Has no one heard of the pill mills where doctors illegally provided millions of pills to the addicted? Don’t put Drs on a pedestal.
There has been extensive investigation, and it’s well documented that the maker of oxycontin lied to doctors.
There were at least 4 significant drivers of the opioid epidemic in the US:
concern about the undertreatment of pain became common.
patient reviews of medical providers became an important thing.
oxycontin was developed, and marketed extremely heavily as a solution to intractable pain issues. The manufacturer published false data about how hard it was to become addicted, while simultaneously publishing prescribing guidelines that were designed to addict the users. They wanted to sell pills.
yes, there were also some pill mills, basically quasi-legal drug pushers
But i think the fourth largely serviced people who were hooked by the interactions of the first three.
I mean, the Sacklers, who own the company that made oxycontin, hoped to pay $6B to shield themselves from future lawsuits. That suggests just a tiny bit of responsibility. Not to mention that the corporation has already pled guilty to being opioid pushers.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a controversial bankruptcy case involving Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, and members of the Sackler family who own the company.
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In exchange for a $6 billion dollar payment from the Sacklers, the arrangement would block future opioid lawsuits targeting them.
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Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty twice to federal criminal charges relating to opioid sales and marketing, but the Sacklers have never been charged with crimes.
I mean, that’s obviously true - if gender is a social construct, and of course it is, then gender dysphoria must be a product of our culture as well. Perhaps it’s a product of the way biological realities about a specific person interact with our culture, but our culture is a necessary part of the equation.
That doesn’t make it any less real, though. Everything in the universe is viewed through our own interpretation of things. You can’t even hold a concept in your mind without socially constructed interpretations coming into play.
“Man” and “woman” are social constructs. The Right loves to try and use this as a “gotcha”, but that’s because they’re playing to a base of ignorance on this topic. Again, EVERYTHING is a social construct. Is Tyrannosaurus rex a dinosaur? Sure, we can agree on that. What about Plesiosaurus? What about Pterodactyl? What about Herrerasaurus? What about Gallus domesticus?
Is Jupiter a planet? What about Mercury? What about Pluto? What about the moon? What about Ceres?
Is that a chair? Or is it a lump of dead organic matter, mostly cellulose?
Is that a person? Is it an upright hominid of the Homo genus? Or is it a collection of cells of various species, living in a symbiotic colony?
…there was a HUGE amount of pushback from professionals in the field to that article. Here are some of them:
From the last one:
The foundation is strong for safe reversible science based adolescent gender care. As long as you listen to the consensus and the experts, and not people with an agenda.
Since magellen01 has never answered the question, can you maybe answer why the state government needs to step in for this particular set of treatments, while leaving other various serious treatments with serious, life-changing side effects up to doctors, medical review boards, patients, and caregivers?
I’m sure there are lots of articles (valid or not) that take issue with all kinds of current medical care, but why are the state governments only stepping in for this one?
There was a surge in left-handed-ness when it became socially acceptable. There was a surge in people who identified as gay when that because socially acceptable, too. What we are seeing now is very much like what we saw with gays in the 1980s.
And i expect the mental health of trans people to change similarly to what happened when homosexuality became more acceptable, as well. Back in the day, a huge fraction of homosexuals had major mental health disorders. Lots were suicidal. Today, the mental health profile of gays is similar to that of straights.
I’m hopeful we can get there.
And I’m convinced that the most important “treatment” trans people need is social acceptance. You want to help trans people? Vote against any politician who proposes “bathroom bills” or blocks “trans affirming care” or tries to “protect children” from learning that trans people are there, too.
I actually think the answer is a little broader than that. I think that bigots are upset by anything that helps people who don’t want to conform to social norms. All social norms, no matter how oppressive or harmful they are.
That’s why liposuction, which is awfully dangerous for its benefit, gets almost no scrutiny. Because it’s about helping people conform to the “approved” body shape. And medical transition, which has enormous benefits for a tiny fraction of the population, is seen as scary and something that must be regulated. Because it’s about non-conformity.
I posted about this in the Sackler thread last night, but doctors are legally allowed to write prescriptions and are given a lot of discretion to do so. Unless the prosecutors can prove illegal intent (which is difficult), there’s not much they can do. The Supreme Court threw out a bunch of these convictions on a 9-0 decision, so unless there are other illegal acts involved, like tax evasion or using drugs to coerce patients into sex, most of the “pill mill” doctors were acting lawfully and most of the clinics maintained a veneer of legitimacy by requiring physical exams and MRI’s ( for which they charged dearly).
If you read the linked post you will see that I’m not excusing the doctors, but that I felt that manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies - along with some politicians and lobbyists- were equally culpable. It was a systemic failure of a profit-driven system, and one of the unintended consequences was the way that failure eroded public trust in the health care system.
Getting back on topic, I think it’s worth mentioning Louisiana state senator Fred Mills -who is also a pharmacist- who was the deciding vote in killing Louisiana’s proposed anti-trans legislation in committee. He basically said that when he looked into the issues that the facts and statistics did not back up the narrative that had been presented to the committee and that he wasn’t going to ban what appeared to be a safe and effective treatment for political reasons.
What do X and Y chromosomes have to do with anything? The vast majority of people don’t even know what their sex chromosomes are. Yes, you can make a very good educated guess based on a variety of other biological cues, but those other biological cues don’t always give the right answer for the chromosomes, and don’t always agree with each other.
Just like, for the majority of people, those biological cues correlate very closely with self-identification of gender, but there are some people for whom the correlation breaks down.
Does it give you pause that in some countries, which are to be ahead of us in dealing with trans protocols, that they are taking a step back, rethinking the assumptions that were made about what constitutes best care? Does that change in expert consensus give you any pause about what you’ve been arguing?
I’m aware go that, which affects a tiny part of the population. But I was trying to understand where Babble was drawing the line about social constructs.
Because those particular countries are “stepping back” because transphobia has become widespread and institutionalised in many of those countries, and they aren’t stepping back “based on the science”, but because of political pressure from obvious bigots.
There hasn’t been a change in expert consensus. We just have to look at the quality of the citations you’ve provided in this thread to see that many of these “so-called experts” aren’t experts in this field at all. For example, look at my deep-dive into the “chief psychiatrist at Tampere University” who turned out to not be the chief psychiatrist at Tampere University.