World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Files

 You cannot treat a person if you do not accept their personal account of themselves.

There's a difference between believing someone when they describe how they feel, and believing that their beliefs about themselves are literally true. For instance a schizophrenic will believe that people are talking to them from the shadows, or in their head. A doctor will take that into account, but won't think someone is talking to them.

An amputee can feel pain in the amputated limb. The pain is real, but the limb is still not actually there. Again, treatment will take both those facts into account. An anorexic is convinced that they are overweight. That has to be taken into account, but not believed as a fact by the medical staff.

Apols. Thought you were someone else!

How is giving children puberty blockers and hormones compassion? Are you not are giving them infertility and a life time of medical care?

Shoog seems to think doctors have a special way of determining true trans, and they could never be wrong.

The number of detransitioners whose lives are currently fucked disproves this.

So, it has been revealed that many troubled young persons were led down a painful, unnecessary path of chemical castration and surgical mutilation to satisfy an ideology.

Strip away all the activism, all the rhetoric, all the sophistry, all the hashtags and that is what we are left with. Ruined kids.

What a shameful episode in Western history.

With all due respect, I think/hope that might be true in this country but not in others. TG4 had a program on years ago (and bear with me, I'm going from memory) about trans treatments in Canada. Funny thing about TG4 us that noone notices because it's in Irish. But I digress.

So trans identifying children were being seen and evaluated by a trained child psychiatrist in a clinic who would then come up with a clinical evaluation. I'm afraid I can't remember his name but I remember him saying there were varying evaluations - those who had been subjected to emotional/physical and sexual abuse, those who were homosexual, those who had other difficulties (eg: autism, bipolar, anxiety and eating disorders) and those who were genuine trans cases. The latter were then referred for specialist treatment.

In the end, he was fired and the clinic was shutdown on the basis that he was transphobic for not evaluating more children as transgender.

That's what the program said anyway but as I say, I'm going on memory here.

(IMHO, I do feel medicalisation is a pervasive problem which may be related to lack of resources/training. Do you have anxiety? Have some SSRIs. Sexual dysfunction as a result? You're lying and we'll section you. Knee pain? Surgery for you. High blood pressure? Have some tablets. A friend of mine was put on those even though he only had high blood pressure in the doctor's office. I found that sort of interesting.).

That's what the program said anyway but as I say, I'm going on memory here.

Whether in Irish, English or indeed Canadian French (as it’s Canadian), there was definitely more to that anecdote than the producers were prepared to share with their audience (I do watch TG4, not just for the weather girls, but good gracious! 😳 I was raised through Irish at home as a child). Nonetheless, it’s one anecdote from a country where there are plenty of anecdotes to choose from in support of one’s beliefs one way or another. It shouldn’t be taken as any indication of the system as a whole:

https://nationalpost.com/news/montreal-doctor-suspended-for-three-months-after-argument-over-patients-pronouns

Same as the anecdote above which is provided in the article - it’s well-known among clinicians that there are side-effects of any medical intervention, it’s why they try to mitigate against them while at the same time being cognisant of the rights of the patient to information and informed consent, and to deliver the information in a way the patient understands. It’s why lithium is still used in the treatment of schizophrenia in spite of the fact that it’s use causes impotence in a third of patients - the benefits outweigh the associated risks, which they attempt to control and manage through observation of the patient.

That’s not the same as the earlier example you gave of how growth hormones in their early development were used to increase height in patients who were thought to be underdeveloped. That was an unethical practice, and medicine and science is littered with examples of unethical practices (if you know about John Money’s lesser known experiments, you know how vaccines and hormonal contraceptives were developed), such as compulsory sterilisation:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#:~:text=Compulsory%20sterilization%2C%20also%20known%20as,usually%20done%20through%20surgical%20procedures.

I didn’t want to be rude and point out that at the same time growth hormones were being developed, so too specifically in relation to increasing height among young boys (what you euphemistically referred to as ‘cosmetic endocrinology’), was a surgical procedure which was originally intended for other use cases:

The surgery is long, expensive and painful. The technique was pioneered by Gavril Ilizarov, a Soviet doctor treating injured soldiers returning from World War Two. And while the surgery has evolved over the last 70 years, many of the principles remain the same.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55146906.amp

https://www.limblength.org/conditions/short-stature/

For my sins, I started reading through the "WPATH Files" that OP cites. The report offering analysis on the apparently leaked files is a pile of waffle with a whole thick layer of personal opinions being offered to set the context and to wrap around the actual "leaked" files". The files themselves, so far, appear to just comprise doctors having discussions around gender affirming care and care for trans people generally — whereby some of them offer disagreement or different points of view as you would expect on literally any medical topic. Apparently however, these frank discussions and doctors offering viewpoints is enough to be portrayed in the Twitterverse as evidence of a nefarious conspiracy at the heart of the medical profession.

But I guess that's the point of the report is not to be informative, or objective, or to facilitate sensible debate . The point of the report is to merely exist and its existence is enough for people to share it and cite it, probably without reading it all or actually reading the files for themselves with any sense of objectivity.

Whether in Irish, English or indeed Canadian French (as it’s Canadian), there was definitely more to that anecdote than the producers were prepared to share with their audience.

You saw that Fíorscéal episode? Good grief, that's a bit of surprise! The series is sometimes inclined towards a certain viewpoint alright (usually liberal actually) but it was the first I had heard of children identifying as transgender (not that I was paying attention previously) so I found it interesting. Canada has its own thing going, possibly in opposition to the perceived conservatism of the US (I've lived in both places). It sometimes feels like taking the "we're going to be liberal whether you want it or not" approach.

Ken Zucker is the guy you're thinking of I think?

He got a big payout over the firing, but what a huge loss to gender non conforming/ questioning kids.

https://www.thecut.com/2016/02/fight-over-trans-kids-got-a-researcher-fired.html

Yes indeed, that's the guy. Thanks for the link. The original documentary was made by the BBC in 2017 (!) and called Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? I doubt it's an easy watch if I recalled its impact after 7 years but these things never are. CBC in Canada was unable to show it after "social media complaints".