G. K. Chesterton's observation that "the madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason" speaks to the particular nightmare that is gender medicine. There are so many 'if... thens,' where the ‘ifs’ have lost all contact with reality and then everything proceeds logically from that fateful starting point.
This is the most mystifying aspect to me about what’s happening, and more than anything else, it’s what makes me again and again question my own sanity. It seems so obvious that sterilizing children based on no criteria, other than what the child believes, is tremendously ethically wrong. I can’t imagine a clearer example of a reckless medical practice, and yet it’s become commonplace. In addition to our children needing to be deprogrammed, we need a deprogramming effort in place for the vast numbers of clinicians, inside and external to the clinics, who support affirmative care. Personally, I think prison would be a perfect place to enact such a program, but I suspect that wouldn’t be feasible. Maybe it could be part of a job training program after they lose their licenses. One can dream…
When I was training as a mental health nurse back in the 1980s, I was fortunate enough to have tutors who believed in a holistic approach to care. I've never forgotten it. Now, when I teach medical law and ethics to (primarily) medical students, I do the same. People are not a series of plug-in modules, where components are more or less trivially replaced - everything is linked and intimately connected with other parts, and always the brain/mind. Holism starts with the person (patient) in from of you, not the person who might be in the future, because that future-ghost is a subjective fantasy construct that no one else can share, not even the patient. Goals of treatment should always be to maximise choice for the person (so, for example, treating a broken leg maximises choices by almost certainly returning the person to the same physical condition as before, though they may be more careful about the activity that led to the fracture in future - their choices in that case have been reduced a little). Treatment that leads to significant reduction of choices needs to be explored very carefully, preferably with the patient (emergency treatment is about the ultimate maximising of choices - keeping the patient alive - and so needs less in the way of exploration). Now, to the point of this essay (sorry for the length!) - affirmative treatment with PBs and sex hormones fails every single test of holism. It puts a future-ghost in the place of the person in front of the healthcare professional, and so dramatically reduces the choices for that person. It is fundamentally wrong in its ambition, its scope, and its implementation. It needs urgently consigning to the waste-bin of history, and those responsible for it made to pay.
As a doctor I am a bit more cynical than that: I know this kind of collegues. Their most fundamental need, the one that guides all their decisions is their hunger for money and fame.
Thus a dramatic and costly intervention will alway be chosen over a more personalized treatment that needs lots of time and empathy and is not payed half as well and not recognized as great achievement by the medical community.
Doctors aren’t trained in the West to treat the person in front of them. They are trained to diagnose and prescribe. We have an epidemic of Mental Health disorders in the West and enough good therapists to help a tiny minority of the people who need them. That’s the issue. Well…it’s one of the issues. We could also start training our Physicians to see a person in front of them.
This is the most mystifying aspect to me about what’s happening, and more than anything else, it’s what makes me again and again question my own sanity. It seems so obvious that sterilizing children based on no criteria, other than what the child believes, is tremendously ethically wrong. I can’t imagine a clearer example of a reckless medical practice, and yet it’s become commonplace. In addition to our children needing to be deprogrammed, we need a deprogramming effort in place for the vast numbers of clinicians, inside and external to the clinics, who support affirmative care. Personally, I think prison would be a perfect place to enact such a program, but I suspect that wouldn’t be feasible. Maybe it could be part of a job training program after they lose their licenses. One can dream…
Outstanding commentary on what is going on in "gender care" medicine. They are not treating the person, tehy are treating an illusion :-(
When I was training as a mental health nurse back in the 1980s, I was fortunate enough to have tutors who believed in a holistic approach to care. I've never forgotten it. Now, when I teach medical law and ethics to (primarily) medical students, I do the same. People are not a series of plug-in modules, where components are more or less trivially replaced - everything is linked and intimately connected with other parts, and always the brain/mind. Holism starts with the person (patient) in from of you, not the person who might be in the future, because that future-ghost is a subjective fantasy construct that no one else can share, not even the patient. Goals of treatment should always be to maximise choice for the person (so, for example, treating a broken leg maximises choices by almost certainly returning the person to the same physical condition as before, though they may be more careful about the activity that led to the fracture in future - their choices in that case have been reduced a little). Treatment that leads to significant reduction of choices needs to be explored very carefully, preferably with the patient (emergency treatment is about the ultimate maximising of choices - keeping the patient alive - and so needs less in the way of exploration). Now, to the point of this essay (sorry for the length!) - affirmative treatment with PBs and sex hormones fails every single test of holism. It puts a future-ghost in the place of the person in front of the healthcare professional, and so dramatically reduces the choices for that person. It is fundamentally wrong in its ambition, its scope, and its implementation. It needs urgently consigning to the waste-bin of history, and those responsible for it made to pay.
As a doctor I am a bit more cynical than that: I know this kind of collegues. Their most fundamental need, the one that guides all their decisions is their hunger for money and fame.
Thus a dramatic and costly intervention will alway be chosen over a more personalized treatment that needs lots of time and empathy and is not payed half as well and not recognized as great achievement by the medical community.
Doctors aren’t trained in the West to treat the person in front of them. They are trained to diagnose and prescribe. We have an epidemic of Mental Health disorders in the West and enough good therapists to help a tiny minority of the people who need them. That’s the issue. Well…it’s one of the issues. We could also start training our Physicians to see a person in front of them.