Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Health

Canadian media might not be able to ignore new studies on harmful gender transitions for minors

Published

11 months ago

8 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

When the UK National Health Service’s bombshell Cass Review condemning gender “transition” for minors was published, virtually the entire Canadian press engaged in a voluntary blackout.

Unless you were reading an alternative news source, an international news source, or the National Post, it was as if Cass Review — and its findings — had simply never existed. Many media outlets did not run a single story; the state-funded CBC ran precisely one, and it was a laughable hatchet job claiming that the massive study was “biased.” They did not interview a single person associated with the research.

The Canadian press has functioned for years as a propaganda arm for the transgender movement, even as the gender ideology house of cards topples in in the U.S. and the UK, where there have been genuinely robust debates informed by scientific evidence rather than ideology. Thus, I wonder how they will deal with new studies by Canadian researchers that reach many of the same conclusions.

As Sharon Kirkey of the National Post reported. “The evidence surrounding the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children and teens identifying as transgender is of such low certainty it’s impossible to conclude whether the drugs help or harm, Canadian researchers are reporting.” The research was funded by the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) and McMaster University, considered to one of Canada’s top institutions of higher hearing, and published this week in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

“There’s not enough reliable information,” said Chan Kulatunga-Moruzi, one of the authors of the two new reviews. “We really don’t have enough evidence to say that these procedures are beneficial. Few studies have looked at physical harm, so we have really no evidence of harm as well. There’s not a lot that we can say with certainty, based on the evidence.” (Here, I would note that there are now thousands of testimonies of detransitioners testifying to the harm that sex-change “treatments” have caused them, but this is a remarkable admission nonetheless.)

The researchers conclude that doctors should approach these “treatments” with extreme care, clearly communicating with parents and children and — notably — checking “whose values they are prioritizing” if they should decide to prescribe cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers. As Kirkey put it with devastating understatement: “Originally considered fully reversible, concerns are emerging about potential long-term or irreversible effects, the Canadian team wrote … Questions have been raised about the effects of fertility or what impact, if any, they might have on brain development.”

The researchers painstakingly went through the available evidence on both cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers (Kirkey irritatingly refers to them as “gender-affirming hormones”) for those up to 26 years old. To analyze the evidence, they “graded” it “using a scoring system co-developed by Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a celebrated McMaster University scientist who coined the phrase evidence-based medicine.” As Kirkey reported:

After screening 6,736 titles and abstracts involving puberty blockers, only 10 studies were included in their review. While children who received puberty blockers compared to those who don’t score higher on “global function” — quality of life, and general physical and psychological wellbeing — the evidence was of “very low certainty.” Very low, meaning researchers have “very little confidence in the effect estimate” and that the true effect “is  likely to be substantially different from the estimate of effect.”

It gets worse. The research also debunked the perpetually asserted claim utilized by trans activists and their political allies to enforce their agenda: that these drugs are necessary to prevent depression and suicidal ideation. According to the researchers: “We are very uncertain about the causal effect of the (drugs) on depression. Most studies provided very low certainty of evidence about the outcomes of interest; thus, we cannot exclude the possibility of benefit or harm.” Again, despite the careful understatement, this is devastating: Thousands of children have been subjected to these treatments on the premise that they prevent harm and are harmless.

Indeed, the second review, which analyzed 24 studies, reached the similar conclusion of “very low confirmatory evidence of substantive change” not just in depression or health overall but even in gender dysphoria itself. As Kirkey noted: “Many studies suffered from missing data, small sample sizes, or lacked a comparison group.” The researchers concluded: “Since the current best evidence, including our systematic review and meta-analysis, is predominantly very low quality, clinicians must clearly communicate this evidence to patients and caregivers. Treatment decisions should consider the lack of moderate- and high-quality evidence, uncertainty about the effects of puberty blockers and patient’s values and preferences.”

Featured Image

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Related Topics:

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

More from this author
Frontier Centre for Public Policy / 7 hours ago

Tent Cities Were Rare Five Years Ago. Now They’re Everywhere

Fraser Institute / 8 hours ago

How to talk about housing at the holiday dinner table

armed forces / 8 hours ago

Remembering Afghanistan and the sacrifices of our military families

Alberta

A Christmas wish list for health-care reform

Published on December 23, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail and Mackenzie Moir

It’s an exciting time in Canadian health-care policy. But even the slew of new reforms in Alberta only go part of the way to using all the policy tools employed by high performing universal health-care systems.

For 2026, for the sake of Canadian patients, let’s hope Alberta stays the path on changes to how hospitals are paid and allowing some private purchases of health care, and that other provinces start to catch up.

While Alberta’s new reforms were welcome news this year, it’s clear Canada’s health-care system continued to struggle. Canadians were reminded by our annual comparison of health care systems that they pay for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal health-care systems, yet have some of the fewest physicians and hospital beds, while waiting in some of the longest queues.

And speaking of queues, wait times across Canada for non-emergency care reached the second-highest level ever measured at 28.6 weeks from general practitioner referral to actual treatment. That’s more than triple the wait of the early 1990s despite decades of government promises and spending commitments. Other work found that at least 23,746 patients died while waiting for care, and nearly 1.3 million Canadians left our overcrowded emergency rooms without being treated.

At least one province has shown a genuine willingness to do something about these problems.

The Smith government in Alberta announced early in the year that it would move towards paying hospitals per-patient treated as opposed to a fixed annual budget, a policy approach that Quebec has been working on for years. Albertans will also soon be able purchase, at least in a limited way, some diagnostic and surgical services for themselves, which is again already possible in Quebec. Alberta has also gone a step further by allowing physicians to work in both public and private settings.

While controversial in Canada, these approaches simply mirror what is being done in all of the developed world’s top-performing universal health-care systems. Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland all pay their hospitals per patient treated, and allow patients the opportunity to purchase care privately if they wish. They all also have better and faster universally accessible health care than Canada’s provinces provide, while spending a little more (Switzerland) or less (Australia, Germany, the Netherlands) than we do.

While these reforms are clearly a step in the right direction, there’s more to be done.

Even if we include Alberta’s reforms, these countries still do some very important things differently.

Critically, all of these countries expect patients to pay a small amount for their universally accessible services. The reasoning is straightforward: we all spend our own money more carefully than we spend someone else’s, and patients will make more informed decisions about when and where it’s best to access the health-care system when they have to pay a little out of pocket.

The evidence around this policy is clear—with appropriate safeguards to protect the very ill and exemptions for lower-income and other vulnerable populations, the demand for outpatient healthcare services falls, reducing delays and freeing up resources for others.

Charging patients even small amounts for care would of course violate the Canada Health Act, but it would also emulate the approach of 100 per cent of the developed world’s top-performing health-care systems. In this case, violating outdated federal policy means better universal health care for Canadians.

These top-performing countries also see the private sector and innovative entrepreneurs as partners in delivering universal health care. A relationship that is far different from the limited individual contracts some provinces have with private clinics and surgical centres to provide care in Canada. In these other countries, even full-service hospitals are operated by private providers. Importantly, partnering with innovative private providers, even hospitals, to deliver universal health care does not violate the Canada Health Act.

So, while Alberta has made strides this past year moving towards the well-established higher performance policy approach followed elsewhere, the Smith government remains at least a couple steps short of truly adopting a more Australian or European approach for health care. And other provinces have yet to even get to where Alberta will soon be.

Let’s hope in 2026 that Alberta keeps moving towards a truly world class universal health-care experience for patients, and that the other provinces catch up.

Continue Reading

Health

FDA warns ‘breast binder’ manufacturers to stop marketing to gender-confused girls

Published on December 21, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Dr. Marty Makary took aim at the transgender-medical-industrial complex that has exploded in recent years during a recent press conference.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has sternly warned companies manufacturing “breast binders” to cease marketing and supplying their product to gender-confused girls seeking to make their bodies appear masculine.

“Today the FDA is taking action,” said Makary in a press conference. “We are sending warning letters to 12 manufacturers and retailers for illegal marketing of breast binders for children, for the purposes of treating gender dysphoria.”

“Breast binders are a class one medical device with legitimate medical users, such as being used by women after breast cancer surgery,” but “these binders are not benign,” he cautioned. “Long-term usage has been associated with pain, compromised lung function, and even difficulty breast feeding later in life.”

“The warning letters will formally notify the companies of their significant regulatory violations and require prompt corrective action,” said the FDA head.

The warning letter addressed to California manufacturer, GenderBender, notes that the company’s website states that “[c]hest binding is the practice of compressing breast mass into a more masculine shape, often done in the LGBTQ community for gender euphoria.”

“Your firm should take prompt action to address any violations identified in this letter. Failure to adequately address this matter may result in regulatory action being initiated by the FDA without further notice. These actions include, but are not limited to, seizure and injunction,” advised the FDA.

During his presentation, Makary took aim at the transgender-medical-industrial complex that has exploded in recent years. 

“One of the most barbaric features of a society is the genital mutilation of its children,” observed Makary.

“This ideology is a belief system that some teachers, some pediatricians, and others are selling to children without their parents knowing sometimes, or with a deliberate attempt to remove parents from the decision making,” Makary explained.

To witness society “putting kids on a path of chest binders, drugs, castration, mastectomies, and other procedures is a path that now many kids regret,” he lamented, as he pointed to Chloe Cole, who has reverted to her God-given femininity after undergoing so-called “gender-affirming” surgery as a teen.

Cole is a leading voice for young people who have “detransitioned” after having medically, surgically, and socially attempted to “transition” to a member of the opposite sex.

Continue Reading

Trending

X