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 Postreported. “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.”
Imagine for a moment that you are a teen or young person who started these treatments after having been told, with utter, aggressive confidence, by counselors, psychiatrists, and doctors that they were both harmless and necessary — that they could even save your life. Imagine being a parent who subjected your child to these treatments, convinced by “experts” that this was the best thing you could do to love your son or daughter. I have written these words too many times to count: This is a medical scandal of unprecedented proportions in this century, and those that perpetrated it must be held accountable.
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.
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.
After the Smith government recently announced its shift to a new approach for funding hospitals, known as “activity-based funding” (ABF), defenders of the status quo in Alberta were quick to argue ABF will not improve health care in the province. Their claims are simply incorrect. In reality, based on the experiences of other better-performing universal health-care systems, ABF will help reduce wait times for Alberta patients and provide better value-for-money for taxpayers.
First, it’s important to understand Alberta is not breaking new ground with this approach. Other developed countries shifted to the ABF model starting in the early 1990s.
Indeed, after years of paying their hospitals a lump-sum annual budget for surgical care (like Alberta currently), other countries with universal health care recognized this form of payment encouraged hospitals to deliver fewer services by turning each patient into a cost to be minimized. The shift to ABF, which compensates hospitals for the actual services they provide, flips the script—hospitals in these countries now see patients as a source of revenue.
In fact, in many universal health-care countries, these reforms began so long ago that some are now on their second or even third generation of ABF, incorporating further innovations to encourage an even greater focus on quality.
For example, in Sweden in the early 1990s, counties that embraced ABF enjoyed a potential cost savings of 13 per cent over non-reforming counties that stuck with budgets. In Stockholm, one study measured an 11 per cent increase in hospital activity overall alongside a 1 per cent decrease in costs following the introduction of ABF. Moreover, according to the study, ABF did not reduce access for older patients or patients with more complex conditions. In England, the shift to ABF in the early to mid-2000s helped increase hospital activity and reduce the cost of care per patient, also without negatively affecting quality of care.
Multi-national studiesontheshift to ABF have repeatedly shown increases in the volume of care provided, reduced costs per admission, and (perhaps most importantly for Albertans) shorter wait times. Studieshavealsoshown ABF may lead to improved quality and access to advanced medical technology for patients.
Clearly, the naysayers who claim that ABF is some sort of new or untested reform, or that Albertans are heading down an unknown path with unmanageable and unexpected risks, are at the very least uninformed.
And what of those theoretical drawbacks?
Some critics claim that ABF may encourage faster discharges of patients to reduce costs. But they fail to note this theoretical drawback also exists under the current system where discharging higher-cost patients earlier can reduce the drain on hospital budgets. And crucially, other countries have implemented policies to prevent these types of theoretical drawbacks under ABF, which can inform Alberta’s approach from the start.
Critics also argue that competition between private clinics, or even between clinics and hospitals, is somehow a bad thing. But all of the developed world’s top performing universal health-care systems, with the best outcomes and shortest wait times, include a blend of both public and private care. No one has done it with the naysayers’ fixation on government provision.
And finally, some critics claim that, under ABF, private clinics will simply focus on less-complex procedures for less-complex patients to achieve greater profit, leaving public hospitals to perform more complex and thus costly surgeries. But in fact, private clinics alleviate pressure on the public system, allowing hospitals to dedicate their sophisticated resources to complex cases. To be sure, the government must ensure that complex procedures—no matter where they are performed—must always receive appropriate levels of funding and similarly that less-complex procedures are also appropriately funded. But again, the vast and lengthy experience with ABF in other universal health-care countries can help inform Alberta’s approach, which could then serve as an example for other provinces.
Alberta’s health-care system simply does not deliver for patients, with its painfully long wait times and poor access to physicians and services—despite its massive price tag. With its planned shift to activity-based funding, the province has embarked on a path to better health care, despite any false claims from the naysayers. Now it’s crucial for the Smith government to learn from the experiences of others and get this critical reform right.
Officials at the the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a partnership Wednesday to research “root causes of autism spectrum disorder.”
As part of the project, NIH will build a real-world data platform enabling advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records and consumer wearables, according to the agencies.
“We’re using this partnership to uncover the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We’re pulling back the curtain – with full transparency and accountability – to deliver the honest answers families have waited far too long to hear.”
CMS and NIH will start this partnership by establishing a data use agreement under CMS’ Research Data Disclosure Program focused on Medicare and Medicaid enrollees with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or ASD.
“This partnership is an important step in our commitment to unlocking the power of real-world data to inform public health decisions and improve lives,” NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said. “Linking CMS claims data with a secure real-world NIH data platform, fully compliant with privacy and security laws, will unlock landmark research into the complex factors that drive autism and chronic disease – ultimately delivering superior health outcomes to the Americans we serve.”
Researchers will focus on autism diagnosis trends over time, health outcomes from specific medical and behavioral interventions, access to care and disparities by demographics and geography and the economic burden on families and healthcare systems, according to a news release.
