"Right, but this is the point. If you're taking the question of risk seriously, you can't just hold the same view with all drugs. Because some drugs are very different to others in their effects and long-term implications."
I absolutely can and I just did with the fundamental crux of the moral logic: that these choices should be left up t…
"Right, but this is the point. If you're taking the question of risk seriously, you can't just hold the same view with all drugs. Because some drugs are very different to others in their effects and long-term implications."
I absolutely can and I just did with the fundamental crux of the moral logic: that these choices should be left up to either the consumers themselves, if they're adults, or medical practitioners with far superior knowledge than laypersons, if they can't make those choices for themselves as consenting adults. We should caution people that some drugs are more dangerous than others—benzodiazepines don't carry the same risks as Tylenol. But to make that choice for them or to even shame their choice to take or not take one or the other is overstepping our boundaries.
I'm going to riff on this for a second because I think it's all part of the same issue that ties in with your original post. Today, we've woken up with these technologies that have granted us unprecedented access into other people's lives. With that has come an assumption most people make that they're entitled to be the judge of other people's lives. To them, I say, leave me alone and I'll suffer the consequences of my own actions, thank you very much.
"Drugs aren't inert. If they were, they'd be homeopathic remedies"
Drugs not taken are certainly inert. ;)
"Criticising a drug isn't necessarily to say that people shouldn't be taking it or that it should be banned. It's usually to say that the safeguards for that drug aren't sufficient given the aforementioned effects and long-term implications. I'm not sure what these implications for ADHD drugs, so no comment there. But I'm not inclined to just hand over responsibility to the pharmaceutical industry and patients because one is motivated by profit and the other is hampered by fear and a lack of objectivity."
I take issue with this entire premise, largely because our fear of drugs is born out of edge cases algorithmically catapulted to the top of the attention-for-money social media heap. Take addiction to prescribed drugs for instance. We all it an "opioid crisis" but per the NIH's data, the risk of becoming addicted to mind-altering drugs is a wimpy 5%.
That 5% gets a whole lot of media attention in the USA because fear sells. Millions of people are walking around with silicone implants and are doing fine, so declaring them "unsafe" isn't accurate. Which brings me back to my original point: with all medical progress, it's easy to find those edge cases and whip up a panic. Hell, we can even do this with things that are patently benign (carbs, anyone?).
There is, of course, a simple solution to all of this.
Don't like drugs? Don't take them. Don't like abortions? Don't get them. Don't like guns? Don't buy them.
"I take issue with this entire premise, largely because our fear of drugs is born out of edge cases algorithmically catapulted to the top of the attention-for-money social media heap. Take addiction to prescribed drugs for instance."
Again, this is why you can't treat all drugs as if they're the same. Concerns about puberty blockers aren't about edge cases. They're about solid data that says they're unnecessary in the majority of cases and make children far more likely to medically transition (with all the health consequences that entails). There aren't many drugs I can think of that affect people in this way. And therefore, they should be considered on their own merits.
According to Wikipedia, around 10,000 people were affected by thalidomide. Considering that it was sold worldwide, for around 5 years, I'm betting that the percentage of people affected was fairly low. But we didn't let expectant mothers just roll the dice, because their decision would affect their kid.
As for, "if you don't like drugs, don't take them..." the implications of this get pretty bad pretty quickly, no? By this logic should we legalise all drugs, accepting the cost to public health and to crime and to society at large? Or guns, okay, I don't like guns, so I won't buy them. Does that decision keep me safe from other lunatics who *do* buy them? Do we, perhaps, need *some* guardrails here?
"Again, this is why you can't treat all drugs as if they're the same. Concerns about puberty blockers aren't about edge cases. They're about solid data that says they're unnecessary in the majority of cases and make children far more likely to medically transition (with all the health consequences that entails). There aren't many drugs I can think of that affect people in this way. And therefore, they should be considered on their own merits."
I'm interested in seeing this data.
"But we didn't let expectant mothers just roll the dice, because their decision would affect their kid."
No certainly not if we have a reasonable alternative. But I don't think there is a one-to-one alternative to opiates and possibly puberty blockers, too, but admittedly, I haven't investigated that far. It's more your specialty than mine.
"Do we, perhaps, need *some* guardrails here?"
Sure, make people wait a month to get the gun and conduct background checks. Make people have to be 18 to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I'm in favor of all these things. But it doesn't make these things "bad" they just are.
"Sure, make people wait a month to get the gun and conduct background checks. Make people have to be 18 to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I'm in favor of all these things. But it doesn't make these things "bad" they just are."
Right, again, I'm not saying that puberty blockers are bad and certainly not that transition is bad. Puberty blockers have been used for years for precocious puberty with well documented pros and cons. Transition is life-changingly positive for many people with gender dysphoria.
The issue is, trans activism in its current form, is hellbent on removing pretty much all guardrails, whether for kids, or for dishonest men who claim to be women.
I'm constantly baffled why nobody asks why we weren't talking about these issues 20 years ago. Well, it's because men couldn't legally become women simply by saying so. It's because people weren't tying to obfuscate obvious realities about biological sex. It's because people who transitioned did so to ease their medically diagnosed dysphoria, not to be edgy men in dresses deconstructing gender or because they were "transmaxxing (https://www.reddit.com/r/transmaxxing/comments/16y6c66/should_i_transmaxx/)" or because they were mentally ill and had been told by fetishists online that transitioning would fix them.
As you say, people need to be 18 before they drink alcohol or smoke weed or get a tattoo. But potentially making yourself infertile or chopping off body parts shouldn't require the same care?
Sorry, just realised that I hadn't provided this. Here's a link to a pretty good round up of all the studies (complete with links to the original papers) demonstrating that when children are allowed to go through their natural puberty without medicalisation, most of them are no longer dysphoric but usually just gay adults.
The optimistic interpretation of this second set of data is that puberty blockers are incredibly carefully prescribed and all the kids taking them are genuinely trans and go on to medically transition.
But given the shifts in policy in the Scandinavian countries and France, as well as the shutdown of the Tavistock gender clinic in England following findings of widespread negligence, I think a more realistic interpretation is that puberty blockers aren't carefully prescribed at all, but act as a gateway or first step on a transition pathway that few step off. Angst about puberty is, after all, nothing new.
Governments pass laws to govern the behavior of people. Propaganda to attain by-in from the public so it can be seen as the result of democracy is ubiquitous. What or who defends minority opinion and individuals from the tyranny of democracy. People petition government to impose their views on those who don't hold them. "But I don't want you to [cause goes here] for the good of society!"
100%, Dave. Spot on. Now, there’s an argument to be made that there are clear cases where one party harms another. But harming yourself is, by definition, never one of those cases. There’s also a difference between supporting something like healthcare finance and legislating individual morality. We pool money for healthcare with health insurance. That’s different from telling someone they can’t do something because we feel it’s morally objectionable or because we worry about the (usually extremely minor) risk it will hurt them.
"But harming yourself is, by definition, never one of those cases."
Except when you're a child.
If we were talking about adults, we'd basically be in 100% agreement. I'm not saying a word about cross-sex hormones or any other surgical options for adults because, as you say, adults should be free to suffer the consequences of their own actions.
But children are in a particularly vulnerable situation, especially with regards to this treatment. All the data say that at least 80% of children won't need these drugs if they go through their natural puberty. While around 95% of children will become lifelong medical patients if they're not allowed to go through their natural puberty.
So if you're prescribing these medications, you'd better have solid data-backed reasoning for doing so. And as far as I can see, the opposite is the case. Again, every country that has done a systemic review of puberty blockers has based or severely curtailed them. As well as shutting down some of the irresponsible gender clinics catering to children.
"Right, but this is the point. If you're taking the question of risk seriously, you can't just hold the same view with all drugs. Because some drugs are very different to others in their effects and long-term implications."
I absolutely can and I just did with the fundamental crux of the moral logic: that these choices should be left up to either the consumers themselves, if they're adults, or medical practitioners with far superior knowledge than laypersons, if they can't make those choices for themselves as consenting adults. We should caution people that some drugs are more dangerous than others—benzodiazepines don't carry the same risks as Tylenol. But to make that choice for them or to even shame their choice to take or not take one or the other is overstepping our boundaries.
I'm going to riff on this for a second because I think it's all part of the same issue that ties in with your original post. Today, we've woken up with these technologies that have granted us unprecedented access into other people's lives. With that has come an assumption most people make that they're entitled to be the judge of other people's lives. To them, I say, leave me alone and I'll suffer the consequences of my own actions, thank you very much.
"Drugs aren't inert. If they were, they'd be homeopathic remedies"
Drugs not taken are certainly inert. ;)
"Criticising a drug isn't necessarily to say that people shouldn't be taking it or that it should be banned. It's usually to say that the safeguards for that drug aren't sufficient given the aforementioned effects and long-term implications. I'm not sure what these implications for ADHD drugs, so no comment there. But I'm not inclined to just hand over responsibility to the pharmaceutical industry and patients because one is motivated by profit and the other is hampered by fear and a lack of objectivity."
I take issue with this entire premise, largely because our fear of drugs is born out of edge cases algorithmically catapulted to the top of the attention-for-money social media heap. Take addiction to prescribed drugs for instance. We all it an "opioid crisis" but per the NIH's data, the risk of becoming addicted to mind-altering drugs is a wimpy 5%.
That 5% gets a whole lot of media attention in the USA because fear sells. Millions of people are walking around with silicone implants and are doing fine, so declaring them "unsafe" isn't accurate. Which brings me back to my original point: with all medical progress, it's easy to find those edge cases and whip up a panic. Hell, we can even do this with things that are patently benign (carbs, anyone?).
There is, of course, a simple solution to all of this.
Don't like drugs? Don't take them. Don't like abortions? Don't get them. Don't like guns? Don't buy them.
"I take issue with this entire premise, largely because our fear of drugs is born out of edge cases algorithmically catapulted to the top of the attention-for-money social media heap. Take addiction to prescribed drugs for instance."
Again, this is why you can't treat all drugs as if they're the same. Concerns about puberty blockers aren't about edge cases. They're about solid data that says they're unnecessary in the majority of cases and make children far more likely to medically transition (with all the health consequences that entails). There aren't many drugs I can think of that affect people in this way. And therefore, they should be considered on their own merits.
According to Wikipedia, around 10,000 people were affected by thalidomide. Considering that it was sold worldwide, for around 5 years, I'm betting that the percentage of people affected was fairly low. But we didn't let expectant mothers just roll the dice, because their decision would affect their kid.
As for, "if you don't like drugs, don't take them..." the implications of this get pretty bad pretty quickly, no? By this logic should we legalise all drugs, accepting the cost to public health and to crime and to society at large? Or guns, okay, I don't like guns, so I won't buy them. Does that decision keep me safe from other lunatics who *do* buy them? Do we, perhaps, need *some* guardrails here?
"Again, this is why you can't treat all drugs as if they're the same. Concerns about puberty blockers aren't about edge cases. They're about solid data that says they're unnecessary in the majority of cases and make children far more likely to medically transition (with all the health consequences that entails). There aren't many drugs I can think of that affect people in this way. And therefore, they should be considered on their own merits."
I'm interested in seeing this data.
"But we didn't let expectant mothers just roll the dice, because their decision would affect their kid."
No certainly not if we have a reasonable alternative. But I don't think there is a one-to-one alternative to opiates and possibly puberty blockers, too, but admittedly, I haven't investigated that far. It's more your specialty than mine.
"Do we, perhaps, need *some* guardrails here?"
Sure, make people wait a month to get the gun and conduct background checks. Make people have to be 18 to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I'm in favor of all these things. But it doesn't make these things "bad" they just are.
"Sure, make people wait a month to get the gun and conduct background checks. Make people have to be 18 to drink alcohol or smoke weed. I'm in favor of all these things. But it doesn't make these things "bad" they just are."
Right, again, I'm not saying that puberty blockers are bad and certainly not that transition is bad. Puberty blockers have been used for years for precocious puberty with well documented pros and cons. Transition is life-changingly positive for many people with gender dysphoria.
The issue is, trans activism in its current form, is hellbent on removing pretty much all guardrails, whether for kids, or for dishonest men who claim to be women.
I'm constantly baffled why nobody asks why we weren't talking about these issues 20 years ago. Well, it's because men couldn't legally become women simply by saying so. It's because people weren't tying to obfuscate obvious realities about biological sex. It's because people who transitioned did so to ease their medically diagnosed dysphoria, not to be edgy men in dresses deconstructing gender or because they were "transmaxxing (https://www.reddit.com/r/transmaxxing/comments/16y6c66/should_i_transmaxx/)" or because they were mentally ill and had been told by fetishists online that transitioning would fix them.
As you say, people need to be 18 before they drink alcohol or smoke weed or get a tattoo. But potentially making yourself infertile or chopping off body parts shouldn't require the same care?
"I'm interested in seeing this data."
Sorry, just realised that I hadn't provided this. Here's a link to a pretty good round up of all the studies (complete with links to the original papers) demonstrating that when children are allowed to go through their natural puberty without medicalisation, most of them are no longer dysphoric but usually just gay adults.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/children-change-minds/
But when children ARE medicalised, almost all of them go on to transition.
https://segm.org/early-social-gender-transition-persistence
The optimistic interpretation of this second set of data is that puberty blockers are incredibly carefully prescribed and all the kids taking them are genuinely trans and go on to medically transition.
But given the shifts in policy in the Scandinavian countries and France, as well as the shutdown of the Tavistock gender clinic in England following findings of widespread negligence, I think a more realistic interpretation is that puberty blockers aren't carefully prescribed at all, but act as a gateway or first step on a transition pathway that few step off. Angst about puberty is, after all, nothing new.
Governments pass laws to govern the behavior of people. Propaganda to attain by-in from the public so it can be seen as the result of democracy is ubiquitous. What or who defends minority opinion and individuals from the tyranny of democracy. People petition government to impose their views on those who don't hold them. "But I don't want you to [cause goes here] for the good of society!"
100%, Dave. Spot on. Now, there’s an argument to be made that there are clear cases where one party harms another. But harming yourself is, by definition, never one of those cases. There’s also a difference between supporting something like healthcare finance and legislating individual morality. We pool money for healthcare with health insurance. That’s different from telling someone they can’t do something because we feel it’s morally objectionable or because we worry about the (usually extremely minor) risk it will hurt them.
"But harming yourself is, by definition, never one of those cases."
Except when you're a child.
If we were talking about adults, we'd basically be in 100% agreement. I'm not saying a word about cross-sex hormones or any other surgical options for adults because, as you say, adults should be free to suffer the consequences of their own actions.
But children are in a particularly vulnerable situation, especially with regards to this treatment. All the data say that at least 80% of children won't need these drugs if they go through their natural puberty. While around 95% of children will become lifelong medical patients if they're not allowed to go through their natural puberty.
So if you're prescribing these medications, you'd better have solid data-backed reasoning for doing so. And as far as I can see, the opposite is the case. Again, every country that has done a systemic review of puberty blockers has based or severely curtailed them. As well as shutting down some of the irresponsible gender clinics catering to children.