The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.

The Medical University of South Carolina initially said it wouldn’t be affected by a law banning use of state funds for treatment “furthering the gender transition” of children under 16. Months later, it cut off that care to all trans minors.

One Saturday morning in September 2022, Terrence Steyer, the dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, placed an urgent call to a student. Just a year prior, the medical student, Thomas Agostini, had won first place at a university-sponsored event for his graduate research on transgender pediatric patients. He also had been featured in a video on MUSC’s website highlighting resources that support the LGBTQ+ community.

Now, Agostini and his once-lauded study had set off a political firestorm. Conservative activists seized on one line in particular in the study’s summary — a parenthetical noting the youngest transgender patient to visit MUSC’s pediatric endocrinology clinic was 4 years old — and inaccurately claimed that children that young were prescribed hormones as part of a gender transition. Elon Musk amplified the false claim, tweeting, “Is it really true that four-year-olds are receiving hormone treatment?” That led federal and state lawmakers to frantically ask top MUSC leaders whether the public hospital was in fact helping young children medically transition. The hospital was not; its pediatric transgender patients did not receive hormone therapy before puberty, nor does it offer surgical options to minors.

  • @[email protected]
    -1•11 months ago

    The researchers conclude that hormonal treatment of gender dysphoria in this age group should be regarded as experimental treatment rather than standard procedure.

    They conclude that it shouldn’t be standard practice and only considered experimental. Isn’t that enough?

    • @Syrc
      3•11 months ago

      It still doesn’t say it’s “a bad idea” like that commenter said, just that we don’t have sufficient proof to conclude that it’s 100% harmless.

      There’s plenty of treatments we do that are not 100% safe, but we still employ them because the alternative is worse. The article is just encouraging more research, not for the practice to stop (It being considered “experimental” or “standard” barely matters as far as I know, since there’s a lot of assessments and tests to do before allowing someone to undergo hormonal therapy anyway).

      • @[email protected]
        -1•11 months ago

        No, it’s rare for a treatment to go from standard practice to experimental, like they suggest. That means a serious misassesment has been made at some point.

        The researches conclude that the hormone treatment makes irreversible changes to the bone structure but that the positive aspects as a treatment to gender dysphoria have not been sufficiently observed.

        • @Syrc
          3•11 months ago

          The thing is even if it does go experimental, I don’t think it would change much. Even now, they aren’t administering it like candy.

          And about bones, doesn’t the study say this?

          GnRHa treatment delays bone maturation and bone mineral density gain that, however, seem to partially recover during cross-sex hormone therapy when studied at age 22 years.

          If it’s only a “delay”, which doesn’t even need the hormone treatment to stop for it to partially recover, doesn’t that mean it’s reversible?

          • @[email protected]
            0•11 months ago

            Partially recovered doesn’t sound reveserible, does it? And the severity ranges from case to case, safe to assume.

            Obviously, we only experience puberty once in life. Anything that alters that process will have consequences.