The Patriot Post® · The Times Hedges Its Bets on Transgenderism

In its unending pursuit of human perfectibility, the Left has taken plenty of wrong turns. Most recently, we’re finding that the issuance of puberty blockers to gender dysphoric children might entail some unforeseen consequences.

Naw. Really?

Perhaps sensing that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that a hot hereafter awaits them, the “progressives” at The New York Times are now hedging their bets on unfettered interference in the biology and physiology of our children.

A lengthy article in Monday’s Times sets the stage by noting incuriously that the number of “adolescents” who identify as transgender continues to grow, and that experimental drugs known as puberty blockers have become the go-to treatment for these — let’s call them what they are — children. The article is titled “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” and it begins by listing instances of children as young as 11 being prescribed puberty blockers to treat their gender dysphoria. As for those radical experimental drugs, Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett write:

Their use is typically framed as a safe — and reversible — way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong. Transgender adolescents suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and other mental health issues. Studies show that the drugs have eased some patients’ gender dysphoria — a distress over the mismatch of their birth sex and gender identity.

But — and there’s always a “but”:

An increasing number of adolescents identify as transgender — in the United States, an estimated 300,000 ages 13 to 17 and an untold number who are younger — [and] concerns are growing among some medical professionals about the consequences of the drugs, a New York Times examination found. The questions are fueling government reviews in Europe, prompting a push for more research and leading some prominent specialists to reconsider at what age to prescribe them and for how long. A small number of doctors won’t recommend them at all.

What could go wrong? Well, bone development for one. And here’s yet another “but”: “But there is emerging evidence of potential harm from using blockers, according to reviews of scientific papers and interviews with more than 50 doctors and academic experts around the world.”

Indeed, we here in the states are lagging behind the Europeans when it comes to pumping the brakes on “transgender” care, the grave concerns of which our Emmy Griffin has extensively and determinedly documented.

The Times article notes that puberty blockers, er, block puberty, and they do so by suppressing the male and female hormones of testosterone and estrogen that help develop the reproductive system “and also affect the bones, the brain, and other parts of the body.”

“During puberty,” the authors write, “bone mass typically surges, determining a lifetime of bone health. When adolescents are using blockers, bone density growth flatlines, on average, according to an analysis commissioned by The Times.”

In a few decades, then, long after the proponents of these experimental treatments have left the scene, we may see a surge of earlier-than-expected bone fractures in our senior citizens, perhaps even in non-seniors.

“There’s going to be a price,” said Dr. Sundeep Khosla, who leads a bone research lab at the Mayo Clinic. “And the price is probably going to be some deficit in skeletal mass.”

That won’t be the only price, of course. Many other costs are as yet unknowable or immeasurable.

In his 2001 book The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, Columbia University Professor of Humanities Mark Lilla reflects on the well-meaning wreckage caused by those who think they know better:

Distinguished professors, gifted poets, and influential journalists summoned their talents to convince all who would listen that modern tyrants were liberators and that their unconscionable crimes were noble, when seen in the proper perspective. Whoever takes it upon himself to write an honest intellectual history of 20th-century Europe will need a strong stomach.

But he will need something more. He will need to overcome his disgust long enough to ponder the roots of this strange and puzzling phenomenon.

Swap out “20th-century Europe” for “21st-century medicine” and you’ve got the makings of an honest look back at the intellectual arrogance of “gender-affirming care.”

Blogger Ann Althouse invited a discussion about the article. Said one commenter: “Transgenderism is a mental disorder. Pretending it isn’t especially in a child is monstrous. Doctors who perform these ‘treatments’ on minors are on the Mengele spectrum.” Said another: “It would be a start if we didn’t call it ‘gender affirming care.’ The treatment doesn’t affirm their gender. It changes it.”

Here we might suggest being on the lookout for the word “affirming” and all its roots and variations. The Left’s appropriation of this euphemism didn’t begin with “affirmative action,” and it won’t end with “gender-affirming care.”

“A small number of people are making a great deal of money from the ‘trans’ fad at the expense of troubled children,” writes Power Line’s John Hinderaker. “Liberals in general, and the Democratic Party and the New York Times in particular, have been their enablers. A reckoning is coming — and, as I said, sooner rather than later.”

He’s right. A reckoning is coming. Just like a reckoning is coming for Team Shutdown and Team Lockdown and Team Take-the-Jab-or-Lose-Your-Job.

Whatever else we do or don’t do, let’s not cave to their eventual calls for an amnesty. Instead, let’s hold them severely accountable. Anything less would be an affront to the many thousands of young victims of these awful experiments and this abominable crime.