Welcome to the sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, July 21, 2024, and National Ice Cream Day. Here’s the best place to go for ice cream in Chicago: Margie’s Candies, founded in 1921, and looks like it hasn’t changed. The ice cream and hot fudge (and chocolates) are superb, and the portions, as you see, are ample. Plus the Beatles ate here on Aug. 22, 1965.
I’d recommend the Turtle Sundae.
It’s also Atheist Solidarity Day, National Day of the Gong, World Giraffe Day,National Flip Flop Day, National Wagyu Day (cultural appropriation), National Peaches and Cream Day, Racial Harmony Day in Singapore, and Ugliest Dog Day. Meet Peanut, winner of this year’s Ugliest Dog Competition, which won his owner $1,500:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was given a stiff sentence in a Russian gulag after being falsely accused of espionage. Nobody save Putin things there’s the least credibility in the charges:
Evan, falsely accused of espionage, was convicted by a Yekaterinburg court after a brief closed-door trial that the U.S. government has condemned as a sham and sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.
It was another blow for the gregarious, energetic, ever-smiling 32-year-old who has devoted much of his career to telling the story of Russia—and has spent more than a year in Russian prisons since he was detained by the security services in March 2023.
Evan moved to Moscow in 2017 and threw himself into life in the Russian capital, where he joined broomball and soccer leagues and cycled with friends on a used Soviet-era single-speed bike.
. . .Based in London after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Evan made regular trips back to Russia to report and write stories. In the newsroom, where I met him, he was a constant fount of chatter about Russia—about its politics, about the changes he witnessed during his visits and about the craft of reporting on the country from afar.
Now, instead of writing the news, he has become a global news story of his own—his name popping up on the U.S. presidential campaign trail and at a United Nations Security Council meeting.
Evan was arrested in a restaurant while on a reporting trip for The Wall Street Journal and shipped to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where he was locked in a cell for 23 hours a day for almost 15 months. He was recently moved to Yekaterinburg for the trial.
By all accounts Gershkovich, who left the NYT to move to Russia, which he loved, was a great reporter and had many friends. Now he’s facing 16 years breaking rocks, though I have substantial hopes that the U.S., or perhaps Germany, will dig up a jailed Russian spy to trade for him, just like they did with Brittney Griner.
*From Benjamin Ryan at the Substack site “Reality’s Last Stand,” a piece called “The Pennsylvania Psychological Association forbids its members from mentioning the Cass Review.”
In a recent email to over 1,000 members of the Pennsylvania branch of the American Psychological Association, the PPA’s leadership denounced Britain’s Cass Review, which found that pediatric gender-transition treatment is based on “remarkably weak evidence,” as “failing to meet the professional standard” of the PPA’s adherence to “evidence-based practices.” Accordingly, the PPA forbade any further mention of the Cass Review on the listserv.
Published in April, the Cass Review was nearly four years in the making. The report was commissioned by England’s National Health Service (NHS) and at 388 pages, is the most thorough analysis of the controversial field of pediatric gender-transition treatment to date. It was based in part on seven systematic literature reviews—the gold standard of scientific evidence—by evidence-based medicine experts at the University of York.
The review has led to a major pivot in the United Kingdom, putting the nation’s policies about pediatric gender medicine in line with four Scandinavian nations. The NHS has forbidden its health care providers from prescribing minors puberty blockers to treat gender-related distress. And the outgoing Tories put in place an “emergency” three-month ban of private prescribing of such drugs, one that the new Labour health secretary Wes Streeting has indicated he wishes to make permanent.
The NHS is at least ostensibly following the Cass Review’s recommendation to plan a clinical trial of pediatric gender-transition treatment, which is meant to be the only way for gender-distressed minors to access blockers and hormones. Such a trial would need to pass muster with an ethics review board and is not expected to launch until the beginning of 2025 at the very earliest.
The Cass Review has been met with scorn by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a largely U.S.-based activist-medical association that published updated treatment guidelines for caring for transgender people in 2022 called the Standards of Care 8.
. . .The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, despite being adamant that it was being transparent with its members about the reason for forbidding discussion of the Cass Review, did not specify in its email why it believed that the review did not meet the group’s evidence-based standards. Instead, in explaining its new policy, the PPA said that members of the LGBTQIA+ community on the listserv and their allies felt “targeted, harmed, and hurt” by the sharing of the Cass Review.
As an alternative, the PPA recommended that members reference WPATH’s Standards of Care 8 and the APA’s policy statement on gender-affirming care. This came after the Cass Review found that the WPATH’s guidelines “lack developmental rigor” and that the document “overstates the strength of the evidence.”
WPATH is a gender-activist organization that by no means deserves the word “World” in its title. The U.S. is uniquely resistant to the Cass Review’s conclusions because WPATH and many American doctors favoring “affirmative treatment” have ignored the studies that, to date, show that the treatment doesn’t work, and that puberty blockers should be used only on a clinical trial basis until their long-term effects become clearer. (Patient payments may be involved in this.) What’s worse, in my view, is that if blockers and other hormones aren’t given to kids suffering from gender dysphoria, most of their cases resolve without surgery or drugs, with many kids simply winding up gay. This mandates against a laissez-faire policy of snipping and dosing, although of course someone who’s of greater age, an age of “consent”, is free to transition as they want.
Note that WPATH, thanks to the Biden Administration, no longer has any minimum age guidelines for surgery or drug dispensation for children or adolescents with gender dysphoria. (See tweets by J. K. Rowling and Elon Musk below).
*Israel should be attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon, but are impeded from doing so for two reasons: the war in Gaza that saps IDF manpower, and because it would mire Israel in another war that, despite U.S. intimations that it would help Israel go after Hezbollah. But Israel can expect no help if it goes after Hezbollah big time, but will accrue plenty more hatred from the world. However, Israel did strike at the Houthis in Yemen today after a Houthi drone that killed one man in Tel Aviv and damaged a building.
Israeli fighter jets bombed sites in Yemen affiliated with the Iran-backed Houthi militia on Saturday in retaliation for a deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv a day earlier, the Israeli military said. It was the first time Israel has publicly attacked the group in months of escalating tensions.
The Israeli airstrikes targeted gas and oil depots and a power station in the area of Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah, two regional officials said. The port is controlled by the Houthis and contains oil export facilities, but also serves as a vital conduit for civilian goods and humanitarian aid to impoverished Yemen.
An Israeli military statement said that fighter jets struck targets near the port “in response to the hundreds of attacks” by the Houthis in recent months. The military said it was not tightening its emergency civil defense regulations after the attack, indicating Israeli officials might not expect a more serious escalation.
Nasruddin Amer, a Houthi spokesman, wrote on social media after the Israeli bombardment that the group would continue to attack Israel in support of Gaza.
“Yemen’s operations in support of Gaza will not stop,” Mr. Amer vowed. “The response to this aggression is inevitable.”
On Friday, the Houthis claimed responsibility for firing a long-range drone that hit the coastal city of Tel Aviv, killing one Israeli and wounding several others. The attack was part of a monthslong Houthi campaign against Israel, during which the Houthis have lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones and menaced ships passing through the Red Sea to try to blockade the Israeli port of Eilat.
. . .The deadly Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv — which struck close to an American diplomatic compound — was a rare breach of Israel’s vaunted air defenses. Most of the missiles and drones fired by the Houthis at Israel have been shot down by U.S. and Israeli forces.
Until Saturday, Israel had avoided a full-on attack against the Houthis in Yemen, which is more than 1,000 miles away. But the drone attack in Tel Aviv appeared to tip the scales.
“The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them — and we will do this in any place where it may be required,” Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, said on Saturday.
Now if only the UN (or even a few Western countries) would report Hezbollah to the International Court of Justice for arrant war crimes (Israel only responds to Hezbollah’s rocket attacks and never initiates firing), maybe they could stave off a wider war in the Middle East. Naaah—not with Iran masterminding it.
*Speaking of Iran, I’ve written many, many times how the U.S., and especially Democratic administrations, have tried to bargain with Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. That’s a fool’s errand, similar to trying to bargain with North Korea to the same end. Iran wants nukes, especially to go after Israel, and it will have its nukes. In fact, it’s almost there:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that Iran’s breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – “is now probably one or two weeks” as Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program.
The assessment marks the shortest breakout time that US officials have ever referenced and comes as Iran has taken steps in recent months to boost its production of fissile material.
“Where we are now is not in a good place,” the top US diplomat said at the Aspen Security Forum Friday.
“Iran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out, instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” he said.
“They haven’t produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully,” Blinken added.
Blinken said the policy of the US is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and that the administration would prefer to stop that from happening through diplomacy.
Blinken is SUCH a sap! Diplomacy hasn’t worked yet, and how on Earth does he expect to diplomacize Iran out of its single-minded purpose? More:
The Biden administration engaged in more than a year of indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in 2018 under the Trump administration.
This is one of the big mistakes that the Biden administration made: thinking that they could talk (or sanction) Iran out of its nukes. Well, it’s too late now, and I wonder if Israel will do something to stop it. Since Iran’s nuclear facilities are now deep underground, resistant to even “bunker-busting” bombs, that would be hard.
*Judge Aileen Cannon disposed of a lot of legal precedent when she dismissed the documents case against Trump, but, according to the WaPo, she may be on shaky ground. Shakier, in fact, than the ground that Trump is on, even if he is eventually found guilty.
Because of the political calendar, however, any legal repercussions could be short-lived.
Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified national security records and obstruction of government efforts to retrieve the material may not matter if the former president and current Republican nominee is elected in November. If he gets back to the White House, Trump couldpressure his Justice Department to close the case. He could also promote Cannon to the very appeals court that will soon examine her decision to tossthe case.
Yes, he’d have no compunction about doing that, and he’d succeed, too.
Cannon’s finding that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump conflicts with numerous past court decisions and the nation’s long history — during both Democratic and Republican administrations — of allowing independent prosecutors to handle high-profile instances of alleged wrongdoing.
. .Smith has filednotice of his plans to appealto the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which reviews decisions from the Florida district where Cannon, a relatively inexperienced judge appointed by Trump in 2020, sits.
The court has already rebuked her twice for her handling of other aspects of the classified documents case, sending what Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar described as a message that her decisions had been “way out of line.”
The question now, Amar said, is how quickly and dramatically the appeals court acts on the latest ruling, which dismissed the entire indictment for Trump and his two co-defendants.
“They may not want to stick their head in a buzz saw if they can just let the case take its slow, deliberative course,” he said.
*And from the AP’s ever-reliable “Oddities” section, we learn about a rare orange lobster, appropriately named “Crush”, who’s been saved from the pot:
The Downtown Aquarium in Denver has a new resident — a rare orange lobster that was rescued from a shipment of crustaceans delivered to a Red Lobster restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado.
A long-term employee who is a dishwasher and head biscuit maker spotted the bright orange lobster while unpacking a shipment last Friday and alerted restaurant managers, aquarium officials said. The staff named it Crush after the Denver Broncos’ legendary Orange Crush defense from 1976 to 1986.
“Myself and many of my team are born and raised Denver Broncos fans, so as soon as we saw that orange color, we knew that Crush would be an excellent representation,” said Kendra Kastendieck, the restaurant’s general manager. “And we all want our defensive line to be that good again.”
When the Pueblo Zoo couldn’t take Crush, Kastendieck called the Downtown Aquarium, which she said was interested right away.
. . .Crush will be examined by a veterinarian and after 30 days in quarantine will be placed in the “Lurks” exhibit that houses other cold water North Atlantic Ocean species, aquarium staff said.
“We are thrilled to be able to share this very rare and extraordinary animal with the community and visitors to Colorado,” Ryan Herman, general curator at Denver Downtown Aquarium, said in a statement.
Crush was shipped to the Pueblo restaurant from a supplier in Tennessee. It was caught off a coast of Canada, said Kastendieck, but she was unable to confirm which coast.
Genetic mutations can lead to lobsters that are orange, blue and yellow. Downtown Aquarium has had one orange lobster previously.
The Downtown Aquarium has more than 700 species of fish along with a stingray reef and three Sumatran tigers.
Yay! Lobster diversity preserved! And I always hate it when people throw live lobsters in boiling water. Imagine how the lobster perceives that. We don’t know if they feel pain in the way we do, but their neurons surely send off a huge and disturbing alarm signal.
Meet Crush:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is impressed by the biodiversity of her yard:
Hili: Wherever we look there are organisms.A: Luckily we do not see all of them.
In Polish:
Hili: Gdzie nie spojrzeć tam jakieś organizmy.Ja: Dobrze, że nie wszystkie widzimy.
*******************
From Science Humor (a terrestrial animal like this–chevrotains spend a lot of time in the water–could have been the kind of ancestor that whales had.
From Kitty Memes. No wonder the cat is, like, “yuk!” Give that moggy a pint of Landlord!
From Things With Faces via Natalie Brahim:
From Masih, with the Google translation below (I helped):
The father was beaten for supporting his daughter without hijab. As long as there is an Islamic Republic, no one will be safe. This video was sent to me by a citizen from the Abroud salt tourist area near Chalus. In his description, he wrote that on the 28th of July, hijab abusers and police officers clashed with a family from Isfahan who had come to Namak Abroud for sightseeing and recreation because of hijab. They severely beat the father of the family in front of the family members. The sender of the video wrote that in the continuation of this conflict, the mother of this family and one of her children were run over by a police car, and he could not record the video of that scene. I ask all the citizens who witnessed this governmental brutality on July 28th in Namak Abroud to publish their observations or pictures if they have prepared them in any way they can. Solidarity is the way to escape from the evil of these violent people. #WomenLifeFreedom #WarAgainstWomen
پدر را به جرم حمایت از دختر بدون حجابش کتک زدند. تا جمهوری اسلامی هست، هیچ کسی در امنیت نخواهد بود.
این ویدئو را شهروندی از منطقه توریستی نمک آبرود در نزدیکی چالوس برای من فرستاده است. او در شرح آن نوشته است که در روز ۲۸ تیرماه آزارگران حجاب و ماموران پلیس با یک خانواده اصفهانی… pic.twitter.com/JlFzNJmlcv— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) July 19, 2024
From Luana, a tweet linking to a BBC article reporting that restriction the use of puberty blockers does not, as some gender activists claim, increase the suicide rate (the assumption is that people not allowed to transition will kill themselves). The BBC article is here.
Puberty blocker curb has not led to suicide rise – review https://t.co/qRg1weyKvl
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) July 19, 2024
From my feed: double tweets from two of the world’s most hated people. But you will forgive me for posting this because they’re right.
Well, @jk_rowling is absolutely right!
Almost every child goes through some kind of identity crisis during puberty. It is deeply wrong to make them permanently infertile with “puberty blockers”.
If they still wish to transition as adults, provided they are fully informed of… https://t.co/4THoppUaqy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2024
A FB video sent by Malcolm. No harm done!
From Richard. I think this book is definitely worth a read. You can order it on Amazon here.
Listening to Coleman Hughes (@coldxman) reading his wonderful book, The End of Race Politics. Scarcely a sentence goes by without my wanting to burst into spontaneous applause. Martin Luther King would be applauding loudest of all. Please read it. With an open mind.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 20, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:
Gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz, and barely a year old. https://t.co/Jt1qwErrwQ
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) July 21, 2024
Two tweets from Matthew. This is a good one:
Meanwhile at Microsoft headquarters.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/XAHs9dTxBi
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 19, 2024
For kitty fans:
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) July 19, 2024
Consent remains a minefield in the treatment of people confused about their sexed bodies and unhappy with them. It is not at all cut and dried that minors cannot give consent for treatment. A doctor must make a (usually implicit) determination of capacity to consent for all patients he proposes to treat and, having determined that the patient is capable, he is entitled to rely on that patient’s consent. There is no arbitrary age below which the doctor cannot rely on a person’s consent, if deemed by the doctor to have capacity. (Some jurisdictions call this “competent”. I’m using the Ontario language.). If the capacity is disputed, then the Courts or child protection services get involved.
Denying treatment to a consenting person who demands it will land the doctor in hot water if the treatment is regarded as appropriate and medically necessary for that condition, which the profession in this case seems in pretty much lock-step unanimity, at least in public.
Legislatures must therefore set arbitrary age limits below which a patient’s consent is not valid for treatment intended to alter the cosmetic appearance of his/her sexed body. And the Courts must uphold these bans as not infringing on the Constitutional or civil rights of children. They must not be vilified for interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. In this case, that’s the whole point. The state has a duty to protect minors from their immature decisions.
It is strange that we make a blanket ban on those under 18 getting a tattoo, or using a sunbed, but we can deem them as having capacity to elect for permanent sterility and sexual dysfunction.
+1
Agree. It’s a tradgedy.
Leslie,
Can you elaborate on this?
“It is not at all cut and dried that minors cannot give consent for treatment…”
Most (the vast majority) of minors do not have the wherewithal to make informed decisions, the lack of (life) experience and the immaturity of the brain (matures at ~24-25?) buttress the claim. If minors *can* give informed consent – should we -for example- debate the thresholds on statutory rape?
Yes, the thresholds are arbitrary, but they need to be imposed at “some” level; limits on the drinking age, the age to carry a weapon and so on. There has to be a cut-off.
Surely an 11 year old girl should not be able to make a decision about removing her nascent breasts?
Body Integrity Identity Disorder (also) comes to mind. Should a physician follow through on the call to cut off a limb?
Also, the unanimity you speak of (re: gender dysphoria and the profession treating it) is fast eroding, specifically in western nations that have decided to follow the Cass-Review (UK) and adopt a cautionary approach – meaning a “wait and see” approach. North America (I include Canada in this, far more liberal than the US) is an anomaly.
My hope is that the US and Canada will be forced to follow-suit via litigation and advocacy.
I would recommend this clip – Christina Buttons (who has an excellent grasp on the science and the subject – she’s an investigative reporter) on Triggernometry: it’s excellent:
Rosemary, it’s often the case that a minor will ask for treatment and not want parents informed – say a prescription for oral contraceptives, a pregnancy test, or an STD test. If the minor understands the risks and benefits of a treatment or test then we regard them as having capacity to consent. I would not be comfortable letting a minor make an irreversible, major decision, however. Given my squeamishness about that, to comply with the rules of the licensing body I would be required to then refer the child on to another physician who is, perhaps, less particular. If I feel the minor is not capable of understanding their choice from all sides, technically I would not have to refer on, but simply to save potential complaints I likely would anyway. Glad I’m retired now!
Thanks for the explanation Christopher.
The contraceptive case is a good example. Makes sense.
It seems the *irreversible* damage aspect is key in all this.
+1
Treating minors with only their own consent got started with prescribing The Pill to adolescents who wanted to have sex (with other adolescents, not with adults), treating sexually transmitted diseases without informing parents (particularly since this might reveal sexual “deviancy” to those parents), and doing abortions. Doing this presupposes that the minor has capacity to consent. Since we want to do all those things (I think), we have to accept the minor can consent, because if the minor could not consent, then we would have to get informed consent from custodial parents or guardians for all patients below the age of majority.
Having opened that box, we can’t turn around and condemn the same doctor who arranged an abortion for a 14-year-old without informing the parents for now giving testosterone for body dysphoria under the same consent. Unless we make a statutory rule that for this list of treatments, not only is the minor’s consent invalid but so is the parent’s, there is no easy way to tell the two cases apart.
A doctor who did an elective tonsillectomy on a six-year-old without parental consent would receive a rough go at a disciplinary board because medical experts would say that was inappropriate, considering all the facts. A doctor who prescribed testosterone to a 14-year-old against parental wishes would be exonerated by the medical experts and applauded, as things stand today in Canada and many populous U.S. states. Indeed the doctor would have to notify child protection services that the parents had tried to prevent the child from receiving medically necessary care.
The age of consent for sexual activity with an adult is a different question. Doctors have a fiduciary obligation to act always in the patient’s best interests. If a doctor thinks that this 14-year-old can consent to testosterone or refuse more cancer chemotherapy, we give him the benefit of the doubt. An adult who wants to have sex with someone not yet 16 doesn’t get the same presumption of good intentions.
Thank you Leslie, that explains some of my questions and concerns, but doesn’t settle the matter in my mind.
Your examples are good ones and similar to the one cited by Christopher who commented similarly (see above).
I see a marked difference (not only in degree but in kind as well) between the examples you cited and the current protocol for the treatment of gender dysphoria in North America. Prescribing contraceptives and arranging an abortion are grounded in material reality. Presumably a 14-year old who visits her physician and requests contraceptives is engaging in (or plans to) engage in sex. It would be -again presumably- in her best interest (hopefully after some therapy) to prescribe the contraceptive provided she understands the risks (and depending on the laws of the state/region). An abortion is similar, it’s grounded in the reality of being pregnant. It’s verifiable. There is a *there* there. An identifiable *there*.
With gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder the current evidence shows that a majority of those who transition socially go onto blockers, cross-sex-hormones and (sometimes) reassignment surgery. All based on gender-pseudo-science (derived from WPATH’s questionable and advocacy based treatment protocol) that is far removed from an evidence-based protocol for a malady that cannot be clearly and materially identified, either biologically or psychologically – though *of course* there are some who benefit from blockers/hormones/surgery.
The majority of those who experience or complain about dysphoria are gay/lesbian youth OR they are on the spectrum (in the case of many females) or they are suffering from historical abuse/trauma. The data also shows that the majority of these youth, if subject to a cautionary treatment approach (therapy, “wait and see” and going through puberty – as all mammals do, as all mammals are meant to) emerge on the other side as healthy gay adults or healthy straight adults.
The salient point is that contraceptives (though questions are emerging about the pill as well) and abortions are interventions that are rational and based on “good” science – depending on the context. The treatment protocol for gender dysphoria is not, ergo consent should be withheld until we have serious longitudinal studies (outside the influence of the “citation cartel” and the activists) guiding us one way or the other. The Cass-Review buttresses my concerns – it demonstrates that the majority of young adults who are gender-dysphoric do not benefit from blockers/hormones and surgery.
Also, an intervention that is patently beneficial (a contraceptive for example or an abortion) and one that removes a child’s genitals are vastly different in degree and kind. If there’s a negative consequence of the contraceptive, a recovery is more or less guaranteed, however, if a young woman’s breasts are removed and she changes her mind just one year later, she will come to understand that she will never breast feed her future child. She will never get her breasts back. This is a grievous injury. Blockers and cross-sex hormones pose similar risks.
Having sex and becoming pregnant are not outside the range of expected behaviors and consequences. They are within the overtone window of the expected. Believing that one is born in the wrong body is not; historically a mere 0.02% identified as trans, that ratio has increased exponentially, not in a believable organic manner but in an anomalous one; lending credence to Abigail Shrier’s evidence based claim that a contagion is at play.
What happened to “do no harm?”.
But yes, I understand your point, that *given* the current protocol (via WPATH), the prescription of blockers (and more) may be inevitable. The west needs more courageous physicians/therapists who are able to say, “no, we must wait”. And, there are a growing number of these admirable folk emerging.
ASIDE:
I am curious can a physician prescribe -say- prozac (or any other SSRI) to a child simply based on the child’s consent? If a 14 year old asks a therapist (without the knowledge of her parents) to prescribe an SSRI, does the current North American policy (?) permit the prescription?
All those things are true, Rosemary. I was just trying to comment on why there are no clear-cut age cut-offs for when a doctor can treat a minor without the parents’ knowledge or consent. In many (most?) cases of complex disease the doctor will try to get permission to involve parents so they can provide love and support for the child at home. Same at the other end of life. Many older people will want their adult children to be involved in treatment decisions even though legally it is still solely up to the elderly patient to decide.
As to your last:
Children don’t walk in and request Prozac the way they do request hormones. They have symptoms of mental distress. The doctor makes a diagnosis and forms an judgement about what treatment he would offer, and reasonable alternatives. If the adolescent could be made to understand enough about the diagnosis and the proposed treatment (and alternatives) to consent independently then yes, the doctor could prescribe the SSRI (if that was medically appropriate) without involving the parents unless the adolescent consented to involve them. You would hope a depressed teenager would let parents be involved but such is life.
The pharmacist would be wanting to know who was going to pay for the prescription, of course.
Thanks Leslie.
Your response makes makes me wonder how many young adults (teenagers under 18 say) are misdiagnosed and prescribed medications (without parental consent) that don’t address the problem(s) ailing them.
Thanks for the video.
Some young kids may actually think they can become the opposite sex. They’re too young to know that it’s not possible.
Sadly, those young kids are being affirmed by adults. By physicians, by surgeons, by institutions.
The video is excellent.
FYI: I agree with you, just developing a bit:
Body Alchemy (1996) is a photographic art book by Loren Cameron.
It is called “body alchemy” because that is precisely what transforming the body in the ways we are discussing is.
This is to be discerned from treatment for clearly, materially defined …errmm. genuine medical problems.
Tattoos are body alchemy. Can minors consent to tattoos? In fact, temporary tattoos are popular with kids now! One can wonder what is going on with that…
…and then there’s the strong “mental health” promotion going on now… how much of the material world is considered in that?
Anywho…
True. +1
If you listen to the Buttons’ clip. She calls it interestingly – a lifestyle choice. I like your terminology (body alchemy) better. There *is* something magical about the *gendered soul* – one that cannot be objectively/empirically discerned.
It seems that truth matters less and less today, material reality is becoming incidental … almost as though we are traveling back to a time when magic and myth ruled our collective psyche.
I think (often) that we are living in “someone’s” simulation.
Two words :
Gnosis
Hermeticism
… I blame Oprah.
I really appreciate this explanation. Legislation setting age limits is a kind of protection for doctors against the capture of their professional org by activists who set standards of care that are likely to cause harm.
+1
I am unfamiliar with the concept of “allies” in the medical world. Sounds like it means something more like “political actors” and less like “practitioners.”
I have yet to hear anyone who disagrees with Judge Cannon’s ruling that the Jack Smith appointment had no legal basis provide anything more than nay-saying in counter-argument. It may be both a correct ruling and “unprecedented,” since this may be the first time a Special Counsel was appointed arbitrarily. “Unprecedented” sounds important and wrong, but isn’t necessarily so.
To understand WPATH operations, there’s this (sorry for caps, it was copied out of the pdf):
Advancing Trans* Movements Worldwide — LESSONS FROM A DIALOGUE BETWEEN FUNDERS & ACTIVISTS WORKING ON GENDER
DIVERSITY
CONFERENCE REPORT — DECEMBER 3 & 4, 2013 — BERLIN, GERMANY
Global Action for Trans Diversity
Open Society Foundations
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/advancing-trans-movements-worldwide
And this :
“Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth — that of alchemy, operational success.”
-George Soros
… as such, all the science and medicine in the world will have no affect on the reflexive alchemy strategy of George Soros.
That means there are some sort of “guideposts” The Open Society has likely set up to direct the alchemical process that is in motion – this is not over, though the rational of us sees the movement slowing down.
Twitter is full of nsfw images of the “operational success” of surgical transition. I sort of agree with the alchemy label for this. The difference is that such surgery turns gold into dross.
Note:
Soros’ strategic success might be downstream of the immediate preoccupations.
“Mental health” is my guess for the guidepost in the operation – absorbing the output of the input (in his terms).
Two words for those decrying…based on precedent…Judge Cannon’s ruling on the unconstitutional appointment of an unconfirmed person as a Special Counsel:
Dred Scott
According to Carolina Curmudgeon, California governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that forbids teachers from informing parents of their children’s stated sexual identity. Now I am a bit to the left of many here, but if this is about having teachers collude with minors who want to get medical procedures without parental consent, then I am very much against this bill.
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-terrible-horrible-no?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2006509&post_id=146831498&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ozbdd&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Mr. Newsom will not do well on a national political stage, imo.
+1 And thanks for the link.
Yes, after this bill, he will not do well nationally.
Abigail Shrier wrote an excellent article for the FB on the bill and there’s already a lawsuit against it.
https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-california-gender-law-newsom
“The law effectively shuts down the local parents’ rights movement in California by eliminating its most important tool: the ability to organize at the community level to stop schools from deceiving them. No longer can families hope to convince their school boards to require schools to notify parents that their daughter, Sophie, has been going by “Sebastian” in class; that her teacher, school counselor, and principal have all been celebrating Sebastian’s transgender identity; that they’ve been letting her use the boys’ bathroom and reifying the sense that she is “really a boy.”
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the law supports the priming of minor children for a secret life with a new gender identity. This includes having school-aged children participate in sexualized discussions and make identity declarations with school faculty, which are often actively hidden from the child’s parents. Elon Musk called the law “the final straw” for families and announced his intention to move both SpaceX and X, two of California’s most prominent tech companies, out of the state as a result. “The goal [of] this diabolical law,” he tweeted, “is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.”
The California law in question is based on the idea that children (that is, legal minors) have privacy rights vi-à-vis their own parents.
This is complete nonsense. I have been a parent for more than 20 years, and had never heard of such a claim (“right”) before trans activists started claiming it.
Here in Canada, an Angus Reid Institute online survey from July 26 to 31 2023 among a representative randomized sample of 3,016 Canadian adults found that 78 per cent of Canadians polled think that parents should be informed by schools if their child wants to change their name or pronoun.
https://angusreid.org/canada-schools-pronouns-policy-transgender-saskatchewan-new-brunswick/
They do not want parents informed for one reason- to give them time to indoctrinate the child without interference from people who actually care about the child’s welfare.
Once the child is fully indoctrinated, it will not matter. By then, they have been convinced that any protest or disagreement from the parent is essentially a hate crime.
If you want to continue to see your kid, you had better not protest very loudly.
Just like when a loved one joins a cult.
JK Rowling is absolutely brilliant and absolutely brave. Of course she can *afford* to be brave – she’s uncancellable. Still, it take guts to go against the grain and be “hated” by many millions of people.
Elon Musk is an eccentric genius and has a propensity to lean to conspiracies but is nevertheless absolutely right in this regard.
Gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria treatment in North America is *NOT* evidence based – there’s ample evidence demonstrating the fact. WPATH is a sham. The number of lawsuits and de-transitioners will only increase -and rapidly- as we move along a path that is causing great harm to our youth and young adults.
It’s heartbreaking. This is the #1 reason I will not be voting for the Biden administration. Of course, I will not be voting for Trump either.
Re: the recent CA law (AB 1955) that was signed into law by Newsom:
“Elon Musk called the law “the final straw” for families and announced his intention to move both SpaceX and X, two of California’s most prominent tech companies, out of the state as a result. “The goal [of] this diabolical law,” he tweeted, “is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/abigail-shrier-california-gender-law-newsom
We live in strange+ times.
Ironically and sadly, we can reasonable expect a Trump administration to fix the problem if he can.
Yes. Sadly.
Professor Appleby’s report on suicide among minors who identify as transgender undermines one of the major reasons organizations like the NHS feel comfortable ignoring the Cass Report even in discussions: if we don’t give “life-saving” gender medicine to kids and teens, they’ll kill themselves. This is a key component of belief. The assumption that it’s transition-or-die encourages medical professionals to see themselves as saviors to a vulnerable population, blinding them to the value of open discussion and to the risks involved in their preferred cure.
It also blinds professionals to what should have been the very obvious danger of bandying about the idea that teen suicide is a reasonable and expected outcome to not getting one’s sex traits modified. How could this well known safeguarding issue be ignored because hey, it’s trans?
Appleby then is also at pains to point out that adolescents are notoriously susceptible to suicide/self-harm contagion, so that telling them “people like you, facing similar problems, are killing themselves” is highly irresponsible. It’s a double whammy: the suicide rates are not high enough to warrant dropping medical precautions but claiming that they are high is leading to suicide threats and self-harm that wouldn’t otherwise happen.
+1
Interestingly, this came out ~2 days ago:
“A suicide prevention expert has discredited claims that banning puberty blockers led to a spike in suicides among children with gender dysphoria.
Professor Louis Appleby, who chairs the National Suicide Prevention advisory group, also warned against puberty blockers being used as the ‘touchstone issue’ in the debate.
He was commissioned by the health secretary to conduct an independent review of NHS data on suicide by young patients at a gender services facility. ”
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/mental-health-pain-and-addiction/expert-discredits-claims-of-link-between-puberty-blockers-ban-and-suicide/
Excellent post and comments. I am catching up on old reading.
I can’t add anything, except, I love ice cream but 18 scoops would be a little too much for me.