Adam Conover wrote:First, on the question of whether 7 year old children are being given “hormones”, which cause irreversible changes: This is not true. These drugs are not hormones: what they actually do is block the onset of puberty.
Wiki wrote:Leuprorelin, also known as leuprolide, [brand name: Lupron] is a manufactured version of a hormone
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Adam Conover wrote:According to the Endocrine Society, these drugs are completely reversible.
++++… normal sexual or reproductive development will not occur. Girls will not begin menstruation and so will be infertile. Boys testes will not grow and develop and will impact on fertility. A boy’s penis will remain immature and remain the size of a child’s into adulthood. This will cause problems sexually if the penis is retained, both functionally and in terms of sexual arousal. It is also problematic if gender reassignment surgery is later chosen since there is too little material to use from the penis and testicles.
When a child’s natural puberty is blocked we can expect to see effects not only on the body but on the developing brain. It is the surge of sex hormones at puberty which triggers the important changes in the adolescent brain which only reach completion in the mid-twenties. Hormonal changes at puberty are thought to influence the development of both brain structure and function.
Recent research indicates that there is a window of development for some cognitive functions, and if this window is missed, cognitive development does not resume later even if blockers are discontinued. A reduction in long-term spatial memory was found to persist after discontinuation of blockers….
Adam Conover wrote:Regarding Joe’s question about whether or not we know what the long-term effects are: These drugs have been approved for use in children by the FDA since 1993. In other words, they’ve been prescribed to children for over 25 years, and still have been deemed safe.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/puberty-blockers/The evidence of ‘reversibility’ is from studies in a different set of children; namely children with precocious puberty (a puberty disorder in which puberty commences very early. Technically this is before the age of 8 in girls but could be as young as pre-school age). In these children puberty blocking drugs are normally withdrawn around the age of 12 and menstruation in girls commences about 1 year later.
This is very different from the approach in children with gender dysphoria. Normal puberty is postponed while the normal ageing process proceeds. Restarting natural puberty (or inducing cross-sex puberty artificially at 16) would therefore be out of step with other development processes. It should also be noted that virtually all cases of precocious puberty occur in girls so there is extremely little evidence of the restarting of puberty in boys.
It has long been known that mechanistically GnRH analogues can cause bone thinning. The reduction of estrogen levels in girls can induce a temporary osteopenia (similar to what’s seen in menopause when estrogen levels naturally fall). A 2009 study showed that Lupron caused bone thinning in girls treated although bone density was seen to return to normal levels within 10 years after treatment. There is also a large 2005 study in men treated for prostate cancer in which a significantly increased risk of bone fractures was observed.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/14/pu ... ns-health/Many [patients on Lupron] have experienced extreme side effects that shattered their health and their lives, including severe joint pain, osteoporosis, compromised immune systems, and mental health issues such as severe depression and even suicidal ideation. The FDA has received 24,000 reports of adverse reactions, about half of which the agency has deemed serious.
Side effects of Lupron include:
headaches
chronic pain
osteopenia
osteoporosis
degenerative disc disease
bursitis
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
deteriorating vision
severe asthma exacerbation
depression
anxiety
mood swings
suicidal urges
seizures
https://californiahealthline.org/news/w ... -problems/
In summation:
https://www.transgendertrend.com/puberty-blockers/It is often said that the use of puberty blockers in children is completely safe and irreversible. This claim however has never been tested in long term studies and its use for gender dysphoria remains experimental. Questions still remain about long term health concerns and the effect on the natural trajectory of the development of gender identity. Ethical questions remain about the capacity of children to consent to a treatment which blocks their natural development at puberty, especially given the evidence that this locks them into a medical pathway resulting in sterility and potential loss of sexual function.