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   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://trt.global/world/article/13453101   
      
   When Chloe Cole was an impressionable 13-year-old, she began taking   
   puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones – a set of drugs that delay   
   natural biological changes. Two years later, surgeons removed her breasts   
   in a double mastectomy. Only one doctor warned her about the potential   
   adverse consequences of the surgery. She regrets not heeding that advice.   
      
   Chloe suffered from gender dysphoria, a medical condition in which people   
   don’t associate with their biological sex. But experts say children with   
   the disorder often grow out of their gender-related anxiety. Often, they   
   are victims of confusion borne out of other reasons like depression and   
   self-esteem issues.   
      
   Cole, now 18, is one of many girls who have ‘detransitioned’, saying their   
   decision to transition into a boy by taking gender-altering drugs and   
   surgeries was wrong.   
      
   Cole wants to be a mother one day, but she might never be able to   
   breastfeed.   
      
   “Something beautiful and uniquely female was taken away from me forever. I   
   was perfectly healthy before that,” she said in an interview. “I was just   
   a kid.”   
      
   These girls, their parents and medical practitioners in many countries are   
   raising concerns about complicated and unproven medical interventions   
   administered to minors.   
      
   The controversial gender-change therapies have come under the spotlight at   
   a time when there’s a push by concerned parents against the normalisation   
   of homosexual relationship discussions in primary schools.   
      
   In the US, UK and other so-called advanced economies, children are   
   frequently encouraged to choose their own ‘pronouns’, which in some cases   
   has created confusion in their minds, experts say.   
      
   How did we end up here?   
      
   In the past two decades, the idea of ‘gender-affirming care’ has become   
   pervasive among the international medical establishment. It basically says   
   that if a boy or a girl is confused about his or her gender, he or she can   
   opt for medical intervention, which can involve surgeries.   
      
   The problem is that the patients are too young to foresee the consequences   
   of their decision, and doctors do not provide sufficient warnings before   
   the ‘treatments’ start.   
      
   “If you are 15-16-year-old and having a mastectomy, you are not really at   
   the age where you are thinking about having a baby sometime in the future.   
   You don’t know what the future holds,” says Dr Karleen Gribble, who works   
   at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University.   
      
   “Fifteen years down the track, you have a baby, and you don’t have   
   breasts, then you can’t do anything about it because it’s a kind of final   
   decision. There is no going back.”   
      
   Lately, health institutions where children with gender dysphoria are   
   referred to have come under scrutiny.   
      
   In February, a former employee of The Washington University Transgender   
   Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital turned a whistleblower when she   
   wrote a scathing article, detailing how minors were hurriedly put on   
   irreversible medical procedures without proper counselling, warnings or   
   investigation.   
      
   Children with psychiatric issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder   
   (PTSD) and bipolar disorder were being diagnosed with gender dysphoria and   
   advised to go under the surgeon’s knife, Jamie Reed wrote in the article   
   for The Free Press.   
      
   “Some weeks, it felt as though almost our entire caseload was nothing but   
   disturbed young people.”   
      
   Social contagion   
      
   A few years back, most of the cases being handled by the so-called   
   transition clinics involved boys. Since 2015, the number of girls seeking   
   medical intervention has increased rapidly.   
      
   In the US, gender dysphoria diagnosis jumped three times to 40,000 cases   
   in 2021 compared to four years ago. A National Health Services (NHS) study   
   in the UK found that ten years ago, there were under 250 referrals, most   
   of them boys. In 2021 there were more than 5,000. And two-thirds of them   
   were girls.   
      
   Since the phenomenon is relatively recent, no thorough research is   
   available to decipher the exact causes behind the surge in the number of   
   girls showing up at transition centres.   
      
   But anecdotal evidence based on interviews with parents suggests that   
   social media has a role to play. Adolescent girls often see gender   
   dysphoria as a coping mechanism against issues such as unhappiness with   
   their physical appearance.   
      
   The proliferation of trans-related content on social media and unverified   
   and often romanticised transition stories on TikTok are also playing a   
   part in shaping the decision of minor girls.   
      
   Experts say the biggest problem lies with the lack of research into the   
   long-term consequences of gender-change therapies.   
      
   A low bar   
      
   In the UK and other so-called developed countries, the route to gender   
   transition usually works something like this: a school-going girl tells   
   her parents she wants to change her name and her appearance, is taken to   
   see a psychiatrist who, after one or two visits refers the kid to an   
   endocrinologist who in turn puts the child on medicines.   
      
   Bicalutamide, a drug used on cancer patients, is given to boys as a   
   puberty blocker. The drug changes their appearance, making them more   
   effeminate.   
      
   Testosterone given to girls deepens their voice and results in the growth   
   of facial hair.   
      
   If parents protest, doctors are known to scare them that their child is   
   vulnerable to suicide if not allowed to proceed.   
      
   Gribble of Western Sydney University says the rules and regulations   
   overseeing medical intervention, such as the guidelines of the World   
   Professional Association of Transgender Health, are unreliable.   
      
   “Like they don’t even say that double mastectomy is going to impact   
   breastfeeding,” she says.   
      
   While doing research for her own paper, which chronicled the regret of a   
   woman who had her breasts removed, Gribble was “shocked” to find that   
   there’s little evidence of any benefit for the girls who took medicines or   
   opted for the surgery.   
      
   “Some of the journals are allowing papers to be published that make very   
   strong claims that are not backed by evidence. That is a very concerning   
   thing.”   
      
   One ‘research paper’ made a definitive conclusion on the satisfaction of   
   minor girls who had their breasts surgically removed - by asking for their   
   response three months after the surgeries, she says.   
      
   “You can’t make those claims. Those were only three months after the   
   surgery. It’s a child who is 14 or maybe 15. In 5 or 10 years, they might   
   have a baby, and how would they feel about it? I think this is what is so   
   concerning. The quality of research is really poor.”   
      
      
   --   
   November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look   
   forward to America being great again.   
      
      
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