Who stands to profit from the push to transgender our children? In addition to those who seek to push the trans ideology, profiteers from big pharma are also behind the trans movement.

From Daily Caller. A March 2021 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence comprehensive review of nine studies failed to find evidence that hormonal therapy and puberty blockers were helpful. The review pointed out common flaws in transgender treatment research, such as confounding variables and bias resulting from observational studies that lack control groups.

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Yet the media has widely publicized studies funded by pharmaceutical corporations and activist groups which claim to find that “gender-affirming” medical care, such as hormones that block children from going through puberty, is good for kids’ mental health.

Stanford University published a Jan. 12 study on childhood hormone therapy funded by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), which, according to a Stanford press release, is supported financially by pharmaceutical giants Arbor and Pfizer. Both companies produce hormonal medications used in gender transitions.

AACAP is an outspoken advocate against laws regulating or restricting puberty blockers, hormone therapy and sex change surgeries for children. It awarded its Pilot Research Award, which supports child and adolescent psychiatry research, to Dr. Jack Turban, the lead author on the Stanford study, in May 2019.

“If Pfizer is producing hormone therapies then of course there’s incentives to promote studies that push those,” Dr. Diana Blum, a California neurologist, told DCNF. “Even though things get published in academic journals, a lot of the funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry….”

The Stanford study claimed to find better mental health outcomes for transgender adults who started hormones in adolescence compared to those who waited until adulthood, and it was touted as evidence of the benefits of hormone therapy for children….

Dr. Blum spoke with the DCNF about problems with the study’s methodology. “This was not a double-blind placebo-controlled trial where you can actually say they tested a hypothesis and here’s the conclusion and here’s why you know it’s valid,” she explained.

“The Stanford study used surveys. Right off the bat there are confounding variables never taken into account and thus inappropriate conclusions and generalizations are made that may not apply to the patient population studied,” Blum said….

The claim that childhood hormone treatment is associated with improved mental health outcomes did not apply across the board in the Stanford study. Transgender patients who received hormone therapy between ages 16 and 17 were three times as likely to have attempted suicide in the previous year compared to those who had never undergone hormone therapy, and five times as likely than those who took hormones as adults, according to the study. Sample sizes for groups who took hormones under 18 were smaller than the group who took hormones at 18 or older….

The New York Times cited the study to support its claim that “preliminary studies have suggested that adolescents who receive drug treatments to affirm their gender identity have improved mental health and well-being.”

“Once it’s in the headlines it gets people’s attention and no one actually digs deeper into it,” Blum said….

A similar story played out in December 2021 when a study conducted by researchers at the Trevor Project, a transgender activism group, claimed to find a positive relationship between hormone therapy for transgender youth and reduced depression and risk of suicide.

The study was not a randomized trial, but was based on a voluntary online quiz which found trans youth through targeted ads on social media and offered $50 prizes to respondents….

The Trevor Project study stated that researchers were unable to control for the effect of parental support in improved outcomes, as every respondent who said they took hormones also had at least one supportive parent. It’s unclear whether parental support, rather than hormonal medications, could have driven the slight improvement in mental health since researchers were unable to examine those variables independently.

Researchers also noted that those with histories of suicidal thoughts and depression may have been less able to seek out hormone therapy, which could confound the results….

NBC News uncritically reported Dec. 14 that “gender-affirming hormone therapy is strongly linked to a lower risk of suicide and depression for transgender youths,” citing the Trevor Project research alongside quotes from its employees. The NBC report failed to mention the study’s questionable methods, how small the mental health gains were, or that the study did not and could not find causality….

Doctors and scientists pointed to emerging research on puberty blockers’ adverse effects on bone and brain health in an October 2020 letter to the editors of Springer Link, a scientific journal. The letter questioned other researchers’ assumption that puberty blockers are safe and reversible.

“Since almost all of the children treated with puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones … puberty blockers may consolidate gender dysphoria in young people, putting them on a lifelong path of biomedical interventions,” the letter noted.

The world’s largest data set on sex reassignment procedures does not show a clear link between mental health benefits and surgical or hormonal interventions, contrary to the narrative many media outlets appear to be advancing. Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2019, the study of over 9 million individuals including 2,679 transgender patients demonstrated no mental health benefits from sex reassignment surgeries or hormone therapy, and surgeries corresponded with higher likelihood of later treatment for anxiety disorders….

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(Excerpt from Daily Caller. Photo Credit: Mercedes Mehling on Unsplash)