This is truly great news. Unfortunately, I expect it will be treated with the a full dress onslaught of the "Fox News Fallacy", the rhetorical trope, "Fox says X. 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 Not X". NPR will blow a gasket if they mention it all and probably characterize it as a threat of genocide to all "LGBTQIA+".
Thank you to Jamie, all at the Courage Coalition, and to everyone who has fought so hard to get these issues heard and addressed. I have started in on reviewing the document itself, and I can see already that it is thoughtful and well-considered. Now, as always, the question is how to get people to engage with it honestly, on its merits, rather than dismissing it because it emanates from this administration.
Yeah but the problem is this administration and the folks he put in the health department don’t follow evidence based anything in any other situation. In fact, they say bonkers things the disqualifies them as anything even remotely approaching logical and trustworthy people.
That is going to tank any ground gained in this fight. If or when the democrats take over again we will be right back to square one if not worse off because so many of the GC crowd worked with and praised this administration. The left says you are right wing nut jobs and you prove them right.
I was also disappointed to see biased coverage, such as by Axios: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/01/hhs-report-gender-care-risk. It has this line about the Cass report: "According to the BBC, 98% of the 103 scientific papers analyzed for that review were not considered high-quality."
Cass's response in a BBC piece: "There were quite a number of studies that were considered to be moderate quality, and those were all included in the analysis."
Does anyone know what's up with moderate studies, are they typically included? Just curious. From all that I've seen, Cass appears eminently trustworthy.
There appears to be an attempt to cast things as only low or high in some discussions.
Then they say, high is too hard so we have to use low. And it's no, you can use moderate. There is a page in the Cass review that says what quality means, it indicates how likely you'll get the estimated outcome. If everyone does well or poorly with some intervention but it's a very low quality finding then you have no idea how someone else will likely do.
I sent this to Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios. Sorry, the links didn't come through in the cut and paste.
Dear Mike Allen,
I enjoyed listening to you on Bari Weiss's April 8th podcast and was intrigued to hear about the goal of Axios, to report on the news without bias. Therefore I was surprised and dismayed to see Maya Goldman's 5/1/25 piece, HHS questions evidence for youth gender care: [Maya Goldman piece link on Axios].
The piece cherry-picked studies and clips in a clear effort to undercut the HHS study, leaving out any and all reports supporting the other side of the debate, namely:
--When physician and researcher Johanna Olson-Kennedy discovered that puberty blockers did not improve the mental health of children with gender dysphoria in her study, she sat on the evidence: [Johanna Olson-Kennedy link from NYT]
--WPATH tried to squelch research from Johns Hopkins that found little to no evidence supporting gender affirming care for children. [Links to WPATH and Johns Hopkins pieces in Economist and abc news 3340.}
Going forward, I sincerely hope that your reporters will do a better job at covering this charged subject.
Great news!
Wish you could get this in the guest Op-Ed section of the New York Times.
Seeing some very biased reporting out there--Associated Press.
Haven't seen anything from NYT yet.
This is truly great news. Unfortunately, I expect it will be treated with the a full dress onslaught of the "Fox News Fallacy", the rhetorical trope, "Fox says X. 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 Not X". NPR will blow a gasket if they mention it all and probably characterize it as a threat of genocide to all "LGBTQIA+".
You have a very astute assessment of the probable retaliation.
Thank you to Jamie, all at the Courage Coalition, and to everyone who has fought so hard to get these issues heard and addressed. I have started in on reviewing the document itself, and I can see already that it is thoughtful and well-considered. Now, as always, the question is how to get people to engage with it honestly, on its merits, rather than dismissing it because it emanates from this administration.
Exactly
Yeah but the problem is this administration and the folks he put in the health department don’t follow evidence based anything in any other situation. In fact, they say bonkers things the disqualifies them as anything even remotely approaching logical and trustworthy people.
That is going to tank any ground gained in this fight. If or when the democrats take over again we will be right back to square one if not worse off because so many of the GC crowd worked with and praised this administration. The left says you are right wing nut jobs and you prove them right.
Bravo. Kudos to those behind the scenes that helped make this happen!
So happy to hear this.
Yay, progress!
I was also disappointed to see biased coverage, such as by Axios: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/01/hhs-report-gender-care-risk. It has this line about the Cass report: "According to the BBC, 98% of the 103 scientific papers analyzed for that review were not considered high-quality."
Cass's response in a BBC piece: "There were quite a number of studies that were considered to be moderate quality, and those were all included in the analysis."
Does anyone know what's up with moderate studies, are they typically included? Just curious. From all that I've seen, Cass appears eminently trustworthy.
There appears to be an attempt to cast things as only low or high in some discussions.
Then they say, high is too hard so we have to use low. And it's no, you can use moderate. There is a page in the Cass review that says what quality means, it indicates how likely you'll get the estimated outcome. If everyone does well or poorly with some intervention but it's a very low quality finding then you have no idea how someone else will likely do.
I sent this to Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios. Sorry, the links didn't come through in the cut and paste.
Dear Mike Allen,
I enjoyed listening to you on Bari Weiss's April 8th podcast and was intrigued to hear about the goal of Axios, to report on the news without bias. Therefore I was surprised and dismayed to see Maya Goldman's 5/1/25 piece, HHS questions evidence for youth gender care: [Maya Goldman piece link on Axios].
The piece cherry-picked studies and clips in a clear effort to undercut the HHS study, leaving out any and all reports supporting the other side of the debate, namely:
--When physician and researcher Johanna Olson-Kennedy discovered that puberty blockers did not improve the mental health of children with gender dysphoria in her study, she sat on the evidence: [Johanna Olson-Kennedy link from NYT]
--WPATH tried to squelch research from Johns Hopkins that found little to no evidence supporting gender affirming care for children. [Links to WPATH and Johns Hopkins pieces in Economist and abc news 3340.}
Going forward, I sincerely hope that your reporters will do a better job at covering this charged subject.
Sincerely,
Thank you for this explanation!
European systems haven’t “ended social transitions”. Not sure where you heard that…
This is fantastic news!!
This is fantastic news!!