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Thank you to Our Duty Canada for composing this letter.
An Open Letter to the Alberta Medical Association (AMA)
Regarding the February 1st Statement from the AMA
Section of Pediatrics on gender-affirming treatments March 2024
On February 1, 2024 your association released a statement in response to
Alberta Premiere Danielle Smith’s proposed changes to the treatment of
trans-identified children and adolescents, those struggling with gender
ideation. We ask that you consider and respond to our questions and
concerns regarding your statement and explain how the official position
described therein is consistent with your profession’s fundamental
principle to first “do no harm.”
We are a group of concerned parents, most of whom have children
struggling with gender ideation and grappling with the largely unrestricted
social and medical options being presented to them in Canada. We believe
that no child has the necessary cognitive and psychosocial maturity to
provide informed consent to the use of off-label synthetic hormones and
surgical procedures, often referred to as “gender-affirming healthcare,”
that have irreversible and damaging effects on their health and fertility.
We also carefully follow the results of peer-reviewed research in this area,
which, to date, has NOT yielded strong evidence of the safety or efficacy
of gender-affirming medical treatments. Therefore, we work to increase
public awareness and pressure our social, medical and political
organizations to conduct themselves from an evidence-based perspective.
We have identified several areas of concern in your recent statement and
we address them herein. In summary, your statement contains
generalizations that are not supported by sound evidence; false statements
about the safety and efficacy of the off-label drugs you recommend for
children and adolescents; reference to your steadfast opposition to
safeguarding children and adolescents through proper regulatory
processes and networks; and finally, a strong disregard for age-appropriate
decision-making and consent to medical treatments and surgical
procedures that have irreversible and damaging effects, and which
increasing numbers of youth are living to regret.
Your statement first asserts that “transgender youth have higher rates of
mental health issues and suicidality because of the stigma attached to
their status. The mental health of these children and youth will be markedly
worse when denied care.” The fact is, however, that recent peer-reviewed
research, such as this 20-year Finnish study, does NOT show that gender
affirming healthcare improves the mental health outcomes of children and
adolescents. For example, and perhaps most importantly, this research
does NOT find decreased suicide rates in youth who have accessed
gender-affirming medical treatment.
Your statement further asserts that “the effects of puberty-blocking agents
are not irreversible; and once treatment stops, puberty goes forward.
Treatment allows the patient time to determine their options without
permanent effects.” This assertion is particularly disturbing for two
reasons: (1) it blatantly misleads readers about how puberty blockers are
actually used in trans-identified children and adolescents, and (2)
consequently, it evades the full truth about the actual impacts of these
off-label drugs. In regard to (1), your assertion is premised on cases where
puberty blockers are used for brief periods of time and then stopped so
that natural puberty can progress.
However, this is not how puberty
blockers are actually being used in the majority of trans-identified children
and adolescents. In reality, puberty blockers are most often followed by
cross-sex hormone treatment (up to 98% of the time) and these minors
never go through natural puberty. Further, the long-term effects of puberty
blockers when they are followed by cross-sex hormones are
well-documented and dire, as even the president of WPATH confirms in
this linked video and with this statement, “Every single child or adolescent
who was truly blocked at Tanner Stage 2 has never experienced orgasm, I
mean it’s really about zero.” The pituitary gland is actually rendered
indefinitely dormant with GnRH Analogues (Puberty Blockers), which is why
several countries, most recently England, have corrected their course and
banned their use for gender affirming healthcare. Medical associations owe
it to the public to provide COMPLETE and TRUTHFUL information, which
your statement does NOT do.
Your statement goes on to point out that “Bottom surgery in Canada is
already limited to patients over 18 years.” Once again, you assert a
half-truth that is misleading to readers when you state that “bottom surgery”
is limited, but you remain silent about bilateral mastectomies (“top
surgery”). The fact is that bilateral mastectomies ARE being performed
on patients UNDER 18 YEARS old in Canada. We know this first-hand
because it has happened to our own children, and we know that this
procedure is completely irreversible. Asserting half-truths and omitting
information is not conducive to maintaining the trust of the public.
In light of the recent release of the WPATH Files, we find the following part
of your statement to be an effort to escape the duty to be transparent that,
as a regulatory body for the entire province of Alberta, is crucial to the
AMA’s role and responsibility: “Requiring a private registry of physicians to
provide gender-affirming care has the feel of surveillance, to which we
object. It is an unnecessary bureaucratic process given the current
existence of effective referral processes and networks.” First, what you
refer to as “surveillance” is understood by the Albertans to whom you are
accountable as the transparency you are charged to uphold. Second, you
fail to explain that your referral process is based on the WPATH guidelines,
which have been largely discredited. The fact is that these guidelines, for
“gender-affirming healthcare,” are not evidence-based, but experimental.
A 2023 article in the prestigious British Medical Journal confirms this. As
parents, we are paying close attention to this, and we are asking that our
medical professionals do the same. Statements like the one you have just
made show us that you are NOT paying attention and that you are NOT
following the overwhelming and growing body of evidence.
When professional medical associations cease to be guided by
evidence-based research and principles, and cease to be open and honest
with the public, then the public– rightly and understandably– becomes
alarmed and will, in turn, support the intervention of governments and
ultimately the courts. While we do respect the doctor/patient relationship,
your lack of adherence to the evidence is a symptom of a problem to which
you, as a medical association, have contributed. Your statement is shining
evidence of this.
There is, however, one part of your statement with which we could not
agree more: “Children and youth have the right to the appropriate medical
care.” Children and adolescents DO have the right to safe, evidence-based,
non-experimental medical care that protects them from long-term harm
such as loss of sexual function and infertility. This right is enshrined in the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, children,
adolescents and their families ALSO have the right to provide informed
consent to drugs and surgical procedures that are recommended to them.
This requires doctors and medical associations to be informed and
evidence-based, transparent and accountable. Your statement shows a
shocking disregard for these responsibilities, which the AMA SHOULD hold
sacred. Full stop.
We strongly recommend that your organization cease to follow the
guidelines put forth by the heavily discredited WPATH, stop promoting
medical negligence and harm while operating from a non-evidence-based
perspective, and change course now as progressive European countries
including Sweden, Finland, England, Norway and France have already
done.
We ask that you explain your comments from an evidence-based
perspective. If you cannot, we must assume that they, along with your
official position, are ideologically driven, in which case we call for complete
retraction or substantial correction to the AMA’s original statement. Should
you fail to respond, we will understand that as further dismissal of the
parents, children and adolescents, and citizens to whom you are
responsible, and we will proceed accordingly.
In Support of Children and Families,
Our Duty Canad
This is big folks. The WPATH files show exactly how unscientific gender medicine is. It is a travesty that a ‘professional association’ could be so irresponsible. But see for yourself.
One video, sixteen minutes equals deep insight into how American society runs. (Hint: Most likely not for your benefit.)
I grow tired of hearing arch-conservatives rail on about the evils of regulation and how it stifles industry. People die because of deregulation and lax standards – but somehow the profit motive trumps all that human welfare shit, almost every time.
Why oh why do people still want to normalize the use of magic and illusion into the practice of medicine?
We’ve spent decades codifying and rooting out the bullshit practices and have steeled ourselves against ‘good common sense’ notions and looked where the evidence points us. There is no mystery to evidence based medicine it has been shown empirically to work. Contrast that with ‘alternative or integrative‘ or ‘whatever term the quacks are using now to sound legitimate and authoritative‘ which is not evidence based, not rigorously tested and not frakking effective. What is most saddening is that professionals who have been well-educated can fall into the woo-trap just as easy as the common bloke. The CBC reports on a quack siting here in my home town:
“An Edmonton doctor who recently won a major medical prize says the only way to bridge the divide between traditional medicine and alternative methods is to listen to the needs of patients.”
Oh FFS! Alternative Medicine … has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call “alternative medicine” that’s been proved to work? Medicine. “Bridging gaps” with quackery results in dead people. It is that simple.
“Dr. Vohra was recently awarded the 2013 Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine. At $250,000, it’s the largest prize of its kind in North America.”
Quack wins quackery prize. This just in, earth still orbiting the sun ONCE every 365 days. Let’s take a peek into history and dude behind the Dr.Rodgers Prize (many thanks to askepticrtn.com)
Dr. Hoffer’s obituary mentioned that he had won the Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2007. I never knew such a thing even existed. It does though.
Dr. Rogers is another individual who appears to have dedicated his life to helping people but probably did just the opposite. He worked in family practice for over 30 years and was a clinical instructor at the University of British Columbia. He founded the Thera Wellness Centre in 1977, a not for profit organization devoted to complementary and alternative practices in medicine. Later he created The Centre for Integrated Therapy which evolved into Centre for Integrated Healing in the late 1990′s which later evolved into Inspire Health. A quick review of Inspire Health’s website reveals it is an organization that promotes all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense as benefiting cancer patients — from Reiki to therapeutic touch to acupuncture.
According to the Dr. Roger’s Prize website, Dr. Rogers was appointed to the Order of British Columbia, the province’s highest honour, for his pioneering work in alternative and complementary cancer care. In other words, BC awarded him the provinces highest honor for selling worthless cures to desperate cancer victims. Not something that immediately comes to mind as worthy of an award, but then again, I have never won the Order of British Columbia, so I am certainly no expert on what it takes to win a medal. I do know there was a time when, good intentions notwithstanding, we threw snake oil salesmen in jail. Now we give them the Order of British Columbia.
The Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine was established in recognition of Dr. Rogers contribution to complimentary and alternative medicine and his tireless efforts to gain widespread recognition for – and acceptance of – complementary and alternative cancer treatments in this country.
I don’t know what alternative universe the folks at the Dr. Rogers Prize are living in, but back here on planet earth we instinctively know that recognition and acceptance of medical practices shouldn’t come from phony awards awards funded by those pursuing an agenda. It comes from sound scientific evidence that the health practices or modalities being promoted actually work.
Regardless of how well intentioned or tireless Dr. Rogers efforts (and I don’t doubt either), they amount to little more than the promotion and sale of snake oil to some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Now in his eighties and suffering from Alzheimer’s, it is sad to reflect on a another man who desperately wanted to help but probably did just the opposite.
Ah, it must feel good to win the snake-oil award for selling cures to desperate people, it must be so gratifying on many levels; how can profiting from the misery of others be anything but?
“Dr. Vohra is the founding director of Complementary and Alternative Research and Education (CARE) at the University of Alberta, the first academic pediatric integrative medicine program in Canada.”
Write down the name and avoid this person at all costs because this sort of medical mendacity gets you dead and impoverishes your family.
“For the sake of her patients, she set about becoming fluent in alternative treatments.”
What a nice way of saying – has stopped listening to Reason and embraced all the magical woo available to the detriment of her patients. Awesome!
“Now she has credibility in both worlds – as a leader in both conventional and complementary and alternative medicine – […]”
Oh LOLfovever. The-fuck-you-don’t get credibility for embracing woo. You don’t get medical credibility for embracing non-evidence based medical practices. Not now, not ever, young padaquack. All you should rightly receive is scorn and derision for making the decision to abandon the scientific method and starting to peddle woo.
“She says studies indicate that 70 per cent of Canadians use complementary therapies, and a significant percentage of them mix traditional and non-traditional remedies without knowing what impact one will have on another.”
Could I get Argumentum ad populum, with a side citation-fucking-needed?! Ring-Ring!! Rationality is calling, Dr. Vohra; and it would, most desperately, like you to return to the fold.
Go to Quackwatch.org for more information on “alternative and integrative” therapies and the harm it causes people.
*Update* – Mother faces criminal charges as she let her son die of a strep infection –
Criminal charges are pending against a Calgary mother who police allege relied on holistic treatments instead of getting medical help for her seven-year-old son’s strep infection. Police allege the mother did not take the boy for treatment, giving him holistic remedies instead.
“The treatment rendered at home was homeopathic in nature. This would include herbal remedies. The mother refused to take the child to a medical professional. No excuse given — just her belief system,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Cavilla.
The boy was bedridden for 10 days prior to his death, police allege.
My defence rests. :(
Chiropractors it is your term to take the sauce and see that the woo you peddle is twaddle and dangerous to people.
Ah homeopathy, how we’ve missed you here at DWR. It has been at least a year since we excoriated your incredulous claims with the biting scourge of rationality, but let’s refresh our memories and let Cool Hard Logic, with his most apropos music selection, remind us how bugfraking nutz Homeopathy is.
Hurrah, Bad Science Watch is here!
It is about time Canada had its own team of people dedicated to showing the absolute nuttery that goes on under the guise of homeopathy, riki, acupuncture and the rest of the quackery that goes on up here. Go to their blog, click on there advertising, heck donate to them and help them in their battle against the dishonest woo-peddlers that are infesting our society.
The first bastion of bullshite they are tackling are the so called “nosodes vaccines” which like the rest of the shit and sugar water homeopathic foolishness are unproven snake-oil remedies that can really hurt the people taking them and the people around them. From the BSW website:
Today, the new Canadian science advocacy group Bad Science Watch announced plans to convince Health Canada to de-register homeopathic health products that are offered as unproven replacements for childhood vaccinations. This project will combat the anti-vaccine camps within homeopathy that offer these so-called “nosodes”; the sale of which directly contradicts Health Canada’s own efforts to promote childhood vaccinations.
Nosodes are ultra-dilute homeopathic remedies prepared using diseased tissue, such as blood, pus, and saliva, that are based on the unsupportable “like-cures-like” hypothesis where you give someone a very low dose of the offending substance to then cure or prevent the disease in question.
Homeopaths in Canada are offering these nosodes for a variety of childhood diseases, like pertussis, or whooping cough, a deadly disease that is currently afflicting more Canadian children, mostly infants, than it has in the past 50 years. The anti-vaccine messages spread by homeopaths have caused parents to needlessly question the usefulness and safety of vaccines and as a result the level of vaccination in Canadian communities has dropped to as low as 62%. A level of 80% or higher is needed to have proper protection from pertussis in the community.
62%? Frak me, people. You need to vaccinate with real vaccines not this froopy-doopy shite that doesn’t work. You are hurting yourself and the people around you. BSW is starting large, I hope they can get the ball rolling on defenstrating this quackery ASAP.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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