Norway: stop to sex reassignment therapies in minors

Last week, the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board announced that it would review its current guidelines regarding so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors, because it no longer considers them to be evidence-based. The council also acknowledged that the growing number of adolescent girls who identify as boys after puberty remains understudied.

Under the proposed updated guidelines, the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transition-related surgeries would be limited to research settings and no longer provided in clinical settings. Norway joins Finland, Sweden and the UK in introducing greater child protection. In the United States, eight states have so far banned affirmative care for children under 18, and Tennessee was the latest to pass such legislation.

It is good that more and more professional organizations are recognizing the experimental nature of this approach in children. An existing body of research demonstrates that most children with gender dysphoria feel comfortable in their bodies after puberty, and those who wish to make a sudden transition after puberty may experience social contagion. These studies were rejected because they do not fit the preferred narrative of woke activists.

This narrative, however, continues to fall apart. A recent article published in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior talks about how the placebo effect has not been adequately taken into account in the interpretation of the new results in support of transition in children. While the term "placebo effect" commonly refers to a patient's response to an ineffective intervention, it can also describe the beneficial psychological and physical effects associated with undergoing a treatment, as opposed to the treatment itself.

For example, participation in a study often gives the patient extra care and an expectation that their condition (eg, gender dysphoria) will improve. While this may be beneficial in a treatment setting, the researchers don't want the study results to be confusing, because the purpose of the research is to objectively determine whether or not a treatment works. This is especially important when evaluating interventions that may have implications for a young person's fertility, future sexual functioning, and long-term health.

So even Norway divides itself from the Woke narrative that rages on many media and US states and protects minors by preventing them from undergoing sex reassignment therapy before they truly understand their sexual identity. A step forward in the protection of young people.

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The article Norway: stop to sex reassignment therapies in minors comes from Scenari Economici .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/norvegia-stop-alle-terapie-per-il-cambio-del-sesso-nei-minori/ on Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:15:51 +0000.