by Robert Burggraaf, MBA, Data Engineer
This year, legislatures in the state of Utah have been attempting to pass a bill that would save children who suffer with gender dysphoria from permanently damaging their bodies for the rest of their lives. The bill would prohibit sex reassignment surgeries and the use of cross-sex hormones, and would halt the use of puberty blockers. The governor and other lawmakers have shown opposition to this type of protection for the children of Utah.
Why would they support the injury of hundreds of Utah children? Maybe because those who want to hide the harms being done are misrepresenting the data when they present it to lawmakers. Hopefully I can clearly demonstrate the truth, so as to help those who can’t help themselves – the children of Utah.
I work in the collection and clear representation of facts and truth in my job every day as a data engineer. I am also a member of the LGBT community and have experienced issues with being transgender all my life. I understand intimately the suffering that goes on with gender dysphoria, and for several years I have been researching medical studies in search of the truth that could help those who suffer as I have.
There is a very important fact that needs to be understood when trying to understand children that experience gender dysphoria. Dysphoria is not an immutable condition like so many in the LGBT community would want you to believe. It is a state of mind that if allowed to run its course, without it being affirmed, will go away in 70% of children by the time that they become adults. This was demonstrated in a 2016 study published in the International Review of Psychiatry.
In the state of Utah for the year 2019, there were an estimated value of 5,713 children that experienced gender dysphoria. Of that amount, it is projected that 3,999 will desist, or grow out of it by adulthood, as seen in the chart below. This is just in the state of Utah.
Gender Dysphoria is not something that can be discovered or proven to be true by the diagnosis of a physician. The sole premise of whether you have it is based upon a self-diagnosis from the patient. Doctors cannot run a blood test or some other biological test to tell a patient that they have gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is not a physical condition.
Many doctors would have you believe that it is an immutable condition, or that once you have it you will always have it. But the data proves those doctors wrong. Not only do some children grow out of it, but a large majority grow out of it. Many doctors treat children with gender dysphoria like it is a lifelong condition, when for many, it is not.
Because it is not a biological condition that can be proven in a lab test. Doctors have no way of knowing if the distress that the child is feeling is one that will persist into adulthood or not. There is no way to know. It is true that some medical treatments have proven to relieve some of the anxiety surrounding gender dysphoria. But these treatments carry with them a tremendous cost for the child in their future.
Doctors may quote different studies to justify their actions, but the real truth comes out in the consent form that they ask patients to sign before treatment. The first thing that patients are warned about is, quoting from an actual consent form, “Loss of fertility… Even after stopping hormone therapy.”
So, let’s look at this from the perspective of the established data that already exists. A child shows up in a doctor’s office stating that they feel distress from the sex that they were assigned at birth. The doctor knows that there is not a biological way to prove that the child should be a different sex, yet the doctor wants to try and help the child with the distress they are feeling. What treatment should be given?
They should be thinking about the 70% of the children that experience these feelings grow out of them. How can they tell if the child in front of them is one of the 30% or the 70%? There is absolutely no way to tell. There are no tests that they can run that would determine this. Any medical treatment that they would prescribe, including hormone blockers, could bring about serious consequences. Because of all of the unknown factors, handing a child a prescription for a given medical treatment is really like handing the child a revolver with only one or two bullets in it and saying, “give it a shot. See if pulling the trigger will help you. Because there is no way for me to know.”
Why are parents not outraged at this type of medical treatment? Why are lawmakers not standing united to outlaw this type of medical guesswork? Why does it take a Data Engineer to point out the very data that doctors should be using in their decisions, but they are not?
Please stand up and do something to prohibit this dangerous medical Russian Roulette with the children of Utah.
Guest Columnist Robert Burggraaf (MBA, Data Engineer) can be reached via support@partnersforethicalcare.com.