2 years ago

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The Trans Train Part 4: Puberty Blockers, Complications and Consent
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In part 4 of the Swedish Trans Train Documentary Series, the story of Leo is told. Leo was a biologically female child who experienced gender dysphoria and was socially transitioned to a boy. Leo was started on Puberty Blockers and maintained on it for years without adequate monitoring of the known complication of bone density loss and pathologic fractures.

The episode explores how gender clinics may fail to inform parents and patients of the risks of hormonal intervention and how the system is not adequately tracking complications and adjusting policies when complications arise - with cases and complications falling into the gaps between the psychology, endocrinology and surgical clinics and the healthcare system more broadly.

See the original source here: https://www.svtplay.se/video/33313874/uppdrag-granskning/uppdrag-granskning-transbarnen
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In May of 2021 Sweden announced a change of their policy regarding the medical and surgical transition of children. The change came in the wake of several bombshell documentaries which explored the issue of medicalization of children experiencing gender dysphoria in Sweden and Europe.

The controversial documentary series examined the evidence base of the protocols, the ethics of treating children who cannot consent and the degree of oversight and accountability that clinics held for their patients.

The english speaking world isn't aware of much of what the documentaries uncovered because of the language barrier, as the films are mostly in Swedish. English captions have been made available and for the first time the films are presented here with english voiceover to make them more accessible.
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This transition protocol for children based on "The Dutch Study" had previously been used by clinics in Sweden since around 2014 to start children on puberty blockers leading to cross-sex hormones and surgery.

The "Dutch Study" was originally designed with strict criteria for inclusion which were not being applied to the exploding population of mostly young women who were starting to seek treatment for dysphoria. As such, most patients being put on this "trans train" of affirmation and medicalization were a different population group than those studied in the original Dutch protocol.

As a result, the issues of regret and detransition began to be come more common as people for whom the Dutch Protocol was not designed for started to see that medical and surgical transition did not solve their issues.

When these stories started to leak out, the Swedish investigative journalists at "Mission: Investigate" started talking with regretters and detransitioners and approached the hospitals and clinics who were treating young people at the time to figure out what was going on. Over the next several years subsequent episodes of Mission: Investigate explored other aspects of the modern discourse about the medical treatment of gender dysphoria. The revelations of this series were eventually led to the national health system in Sweden reviewing their protocols and issuing an official policy halting the implementation of the Dutch protocol in treating children with gender dysphoria.

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