Gender affirming care denies long-term safety data
Robby Starbuck said:
“A medical model that denies long term safety data”
The call for long-term data before treating children sounds like responsible medicine, and the suggestion that advocates are actively denying or suppressing such data implies a cover-up that would concern any reasonable person.
Nobody in this field is denying the limits of long-term data: the clinicians doing this work are the ones calling loudest for more research, and that is what an honest scientific conversation looks like. Limited evidence is not the same as evidence of harm, and the two things are routinely conflated in a way that sounds like caution but functions as obstruction. What we do have runs to several decades: the Dutch protocol studies, multiple systematic reviews, and consistent findings that affirming care improves mental health outcomes for trans young people. Telling families that their child's doctors are concealing dangers does not protect anyone; it steers people away from clinicians who are acting carefully and in good faith on the best evidence currently available.
Trans young people and their families who are told that the doctors caring for them are concealing dangers, eroding trust in clinicians who are acting in good faith on the best available evidence.