No studies show gender affirming care improves quality of life
Helen Joyce said:
“I'd like to see it treated like any other form of medicine, that people show us decent studies that show that this improves quality of life, because none have.”
Calling for evidence-based medicine sounds entirely reasonable, and if someone asserts that no studies exist showing benefit, a viewer without specialist knowledge has no immediate way to contradict that.
The evidence exists, and the claim that none does is simply false. Large cohort studies from Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States have found that gender-affirming hormone therapy is associated with improved mental health, reduced depression, and lower rates of suicidality in adults, and the Endocrine Society's clinical guidelines are built on a systematic review of exactly that literature. It is true that, as in most areas of medicine, the evidence base is not perfect and research continues: that is not the same as an absence of evidence, and no other medical treatment is held to a standard where any limitation is read as proof that nothing works. When that false standard is applied only here, the people who pay for it are adults in genuine need of care, waiting longer, or being refused altogether, on the basis of a claim that does not survive contact with the published record.
What I said at the time:
“I've been a doctor for 33 years and in the whole of that time I've never known a medical condition or a medical treatment being debated by mathematicians and statisticians saying it shouldn't be available.”
Adult trans people seeking hormone therapy who may be denied care or face increased stigma if the false claim that there is no supporting evidence becomes accepted.