Sex-Change Hormones at Age 11? ‘There Are No Ill Consequences,’ Says Spack

Posted on | December 11, 2011 | 12 Comments

The Children’s Hospital Gender Management Services Clinic can, using hormone therapies, halt puberty in transgender children, blocking the development of secondary sexual characteristics — a beard, say, or breasts — that can make the eventual transition to the other gender more difficult, painful, and costly.
Founded in 2007 by endocrinologist Norman Spack and urologist David Diamond, the clinic — known as GeMS and modeled on a Dutch program — is the first pediatric academic program in the Western Hemisphere that evaluates and treats pubescent transgenders. A handful of other pediatric centers in the United States are developing similar programs, some started by former staffers at GeMS.
It was in that clinic, under Spack’s care, that Nicole and her family finally began to have hope for her future. . . .

(“Nicole,” neé Wyatt, who has a twin brother.)

“I have always known I was a girl,’’ says Nicole, now 14. “I think what I’m aiming for is to undergo surgery to get a physical female body that matches up to my image of myself.’’ . . .
When the twins were in the first grade, their parents found a therapist for Wyatt, who was starting to act out. In the third grade, before the GeMS Clinic was even open, Kelly heard about Dr. Spack and made an appointment with him. . . .
Nicole and her parents filed a complaint with the Maine Humans Right Commission over her right to use the girls bathroom. The commission found that she had been discriminated against and, along with the Maines family, filed a lawsuit against the Orono School District. The suit is pending in Penobscot County Superior Court, and the Maines family is represented by lawyers from the Gay & Lesbian Advocates. . . .

(Bathroom rights for transgender sixth-graders? Oh, joy! More business for the trial lawyers!)

[Dr. Spack] believes it is crucial to intervene with such children before adolescent changes begin in earnest. . . .
He adds: “We can do wonders if we can get them early.’’ . . .
“The drugs have a great track record; we already know that these kids do fine,’’ says Spack. “There are no ill consequences.”

(Hat-tip: Da Tech Guy.) Excuse my skepticism here. Maybe I’ve read too much dystopian fiction — Frankenstein, Flowers for Algernon, etc. — about the unintended and tragic consequences of Science Gone Wrong.

It was once considered sophisticated to have a wary attitude toward the claims made on behalf of Scientific Progress, but that sort of skepticism seems to have gone out of style. Once the fashionable experts in any field reach a “consensus” nowadays, everyone starts screaming that The Science Is Settled and anyone who continues to express doubt is labelled “anti-science” and ostracized from polite society.

Suppression of dissent wasn’t part of the scientific method as I was taught it, back in the Dark Ages, but I guess these enlightened experts like Dr. Norman Spack and his colleagues know everything about the diagnosis and treatment of “pubescent transgenders,” and everyone may safely ignore the old-fashioned skeptics.

Your skepticism, of course, will be diagnosed as a “phobia” — perhaps pedotransphobia or transpedophobia — and there will be political lobbying groups organized to clamor for legislation to safeguard the “rights” of these experimental specimens against “discrimination” by hateful bigoted transpedophobes like you.

Clever cable network executives are probably already working on a reality TV series, and “Nicole” will likely defray the costs of surgery by landing a book deal for her memoirs: I Was a Pre-Teen Shemale.

Category: Science, Sex

Comments

12 Responses to “Sex-Change Hormones at Age 11? ‘There Are No Ill Consequences,’ Says Spack”

Adjoran
December 11th, 2011 @ 9:03 pm

Not to worry – ObamaCare will pay for it all. They’ll just scratch the heart catheterization for Uncle Bob, who’s over 50 and used to smoke anyway, and give Grandma a hot water bottle and a prescription for pain killers instead of a costly stay in the ICU.

All is well, move along, nothing to see here, Obama will take care of everything.
Christy Waters
December 11th, 2011 @ 9:43 pm

Never trust a guy named Spack.
Cube
December 11th, 2011 @ 10:13 pm

“No ill consequences” for who? The arrogant fools who can feel better about themselves for “helping the less fortunate” while making lots of money off the insurance for this “treatment” or the young people whose lives are royally screwed up?

I realize this is a subject that at times does not have simple answers. But Stacy’s absolutely right to be more than a little skeptical of this approach which fits entirely too neatly into an agenda that lightly discards traditional norms in favor of current fads. Where is the accountability when this fad is over and those involved in pushing it whisper “never mind” and move on to the next thing? Then who will help those who were damaged by it pick up the pieces of their lives?

If you want to see more clearly what’s wrong here, imagine that instead of trendy leftists on the cutting edge the advocates were a conservative traditional religious organization and everything else was the same. How would the idea be received then?
Adjoran
December 11th, 2011 @ 10:28 pm

Well, it would be a dandy name for a house painter.
Zilla of the Resistance
December 11th, 2011 @ 10:29 pm

What could possibly go wrong? (sarc)
Messing with hormones while the body is still developing can indeed have bad consequences I seem to recall a study about young teens developing all kinds of problems from taking ‘the pill’. I don’t see how giving a kid drugs to render him or her a genderless eunich will be all that great a help in anything but screwing them up.
I can understand the bathroom thing, a boy dressed as a girl in the boy’s bathroom is bound to be a prime target for beating and swirlies and worse, in the girls’ bathroom he might just freak people out but nothing bad is likely to happen to shim.
Joe
December 11th, 2011 @ 11:06 pm

This is some scary shit.

There are kids who are straddling the sexes, hermaphrodites who have to choose which sex is the closest and best fit. Rare but it happens. That is a completely legitimate medical condition.

Then there is something like this. Complete and utter crap. Sorry. In medicine the first rule is do no harm.
Blake
December 11th, 2011 @ 11:43 pm

Until these people can get their chromosomes changed, this is nothing more than complicated voluntary plastic surgery.
ThePaganTemple
December 12th, 2011 @ 10:32 am

Its wrong to do it to hermaphrodites too as far as I’m concerned. They are what they are just like everybody else, for a reason. But at least you can make somewhat of a legitimate case for them. I’d like to see all these damn people conveniently “disappear”, if you catch my drift, before they do permanent damage and ruin kid’s lives. A hint, it don’t grow back.
Bob Belvedere
December 12th, 2011 @ 11:23 am

Ah! What we see with these ‘doctors’ are the successors of Mengele and Freeman.
Bob Belvedere
December 12th, 2011 @ 11:25 am

Individuals don’t matter to the Leftist; only the executions of their theories. Hey, you gotta break some eggs….
Cube
December 12th, 2011 @ 8:32 pm

I’m well aware that individuals are not important to those who Know Better Than You. Keying off a Thomas Sowell piece a few years ago, I wish there was a way to make these “smart people” pay a high price themselves for being so disastrously wrong instead of leaving the pieces for parents (who may have been cut out of the decision making) or friends to pick up (if that’s even possible). That would at least give them incentive to know what they’re talking about before they open their yap.
HdP
December 12th, 2011 @ 9:09 pm

Changing Nicole’s genotype would not change her situation here, since the sex genes have their effect very early in development. Hormone therapies, on the other hand, will not only change her appearance, but will also have psychological consequences. This is well tested (much more than the article would make you believe), the really ‘interesting’ thing here is that she has an ‘identical’ twin who develops differently.