Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by esarbe 1916 days ago
I'm sorry to contradict you. We currently do not know what effect puberty blockers have. There's not enough research.

It's also not true that there are no ill effects in brain developments; studies with animals have shown some concerning results with regards to cognitive functions.

So, it would be more honest to say; "Actually, we don't know. This has not been studied enough."

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/20/...
1 comments
vertex-four 1916 days ago
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01053 (“the findings suggest that GnRH treated CPP girls do not differ in their cognitive functioning, behavioural, and social problems from the same age peers”, albeit findings on emotional regulation and reactivity are inconclusive - which is not the same thing as bad, just their experiment design didn’t give them a clear answer).

DOI 10.10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.03.007

We have no strong evidence that it is unsafe in humans, and a bunch of evidence that it is safe.

The Economist is a weird source for a medical research discussion.

link
esarbe 1916 days ago
Hey, thanks for the link! I'm not sure that the article is too relevant though, since it is about the effects of puberty blocker in treatment of precocious puberty.

Which brings us to the reason why I linked to the Economist article; it gives a pretty good overview about the various concerns of various groups and gives some rudimentary overview about the current understanding. It's pretty hard for laypersons to really understand the jargon in all these papers and it's easy to overlook subtle but important details.

I think my point still stands; we don't know enough yet. We need more research.

link
vertex-four 1916 days ago
The second article was about trans kids.

Aside from that, sure. I’m up for more research (that doesn’t harm trans kids - smarter people than I know experiment designs which don’t result in people receiving subpar treatment for years on end). More research on trans people is welcome, there’s fuck-all of it out there, and now the meantime, we must do our best to use what we do know to help people.

link
esarbe 1916 days ago
> More research on trans people is welcome, there’s fuck-all of it out there, and now the meantime, we must do our best to use what we do know to help people.

I think we can agree on that.

link
tekknik 1916 days ago
From the wikipedia:

“Research on the long term effects on brain development is limited.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker

link