[f154hfds]

What did transgender people do before the treatments and therapies? How did they live in their original state all their lives without our medical interventions? Do we know that the treatments help in the sense that treated people commit suicide less than untreated people before the treatments were available?

[mftrhu]

> What did transgender people do before the treatments and therapies? How did they live in their original state all their lives without our medical interventions?

What did diabetics do before treatment and therapies? People with asthma, myopia, or really any other health issue? What does it matter?

> Do we know that the treatments help in the sense that treated people commit suicide less than untreated people before the treatments were available?

Why do we need to know that? What's the point of it? We don't evaluate effectiveness of any treatment by comparing current data with likely non-existent, pre-treatment (read: more than a century old, in this case) data.

[f154hfds]

My statement above is asking how to test whether the treatments are contributing to a social contagion effect. If they are, we can't test treatment vs. no treatment at a snapshot in time because the very existence of the treatment adds to the contagion effect which in turn produces suicides in treated individuals! To make sure social contagion is not the bigger factor we want to look at how these disorders manifested prior to the existence of the treatment and compare that to the effect of the treatment now.