Child given drugs to delay onset of puberty

[magicstix]

Originally Posted by tater

As I said, waiting til they are adult to decide since this is a psych issue if not intersex. The puberty delay is just that. Delaying puberty until they are of legal majority to decide themselves.

The trouble is that it can have adverse effects long term. <shrug>

If the parents have the right to control medical care for children, then it is the parents' decision alone and anyone in favor of that for other procedures (abortion requiring parents' decision, for example) should be happy.

When I say "medical," I mean physiological, not just mental. Ie: there needs to be a physical test to show it (hormone imbalance, brain scan, etc).

My concern is that the kid doesn't make the wrong decision before they know better, nothing more. There is some data apparently that shows a % get over those feelings. This is unsurprising given the hormonal blitz in puberty. If he is physically a boy, and the testosterone level spikes, it might well just go away in some % of those affected.

I have no "ick" factor.

You seem to show a strong misunderstanding of the condition this child is suffering from. "Intersex" is a condition in which the child has physically ambiguous gender, generally stemming from a congenital insensitivity to testosterone. "Transgendered" is a condition in which the child has a strong aversion to their physical gender. The cause is poorly understood, but the biology isn't. However the only sure test for transgenderism is examining the brain at autopsy. I assume requiring that amount of "proof" would be too extreme even for you.

There are any number of "mental" conditions as you put it that cannot be tested for using a physiological test. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and ADHD to name a few. There is no blood test, MRI, whatever, that can detect these very real conditions. All have poorly understood geneses, all have very real and very successful physical treatments, generally using medication, though in some extremes using surgery.

The troubling thing with this thread is there is a lot of "these parents are monsters because they didn't do what I would do" when the parents are following the advice of a trained medical physician.

My question for these people is if taking the child to the doctor and following his/her treatment recommendations that are endorsed and specified by the larger medical community is not what they would do in this case, then what *would* they do? Beat it out of the child? Electroshock? Bible camp?