Child given drugs to delay onset of puberty

[Sailor Steve]

To drive on a public street is a priveledge, because to do so without proper permission endangers others. To threaten another person with a weapon is neither a right nor a priveledge, because people have the right to be secure in their homes and lives. To speak my mind is a right, whether some authority denies it or not.

Rights are not priveledges, and priveledges are not rights. We relinquish certain rights in certain areas for the common good. That doesn't make them priveledges.

[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.

[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?

[tater]

There are 4 types of intersex if I remember correctly (I read the stuff to my wife on a long distance drive when she was studying for her Urology boards). I have a reasonable understanding of it. It is not just insensitivity to testosterone. There are both hormonal, and genetic causes for the various types. My wife is in the "wait for them to grow up" camp, medically, though she doesn't see many peds patients (there are peds urologists at the U who see more, and she doesn't like to treat patients as guinea pigs).

Some might well be better served with early medical treatment, OTOH, if you were surgically made a girl because you had intersex with micropenis, etc, and later you would prefer to be male, you are screwed. Hence delay as the best option in most cases—the most well-meaning parents are not the person with the disorder, and can make a mistake.

A quick look at wiki shows there are studies using MRIs on transgenders, and that the physical brain difference work was equivocal since they didn't check for hormone use in subjects. In terms of other mental illness, you can treat depression, etc, empirically, and it will get better. That is a sort of physical test. If it were possible to treat transgenders with a drug such that the aberrant feelings went away... you'd likely have people complaining that it was not aberrant and should not be treated.

BTW, schizophrenia has no really successful treatment. Drugs work well for some, for some period of time, but it's pretty much a crap shoot, and the side effects are terrible. It's only a lucky few who can have it as a treatable, chronic disorder, sadly (my brother was schizophrenic, I know a little about that, too).

Bottom line is that I'm fine with delaying treatment until they are adults, and if they can temporize it by delaying puberty without adverse effects, that's fine as well. It's personal enough that the patient should decide, not the parents if at all possible.