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Metastatic Leftism
Keeping thousands of doctors across the country up to date on the latest science and research is not easy. Most of us receive various medical journals each month, and they’re generally a good source of information. For this to be helpful, however, the journals and their content must be trusted. For example, if a journal was owned by Pfizer, the articles in that journal about Pfizer drugs might be questioned, and thus, less valuable. Which is why these journals go to great pains to maintain and demonstrate their impartial, objective viewpoints. Otherwise, why read them?
During the Clinton administration, JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) ran an article about a “research study” which supposedly demonstrated that a majority of American youth do not view oral sex to be real sex, which therefore supposedly demonstrated that when Bill Clinton famously said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski,” he was not directly lying. Now, the American Medical Association is not a great measure of the viewpoint of American physicians (I don’t belong to it – last I heard less than 6% of American physicians did belong to it – long story why – that’s another post…), but still, they were attempting to use their influence to shape public opinion. These are dangerous waters. They were willing to risk making themselves look silly, and lose the reputation they had built up over the course of decades, simply to provide temporary cover for a favored politician. I made a mental note to take what I read in JAMA with a grain of salt. And then this week, I receive this medical journal in the mail:
This journal has not one, but two articles about transgender medicine. One is presented in a similar format to the typical diagnosis and treatment articles that you might read in a medical journal. The other is presented as an editorial. The writing styles and content are similar.
Check out the words used in the editorial: Care, committed, advocacy, biologic sex, inclusive, diverse, gender identity, unique, and continuity. What makes that list even more remarkable is that all of those words are found in the first sentence of the editorial. That is remarkable. It reads like satire. The Babylon Bee could post this article with no alterations.
The “science-based” article states that there are over 1.5 million Americans who identify as transgender. For comparison, there are about 1.2 million Americans who identify as Presbyterian. I’ve been practicing medicine for over 20 years. I’ve treated lots of Presbyterians, but I’ve never encountered a transgender patient. I’m not sure what to make of their stats, but Miss Lewinsky cautions me to take them with a grain of salt.
The article helpfully provides some definitions:
“Transgender describes persons whose experienced or expressed gender differs from their sex assigned at birth.”
Wow. Ok, so their experienced gender means, I guess, how they feel about themselves today. Or something. Man, their definitions need definitions. And I love the phrase, “sex assigned at birth.” Assigned by who? On what basis might their sex have been “assigned?” I wonder if that basis for their “sex assignment” might be relevant to the topic of this article? They don’t say. That’s a lot of very careful, awkward phrasing with no possible purpose except to avoid reality.
Avoiding reality is generally unhelpful in scientific articles.
Another definition:
“Gender dysphoria describes distress or problems functioning that may be experienced by transgender and gender-diverse persons; this term should be used to describe distressing symptoms rather than to pathologize.”
Ok, first, you can’t put a phrase like “gender-diverse person” into a definition without defining it. I have no idea what one of those is. The mind boggles. Please help me with that.
Next, a phrase I’ve never seen in a medical journal: “this term should be used to describe distressing symptoms rather than to pathologize.” I was previously unaware that the word “pathology” could be used as a verb. Pathology essentially means disease. I think they’re saying that when you “pathologize” something that you’re describing it as a disease. And I think their point is that we shouldn’t do that to common, normal, healthy behaviors, like transgenderism.
Just as a reminder, this article was written by physicians, in a scientific journal. Or apparently, as Andrew Klavan would say, a former scientific journal.
I won’t review the entire article. I have better things to do than write silliness like that, and you have better things to do than read it.
The modern left is beyond satire.
And now, their experienced dysphoria has pathologized my beloved medical journals. It’s tragic. It really is.
So now, I’m not even allowed to study medical research without having Democrat talking points shoved down my throat. It’s everywhere. Like a metastatic cancer.
With a similar impact on the host.
Published in General
Keep hookin’ and jabbin’, Doc.
The American Bar Association went down this path many years ago, at least forty. It was an organ of the left when I became a lawyer in 1980.
The great Bill Whittle (who is white) defines “White Privilege” as “The privilege of not having anyone to blame for my failures.”
In that way, I guess conservatives have “privilege,” too: “The privilege of not being allowed to live in fantasy-land.” A land where men can be women and money grows on trees.
For a good portion of my life, I’ve lived in “interesting” neighborhoods, with higher percentages of gay and alt-lifestyle folks. I’ve known several people who were talking up the transgender option, telling everyone about how they were “in transition,” or “saving up for their surgery.” Only a few have even started hormone treatments, and only two or three have gone through the surgery. This is in a population that is very susceptible to that mindset, too.
Basically, there’s a tendency for some people to claim transgender status to be “edgy” for their friends, even if they’re never going to go through actual surgery.
In 2016, there were supposedly just over 3,000 transgender surgeries in the US, and that’s only after a sharp increase in the last few years. There can’t be more than 10,000 to 15,000 total in the US, since gender reassignment started in the 1960s. There could be as many as 50,000 worldwide. Maybe.
I’ve always had a significant percentage of gay patients in my practice. I guess I’m easy to talk to, and I’ve always enjoyed caring for my gay friends and neighbors.
Again, though, I’ve never encountered a transsexual.
As you note, I think that phrase is an indication that the publication is no longer a scientific journal.
I had to suspend reading for a moment once I saw the cover picture. I knew I’d seen that expression before. It’s the same expression Nina, Dick Solomon’s purported secretarial assistant in Third Rock From the Sun, had on her face every time Dick started speaking and showing that he really was an earth-visiting alien from outer space.
“The party told You to reject the evidence of Yer eyes and ears. It was Their final, most essential command.”
“Write a wise saying and Yer name will live forever.” Anonymous.
Trans may be less common than gay, but the demand for treatment of the abnormal as normal is identical, no different from the 1973 normalization of homosexuality in the DSM. Complete with language guidelines. You shouldn’t be surprised.
What an awesome quote!
Agreed. I also think there is Asian privilege. The Confucian culture seems to reject victim status even when Communists take everything away from you and you forced to flee to America. Not incidentally, the minority group that doesn’t think of themselves as victims do very well.
Life in the Fully Politicized Society
I wrote that post in 2014, and the process of full politicization…of everything from sports to science…has advanced much further in the intervening four years.
That book by Sebastian Haffner sounded like one I’d want to read. So I looked closer and then realized I had already read it a few years ago (listened to it on audio).
I’m glad you made reference to it.
I have this problem is that i have children, and the transtrender problem is purely a social contagion built upon the unfalsiable rhetoric of the far left, and spread through online social networks and schools. The further problem is that this is mostly a girl problem, and I have a daughter.
I desperately require a safe port in this storm for my kids.
I don’t wish ill on someone who genuinely has gender dysphoria, but the social/political contagion is a real problem
The evidence for the politicization of science continues and grows: the dangers of GMOs, climate change, and transgenders. It’s deeply disturbing, but what is especially egregious is the corruption of our children. I don’t know if we will ever come back from that damage.
I think it is horrific that transactivism has led to medical action against children–CHILDREN! The idea that adults choose to inject hormones into kids and tell they are what they aren’t is cruel and dangerous and completely immoral. The medical and psychiatric professions should be particularly ashamed of themselves. I am sure past generations would judge this fad as barbaric. I suspect future generations will too.
When you read about past odd medical decisions, it is amazing to realize that smart people thought those were good ideas. There were cases of botched circumcisions where the medical practice was to “just pretend he’s a girl“. Those all turned out horribly. It is such conceit to think our understanding of brain/psychology and hormonal chemistry is sufficient to outsmart nature. If these people are so damn smart, how come nobody has invented a workable diet pill?
Are they trying to distinguish distressing symptoms as pathological or psychological? That may be what they are getting at, but just a guess…..I wonder if they could research if there is more psychological distress among transgenders and this is how you would recognize it.
The fact that you have never seen or treated a transgender person is interesting, because I wonder what you would do differently? If they have bronchitis, or a broken toe, wouldn’t it be the same? That’s why it makes me think all this sensitivity stuff is because you are being told they are different, not just sexually, but psychologically.
Shheesshhh – Good thing there are poems to read on page 682!
JAMA was one paradigm for US medical journals. Around 1900, the AMA changed its Code of Ethics to permit a profitable accommodation with the rising drug industry. At the turn of the 20th century, JAMA was a money pit for the AMA (its advertising revenue of under $14,000/year failed to offset the $25,000/year it cost to publish) but by 1910 the Journal was bringing in $150,000/year in advertising, which the AMA used to consolidate power.* That’s $3.75 million in today’s money; a drop in the drug advertising bucket but when other journals and associations hadn’t yet got the message to Call Off Your Old, Tired Ethics it gave the AMA a lot of clout.
The New England Journal of Medicine (Boston and Hahvahd) was for many years JAMA’s (Chicago) higher minded rival than but NEJM’s former editor, Marcia Angell, described how it too became corrupted by drug money.
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*(See Harris Coulter’s history of medicine Divided Legacy. Volume III is subtitled The Conflict Between Homeopathy and the American Medical Association; the information above is found around pp 417-425.)
Curious. If you have a F2M patient, are you committing malpractice by not ordering an annual PSA? Do you have to a digital rectal exam of the prostate and say “the prostate is not detected on palpation.” And do you have to stop doing pelvic exams of the uterus and ovaries?
Wouldn’t that depend on the standards of care promulgated to the .gov and then the third party payors? After all, how can you withhold, for example, a potentially lifesaving prostate exam from someone whose chart says (M)?
Sorry. That’s an acronym. Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters. Or something.
I like to think that future generations will look back on this the way we now look back on forced sterilization of mentally handicapped people in the US as late as the 1960s. The problem is that this time around the progressives have invented a new minority, transgender people, which they use as a foil to highlight a new form of bigotry against which they can highlight their own righteousness. History has shown that in America, once the left succeeds in getting people to think of a group, such as homosexual or transgenders, as an ethnicity, there’s no way to fight back without sounding like a bigot. Which means there’s no way to win. As long the guilt virus created by slavery exists and continues to traumatize people who are generations removed from slavery, stand by for the left to invent one new minority after another.
I’ve run into about a dozen as an RN, several as a cop, and have had two that I met socially. (Transgenders, not Presbyterians.) To a person, they were all pretty screwed up mentally and emotionally without even mentioning gender dysphoria. Of course, this is not a random sample as anyone who has contact with the police or needs a nurse is likely to have some mental problems.
I made this suggestion once before and I don’t think anyone noticed. There was a man named Ray Jessell, who performed a song for Britain’s Got Talent or something and one lazy night I ran into in on youtube. It was hilarious. He won but I think he was disqualified when it turned out he was not just an octogenarian, but an octogenarian Emmy Award-winning songwriter. It’s called “She’s Got a P**is”. It was performed just before the whole transgender thing, but it perfectly captures the spirit of the times.
That reminds me of an old joke:
Welcome to the Internet.
Where Men are Men.
And Women are Also Men.
And Young Girls (or Boys) are the FBI.
I would have thought that the reason for describing symptoms was to determine a cause.
Good thing I’m an engineer and not a doctor.
I’d be interested in reading that post. I have always assumed the majority of American physicians were in the AMA.