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ResourcePuberty Blockers for Autistic Kids
It occurred to me that a lot of users and lurkers here are newer to all of this, and particularly as the use of puberty blockers for trans-identifying kids is finally being broken down, people might be interested in a very similar misuse.
Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the ‘Lupron Protocol’ was used to chemically castrate autistic children, with the aim of curing their autism.
You can read about it here and here. I think it’s interesting that Dr Geier was finally struck off just as the gender stuff was really starting to take off.
It’s worth reading about, because
a) this is another case of Lupron being misused to castrate children (and, of course, we know that a lot of the children identifying as trans are autistic), often for a prolonged period.
b) I remember earlier slides from Mermaids and similar organisations claiming that affirming a child’s identity and giving them puberty blockers and hormones would cure apparent autism, among other things.
c) the Geiers infiltrated organisations, claiming credentials beyond their real expertise and being considered ‘experts’. They advised courts.
d) the explanations given for why they were giving the children Lupron and how it was all supposed to work shifted and changed, but the expensive long term castrating of the children did not.
e) the drug company was happy to cooperate and go along with it, until everything got too hot.
f) it continued long after everyone reasonable and respectable was sure the science behind it was bunk.
g) it involved dreadful science, studies, and papers that didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
h) at times, it leant on fashionable (now considered inaccurate) real scientific theories about autism, whose proponents later had to disavow any approval of castrating children.
i) it took ages to properly unpick, and get Dr Geier struck off. The organisation where he worked seemed to simply switch to a different, less harmful, random pseudoscience for treating autism, and continued. He doesn’t seem to have faced any consequences other than being struck off, as far as I can tell.
I think this is all useful background for thinking about what is going on now and what has happened to get here.
This is super interesting! There definitely seems to be a larger trend of trying to 'cure' children who are non conforming in someway (whether that be disability, or gender non-conformity) that almost harkens back to eugenics. It's also interesting how these types of scandal's get swept under the rug over time and are forgotten by many. I think that it is especially important to discuss the history of Lupron as a treatment for various 'ailments', as broader knowledge of this powerful medication can help wake many up to the issue of child transition. You also mentioned that Mermaids was advocating for the use of puberty blockers as a treatment for autism, do you have a source for this information specifically? I'd like to learn more.
I think curing them of being ssa is the biggest ‘cure’ being pushed. But ensuring weirdos can’t reproduce is probably an added bonus.
You also mentioned that Mermaids was advocating for the use of puberty blockers as a treatment for autism, do you have a source for this information specifically?
I don’t right now. I was sort of hoping to prompt another of the old guard who had kept receipts to respond, because there used to be various photos circulating from presentations given by Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence and such like, where people had captured the slides with the lists of issues and ailments that they would claim were mistakenly diagnosed instead of unaffirmed transness, and which the speaker would say could be treated through the affirmative approach.
Now, more than ever, I wish I had stored more receipts.
I understand. I'm relatively new to this, so I wasn't around when these screenshots were circulating. However, I have heard multiple different people reference them so I do believe that they are real. If I'm ever super bored at work I might take the time to try and track them down, would love to see them as they definitely prove the wackier origins of some of these organizations. Would also be useful to get this information circulating again as more information comes to the mainstream about the reality of childhood transition.
So they were/are rainbow Wakefields. That quack must be kicking himself knowing that he got disbarred and disgraced and could have avoided all that trouble if he had just parasitized the gay rights movement.
Thanks for sharing this, OP.
Do you have any info about how many kids were subjected to this protocol? And what the sex ratio was?
I'm assuming the "Lupron protocol for autism" that these crackpots promoted was primarily used on males because
a) at the time, many more male children than female children were diagnosed as autistic;
b) as your first link shows, the Geiers came up with this protocol based on the idea that testostorone is a main culprit in autism:
somehow some way, Mark Geier got the idea in his head that testosterone contributes to autism. That in and of itself isn’t woo, given that scientists have from time to time hypothesized that very thing. What made the Geiers’ conclusions pseudoscience is their explanation. Basically, Geier claimed that testosterone binds mercury from vaccines, making it more “toxic” to the brain and also making it harder to get rid of the mercury using chelation therapy. Never mind that the only paper showing testosterone binding to mercury did it in benzene (hint: your blood is not benzene) under extreme conditions. What was worse, however, was the Geiers’ “solution” to this problem, which was to add to the autism quackery known as chelation therapy another potentially harmful form of quackery, namely chemical castration using Lupron, a drug that shuts down the production of sex hormones, including testosterone.
If it turns out that the "Lupron protocol for autism" was used primarily on/against males, then that would make it starkly different to the use of the same class of drugs - GnRHa analogues - as "puberty blockers" in kids with distress and confusion about their sex and gender.
Because the figures that have been released so far show that since the so-called "Dutch protocol" was introduced in the Netherlands in the 1990s and became popularized in many other countries from circa 2005 on, the vast majority of minors who've been put on "puberty blockers" by clinicians practicing "gender medicine" have been female.
For example, in the Netherlands where "the Dutch protocol" first was tried out and took root, it appears that from the start, so-called "puberty blockers" have always been prescribed to females at MUCH higher rates than to males.
A paper published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2023 reported on the treatments administered by the Netherlands’ largest pediatric gender clinic in Amsterdam (VUmc) to all the youth (children and adolescents under 18) who sought evaluation and/or treatment for gender dysphoria there between 1997 and 2018.
The paper says it includes a total of 1766 individuals who were seen at the clinic over 20 years.
However, when the figures given throughout the paper for the subgroups of patients are added up, the total number of patients comes to 1681 - 1012 females, 669 males, so 60% F, 40% M.
The paper says the patients were divided into categories based on their sex and their age when they first were seen at the clinic. Those who sought their first evaluations before age 10 and those who presented to the clinic at age 10 or older. These were referred to "early" vs "late-presenting" patients, or EP and LP for short.
The early-presenting group, 487 patients total, had 217 females and 270 males - so 45% F, 55% M.
The late-presenting group, 1194 patients total, had 795 females and 399 males, so 67% F, 33% M. So in the group that presented at and after age 10, girls outnumbered boys by 2 to 1.
In both the EP and LP groups, females were much more likely than males to initiate "medical transition," and females were put on puberty blockers at much higher rates than males.
The paper says that in 20 years covered - 1997- 2018 - 73% of all the female patients in both the EP and LP groups combined were put on "puberty blockers" at the clinic, compared to 47% of the males.
The total number of girls put on blockers = 616; the number of boys = 266.
53% of the "potentially eligible" early-presenting females pursued medical transition once they became eligible during puberty, compared to 36% of the "potentially eligible" early-presenting males.
77% of the late-presenting "potentially eligible" females started puberty blockers at the Amsterdam gender clinic, compared to 53% for the late-presenting males.
More than 90% of late-presenting "potentially eligible" adolescents of both sexes started cross-sex hormones at the clinic.
The authors of the paper acknowledge that it's plausable that “starting GnRHa in itself makes adolescents more likely to continue medical transition" rather than of giving them "time to think" the way purveyors and popularizers of "puberty blockers" for kids with sex/gender distress orginally claimed.
Again, the authors note that the much higher rate that "puberty blockers" were administered to female patients compared to males by/at the major "youth gender clinic" in the Netherlands between 1997 and 2018 is "remarkable."
I think the testosterone/ASD thing came from Simon Baron-Cohen (Borat’s cousin, a neuroscience researcher), who proposed that autism is an “extreme male mind”. Now he’s gone all 180-degree woke on neurodiversity because he wanted to stay relevant after the “autism is my superpower” mob on social media called him a Nazi and was gearing up to end his career.
As a sufferer myself, who does not have a “male mind” whatever that is, I am 100% of the view that a legitimate cure or preventative diagnostic protocol should be developed, without input from the Andrew Wakefield stans or the Steve Silberman stans. But this ain’t it, chief. This is a feeble attempt at a “cure” that is arguably worse than the disease.
I don’t have those numbers, no, although I’d be interested if anyone finds them. I don’t know that they kept good enough records.
Of note is that when the Dutch Protocol started, the initial intention was that it was aimed at male children, as there was an emphasis on them remaining feminine and ‘passing’, and the shift in the intake happened after the protocol was introduced.
I do know that, despite the explanation about testosterone, there is mention of more female-specific hormone blockers being used in tandem, to block female hormones in female children, with unclear justification as far as I can see.
Of note is that when the Dutch Protocol started, the initial intention was that it was aimed at male children, as there was an emphasis on them remaining feminine and ‘passing’,
That's actually not true, though. A lot of people keep making the point you've made and insisting it's true. But it's not what the papers, data and remarks made public by the Dutch clinicians about the origins of "the Dutch protocol" over time actually show.
It's also not what the clinicians in the Netherlands who were involved in inventing and developing the Dutch protocol said back in the 1990s, what they've over the next 20+ years, or what they've been saying in the past couple of years since their approach has come under so much scrutiny and garnered so much criticism.
The first child in the Netherlands who was put on GnRHa analogue drugs, and kept on them throughout adolescence, due to distress over sex and "gender" was female. She was started on the drugs in the late 1980s or 1990 when she was 13. She is nearly 50 now.
The information that the Dutch clinicians have published and shared with the world so far shows that from the start, gender clinic patients in the Netherlands were much more likely to be put on "puberty blockers" if they were female than male, and the majority of youngsters put on "puberty blockers" in the NE since the 1990s have been female.
The 2023 paper I cited and linked to in my post above says that:
During the period from 1997 to 2018, 73% of all the female patients who were seen for evaluation and/or treatment at the main youth gender clinic in Amsterdam were put on "puberty blockers" at the clinic, compared to 47% of the male patients at the clinic.
53% of the female patients who first went to the Amsterdam youth gender clinic when they were under age 10 ended up pursuing "medical transition" including "puberty blockers" once they became eligible during puberty, compared to 36% of the males who first went to the clinic under age 10.
77% of the female patients who first presented at the youth gender clinic in Amsterdam when they were 10 or older were put on on puberty blockers by the clinic, compared to 53% of the males who first presented at the clinic at age 10 or older.
The clinicians who came up with and developed "Dutch protocol" in the 1990s have always said and continue to say that their focus in coming up with the practice of prescribing "puberty blockers" to kids with sex/gender issues was much more immediate and short-term. They put kids with sex/gender distress on these drugs to stop them from experiencing bodily processes and sensations that the kids found distressing and anxiety-producing in the "here and now."
The distressed kids that the Dutch clinicians put on puberty blockers weren't thinking about their longterm prospects - because kids are short-term thinkers who lack the ability to project themselves far ahead into the future and clearly envision what's ahead. The kids the Dutch clinicians invented the "Dutch protocol" to help were kids who wanted immediate rescue from the many vexing aspects that come with puberty of adolescence that were bothering them and freaking them out in the moment. Which presumably would have been things like messy and embarrassing menstrual periods, menstrual cramps, PMS/PMDD, breast growth, hormonal mood swings. sexual harassment, penis and testicle growth, pubic hair and underarm hair, newly stinky body odor, changes in the voices of the males, spontaneous erections, nocturnal emissions, adolescent angst, greasy skin and hair, pimples, sexual feelings and urges, masturbatory urges and - this is extremely important - feelings of sexual attraction to other people. Which in the case of nearly all the kids put on the Dutch protocol in the Netherlands in the early years and later years alike, has almost always meant feelings of sexual attraction to members of their own sex - feelings that the kids were not prepared for and didn't know how to deal with.
Worse, many of these poor who were desperate to have their sexual feelings squelched were same-sex attracted kids who felt shame and horror over the same-sex attractions they found themselves having because they had grown up being taught to believe that same-sex attraction and conduct are morally wrong, weird, sick, perverted, sinful, abnormal.
The Dutch clinicians weren't thinking about these kids' future prospects and ability to "pass" over the longer term - or if they did think of the kids longterm futures and their "passibility," that was not their priority. Their main goal was to relieve the kids' current distress over what was going on in their bodies and minds at the time, in the moment, and over the very short term.
In that way, the Dutch clinicians who came up with and first instituted the Dutch protocol are very similar to the clinicians from North America recently seen in the videotapes that are part of the WPATH Files. None of those clinicians were principally focused on insuring that the kids they treated would have "transitions" that turn out well in the long run. Even when they expressed concerns about longterm outcomes, those concerns were never the main thing on their mind. As one of the clincians said on tape, the main goal of "youth gender medicine" in the eyes of the men and women who practice it has always been to "affirm" the children's feelings and identity right now and do whatever possible to "make them [the kids] happy in the moment." When he said that, all of the other clinicians nodded along in total, enthusiastic agreement.
The Dutch clinicians who originated, developed and popularized the Dutch protocol have never shown much concern or curiosity about the longterm futures of the adolescents they put on "puberty blockers." To this date, they remain very incurious about what happened to the kids they drugged when they grew up. That's why the Dutch clinicians - like most the youth gender clinicians in the UK - have not only not bothered to follow-up with their former patients once they reached adulthood, they've scoffed at the idea. Indeed, as what's happened in the UK shows, in some cases, youth gender clinicians have tried to prevent any longterm patient follow-up from happening.
Did it work in the sense of relieving severe symptoms of autism at least in some patients?
A relative of mine has a son with pretty severe autism, and I can see why parents of kids with severe autism would be desperate for any kind of treatment, and it makes me wonder to what degree trans "treats" autism even if it's just a placebo.
It's interesting that 25 years ago people were trying to cure autism, and now everyone's trying to claim they have autism because it's trendy to br "neurospicy"
Ugh. I can’t imagine why anyone who doesn’t have autism, ADHD, etc., would want to claim that they do. I have ADHD, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I managed just fine as a kid thanks to an overbearing (albeit loving) mother who believed that I was perfectly normal and would grow out of it if she just micromanaged everything for me. I made it until 26 without a diagnosis. Now I at least know what it is about me that makes live so difficult, but getting everything organized to see a psychiatrist and get on medication let alone fixing my executive functioning is more than I’m capable of at the moment.
Yes I think the real thing is quite different to "here's a list of behaviours and preferences that some autistic people have - you must also be a cool fashionable autist if these feel familiar!"
And some of it is nuts, like apparently neurotypical people can't just reconnect with a friend they haven't seen for years like no time has passed. Um yeah we can and do.
And the masking phenomenon in girls means anyone who wasn't diagnosed or.seen as a problem child can still say she might be autistic if she was sensitive or shy or really loved a book series.
The reality is a lot more complex!!!