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Monday Miscellany, 10/28/24

Monday Miscellany, 10/28/24

Last updated on: October 28, 2024 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 10/28/24 2024-10-25T11:14:27-04:00 Gene Veith

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Withholding the evidence about transgender treatments. Where are the government-funded EV chargers? & From MAGA to MAHA: Make Americans Healthy Again.

Withholding the Evidence about Transgender Treatments

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy has been a strong voice for promoting puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria, so she was put in charge of a $10 million taxpayer-funded research project over 10 years to document how beneficial this treatment is for those children’s mental health. But her results were not what she wanted. It turns out, as reported in a story broken by the New York Times, the puberty blockers do not improve their mental health. So Dr. Olson-Kennedy is withholding publication of her study.

She says that she fears the research will be “weaponized,” used to discourage such treatments. She says now that most of the 95 children she studied, with the average age of 11, had not had many mental problems to begin with. “They’re in really good shape when they come in,” she said, “and they’re in really good shape after two years.”

But that is not what she said at the beginning of the study! She said of the cohort that “Elevated depression was endorsed by 28.6%, and nearly a quarter (23.6%) endorsed lifetime SI [suicidal ideation], with 7.9% endorsing a past attempt.”

That fear that their child might commit suicide is at the heart of the arguments used to persuade parents to accept transgender treatments. Parents are asked, “Do you want a happy little girl, or a dead little boy?” So of course they will agree. But if the transgender treatments don’t help–if their child needs other kinds of help–then there is no reason for them!

The findings are also important because they falsify a 2011 Dutch study that claimed that the treatments do improve mental health, a non-replicable study that has provided the rationale for today’s medical acceptance of the procedures.

Not to mention that this kind of withholding data because of acknowledged bias is bad science and professionally unethical.

Why is the medial profession accepting transgender ideology so uncritically, without their usual scientific rigor? Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of Do No Harm says it’s primarily about money, documenting the huge amount of money hospitals and doctors are making from these transgender treatments, which are ongoing over the course of a lifetime.

Finally, though, one American medical society is saying “no” to the radical harming of children’s bodies. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, representing 92% of physicians with that specialty, has issued a statement saying that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria” because there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”

Where Are the Government-Funded EV Chargers?

A couple of weeks ago we blogged about the failure of the federal government to build even one of the “internet-for-all” projects intended to provide broadband wi-fi for “unserved” communities. Another, arguably more consequential, part of the Biden-Harris “Infrastructure” bill set aside $5 billion to build electric charging stations all across the land so as to make possible the replacement of gasoline-powered cars with Electric Vehicles.

Three years later, the government has built only 17 stations, with 69 charging ports. Why so slow? Again, bids to make and install the ports must follow complicated and expensive rules. Reports the Wall Street Journal, “The delays are due in part to regulations encouraging unionization, as well as the administration’s goal that at least 40% of clean-energy investments benefit ‘disadvantaged communities,’ the areas that need EV chargers the least.”

Meanwhile, the private sector is turning out more charging stations than that every day!

Electric vehicles may take off and they may even replace gasoline cars someday. Not because of top-down government mandates, but because of the free market. Have you ever ridden in a Tesla? My niece took me for a ride in hers, and the acceleration–zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds–drove me back in my seat as if I were experiencing the G-forces of a rocket ship. I can see the attraction.

The market is already outperforming the government’s “Infrastructure Program” in turning out charging stations. It does so by meeting the demand for them.

One reason we need a limited government is because the government just can’t compete with the free market in actually getting things done.

From MAGA to MAHA: Make Americans Healthy Again

The Trump campaign not only wants to “Make America Great Again.” It also wants to “Make Americans Healthy Again.” This theme is being heard at Trump rallies, especially when health activist Robert Kennedy is giving a speech.

The Washington Post tells all about this new emphasis, even as the former president and fast food lover campaigns by frying up French fries at McDonald’s. But the announced policies are genuine. According to the Washington Post,

Nothing symbolizes the unusual alliance between the two men more than their shared Make America Healthy Again agenda, with the former Democrat partnering with Republicans’ leader on a platform that calls for overhauling federal regulations on food and pharmaceuticals, retooling farm subsidies, and cleaning house at the nation’s public health agencies.

Their still-developing plan taps into broad frustrations with America’s health-care system and problems— such as the nation’s reliance on ultra-processed food, the surge of chronic disease and declining U.S. life expectancy — that Democrats scarcely discuss and that Trump had previously ignored, too.

Kennedy wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled Trump Will Make America Healthy Again, listing the policies the new Trump administration hopes to implement.

Reform the Prescription Drug User Fee Act.
Prohibit members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from making money from food or drug companies.
Review direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ad guidelines.
Change federal regulation so that NIH funds can’t go to researchers with conflicts of interest.
Level the playing field for Americans internationally on drug costs.
Stop allowing beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to use their food stamps to buy soda or processed foods.
Revisit pesticide and other chemical-use standards.
Require nutrition classes and functional medicine in federally funded medical schools.
Reform crop subsidies.
Issue new presidential fitness standards.
Devote half of research budgets from the NIH toward preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health.
Increase patient choice by giving every American a health savings account.

Some good ideas there. But some observers are leery about RFK, Jr., overseeing these, since he is a vaccine skeptic and an alternative medicine crusader. (Devoting half of NIH research budgets for “alternative and holistic approaches to health”? Well, that might at least give us evidence about whether they work or not.)

Are any of you old enough to remember the “presidential fitness standards” issued by RFK’s uncle, John F. Kennedy? Those tormented a lot of us grade school kids as we had to perform a certain number of pull-ups and push-ups in order to measure up to the president’s standards. I’m sure that was good for us, though, and it did lend a patriotic motivation to our phys-ed classes.

It looks like we will be subject to a nanny state–telling us to eat our vegetables, lose weight, and exercise more–no matter who wins the election.

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