And yet it's only this that people are talking about. It's bad faith. If you really want to shut this particular thing down for the reasons you've given then you would shut down most of medicine, and virtually all care for pediatric populations.
Edit: yes I am a doctor
But a surprising amount of "medicine" is less well evidenced than we'd like it to be. That's not the same as demonstrably-false, but nowhere near the rock-solid gold-standard of testing. But we don't stop using it, because suffering patients can't wait while we straighten out the epistemological mess.
The best one to make a decision is a doctor, who has both the education required to understand the state of the art, and the details of the patient in front of them. They can combine that with their experience to make the best decision possible. It won't always be perfect, but it's got more likelihood than people guessing about what they think medicine is about.
When the people against it are only against it for one group of people, and doctors by and large disagree with them, it makes me suspicious that their motives are not based in concern for health and instead are based on personal feelings that are being projected onto an external cause.
People aren't against any group of people, they're against administering a damaging and potentially life-ruining treatment to perfectly healthy children.
Citation needed.
Whenever we want to experiment with radical changes in our systems, we need to be very careful. New radical approaches lack the test of time, and should be introduced carefully when there is potential for widespread negative impact.
Today we're saying that a large number of teenagers actually would be better off with a permanent change in gender. This extraordinary claim, which goes against biology and our established cultural norms, could be true but we have to recognize it as extraordinary and approach with extreme care. Maybe one day we'll figure out how many teenagers actually would benefit from this, but right now it's clear to me that we're just going all-in on an untested paradigm with great potential for irreversible pain and suffering.
* Here is the [*APA's policy statement*](http://www.apa.org/about/policy/transgender.aspx) on the necessity and efficacy of transition as the appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria. More from the APA [*here*](http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/programs/transgender/?tab=1)
* Here is an [*AMA resolution*](http://www.tgender.net/taw/ama_resolutions.pdf) on the efficacy and necessity of transition as appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria, and call for an end to insurance companies categorically excluding transition-related care from coverage
* A policy statement from the [*American College of Physicians*](http://annals.org/aim/article/2292051/lesbian-gay-bisexual-t...)
* [*Here*](https://assets2.hrc.org/files/documents/SupportingCaringforT...) are the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines
* [*Here*](https://www.aafp.org/dam/AAFP/documents/events/alf_ncsc/Educ...) is a resolution from the American Academy of Family Physicians
* [*Here*](https://www.socialworkers.org/assets/secured/documents/da/da...) is one from the National Association of Social Workers
---- *Citations on the transition's dramatic reduction of suicide risk while improving mental health and quality of life, with trans people able to transition young and spared abuse and discrimination having mental health and suicide risk on par with the general public:*
* [*Bauer, et al., 2015*](http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1...): Transition vastly reduces risks of suicide attempts, and the farther along in transition someone is the lower that risk gets
* [*Moody, et al., 2013*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722435/): The ability to transition, along with family and social acceptance, are the largest factors reducing suicide risk among trans people
* [*Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment*](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/09/...). A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, ... cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides trans youth the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults. All showed significant improvement in their psychological health, and they had notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among trans children living as their natal sex. *Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population.*
* The only disorders more common among trans people are those associated with abuse and discrimination - mainly anxiety and depression. Early transition [*virtually eliminates these higher rates of depression and low self-worth*](http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/full...), and [*dramatically improves trans youth's mental health*](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/allowing-transgender-youth...). *Trans kids who socially transition early and not subjected to abuse are comparable to cisgender children in measures of mental health.*
* [*Dr. Ryan Gorton*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3219066): “In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients, Kuiper and Cohen-Kittenis found that after medical intervention and treatments, suicide fell from 19% to 0% in transgender men and from 24% to 6% in transgender women”
* [*Murad, et al., 2010*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19473181): "Significant decrease in suicidality post-treatment. The average reduction was from 30 percent pretreatment to 8 percent post treatment.
* [*De Cuypere, et al., 2006*](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1158136006...): Rate of suicide attempts dropped from 29.3 percent to 5.1 percent after receiving medical treatment among Dutch patients treated from 1986-2001.
* [*UK study - McNeil, et al., 2012*](https://www.scottishtrans.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/tra...): "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition.
* [*Smith Y, 2005*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15842032): Participants improved on 13 out of 14 mental health measures after treatment
* [*Lawrence, 2003*](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024086814364): Surveyed post-op trans folk: "Participants reported overwhelmingly that they were happy with their SRS results and that SRS had greatly improved the quality of their lives
* [*Reduction in Mental Health Treatment Utilization Among Transgender Individuals After Gender-Affirming Surgeries: A Total Population Study*](https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.190...) - "*Conclusions:* "... the longitudinal association between gender-affirming surgery and reduced likelihood of mental health treatment lends support to the decision to provide gender-affirming surgeries to transgender individuals who seek them."
There are a [*lot*](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24344788) of [*studies*](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-009-9551-1) showing that [*transition*](https://mayoclinic.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/hormona...) [*improves*](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/960745/) [*mental health*](http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/25690443) and [*quality of life*](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0453-5) while [*reducing dysphoria*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23553588_Long-term_...).
Not to mention [*this 2010 meta-analysis*](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009....) of 28 different studies, which found that transition is extremely effective at reducing dysphoria and improving quality of life.
More stuff:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition...
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/doi/10.1542/...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fu...
https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analys...
https://epath.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Boof-of-abstract...
https://psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/study-finds-l...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
https://www.gendergp.com/exploring-detransition-with-dr-jack...
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380261209346...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...
https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/11/1018
https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgac251
https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(18)30057-2/fu...
For those who lean left, I strongly recommend reading up on Hannah Barnes' book, "Time to Think". The UK and the EU have deemed "gender-affirming care" experimental with US holding out. This should definitely give some pause.
Meanwhile the supposedly targeted agencies deny they suffered a breach.
This strikes me as a group that is less capable than they want people to believe, but on the other hand knowing how well local and start government do at InfoSec I also have a hard time doubting it.
