By Riittakerttu Kaltiala

October 30, 2023

Article from The Free Press

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, 58, is a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. She treats patients, teaches medical students, and conducts research in her field—publishing more than 230 scientific articles. 

In 2011, Dr. Kaltiala was assigned a new responsibility. She was to oversee the establishment of a gender identity service for minors, making her among the first physicians in the world to head a clinic devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. Since then, she has personally participated in the assessments of more than 500 such adolescents.

Earlier this year, The Free Press ran a whistleblower account by Jamie Reed, a former case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She recounted her growing alarm at the effects of treatments that sought to transition minors to the opposite sex, and her escalating conviction that patients were being harmed by their treatment.

Although a recent New York Times investigation largely corroborated Reed’s account, many activists and members of the media continue to dismiss Reed’s claims because she is not a physician. 

Dr. Kaltiala is. And her concerns are likely to get more attention in the U.S. now that a young woman who medically transitioned as a teenager has just sued the doctors who supervised her treatment, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics. According to the suit, the AAP, in advocating for youth transition, has made “outright fraudulent statements” about evidence for “the radical new treatment model, and the known dangers and potential side effects of the medical interventions it advocates.” 

Here, Dr. Kaltiala tells her own story, describing her increasing worries about the treatment she approved for vulnerable patients, and her decision to speak out. 

Read the article at The Free Press:

‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’

56 minutes

Damaged: The Transing of America’s Kids tells the story of the lives of transgender people who wish they could go back.

An amazing film. Even though it’s behind a paywall at Daily Caller, start a trial subscription for $1 and SEE IT.

Also available in PDF: Download

A majority of patients who had vaginoplasties presented several health concerns in visits after the operation, according to a study put out by the Women’s College Hospital (WCH).

The study was conducted on a sample of 80 patients between the ages of 19 and 73 who had received “penile inversion vaginoplasty” at surgical centers in Canada. The patients had all presented themselves for postoperative care at the clinic between three months and five years after their surgery. 

Most patients, at 61.3%, presented themselves for postoperative care with two or more symptoms. Such symptoms included pain, accounting for 53.8% of visits, surgical site/vaginal bleeding accounting for 42.5% of visits, and sexual function concerns accounting for 33.8% of visits. The most commonly reported side effects were hypergranulation, urinary dysfunction, wound healing issues.

Read the full article at: https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/16/patients-vaginoplasty-suffer-surgical-site-bleeding-later-study/

Read full story at https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/under-the-radar-the-detransitioner-movement-is-surging

…thousands of young women and men who once identified as the opposite sex — many of whom attempted a “gender transition” by ingested drugs and undergoing elaborate surgical procedures to impersonate the opposite sex — are now rejecting the transgender identity and are once again embracing their natural sex.

As reported by The Post Millennial, new studies are showing that the rate of individuals who detransition away from a trans identity is occurring at paces that far exceed what the legacy media is reporting. At the Re/Detrans Canada event held at York University in Ontario last month, researchers presented a number of studies that showed detransition rates ranging from 2% to almost 30%. Three other studies from England show rates between 6.9% and 9.8%. Another yet to be published study of 774 young Canadians and Americans revealed that 16% had halted gender transition treatments, citing “health concerns, change in identity, and cost.”

These rates contrast sharply with the “less than 1%” rate that is constantly trotted out by transgender activists and the media. As noted by The Post Millennial, other cultural indicators also point to a swelling detransitioner movement. Reddit, an online discussion forum that in early 2022 was the 9th-most-visited website in the world, has a “Detrans” chatroom (or “Subreddit”) which currently has over 40,000 members.

Online accounts and testimonies of young women and men who have detransitioned from pursuing a gender transition opposite from their biological sex have exploded in the last five years, and distinct similarities are emerging from among many of these testimonies. While the causes for gender dysphoria are often complex and multifaceted, cultural and institutional influences beholden to a pro-transgender ideology have become primary contributors to the confusion over biological sex that is occurring among thousands of adolescents.

Here is a sampling of 20 testimonies from among the hundreds of detransitioners who have publicly shared their stories. The power that social media has to shape the minds of young people who have experienced abuse and are looking for affirmation is readily apparent in these accounts, along with the potent influence that medical and psychiatric professionals have in pushing their young patients down a path of gender transition drugs and surgical procedures that often create irreversible physiological harm.

Continued at The Washington Stand — Read full story at https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/under-the-radar-the-detransitioner-movement-is-surging

In this article for CMDA’s The Point, Dr. Van Mol reveals the flaws in regret studies and surveys, and includes other sources showing higher regret rates.

Regretting Transition for Gender Dysphoria

June 23, 2022

by André Van Mol, MD

Supporters of gender-affirming therapy (GAT)—transition affirmation—are doubling down on claims that regret and detransition are rare. From state-level bills in my home state of California to national policy initiatives from the federal administration, the assertion that transitioning for gender dysphoria is all but regret free is used as a promotional tool for the proposed mandating of GAT essentially on request. However, the sales pitch does not hold up to inspection.

Studies and surveys commonly cited to prove that regret after transition (GAT) for gender dysphoria is exceedingly rare remarkably often demonstrate the same fatal flaws:

• Impressively high rates of loss to follow up, from over 20 percent to over 60 percent, which invalidate the findings.[1] Were those lost patients helped, hurt or even still alive?[2]
• Exceedingly strict definitions for regret, e.g. requiring formal application to change their legal documents back to the original sex.[3]
• Insufficient periods of follow up, usually only six months to two years post-transition, despite the existing evidence that post-surgical regret is known to manifest eight years or so post-transition.[4]^,[5]
• Sampling usually taken from gender clinics, to which those with regret repeatedly report they do not return. Dr. Littman’s 2021 survey of 100 detransitioners found that only 24 percent had informed their clinician of their detransition, thus 76 percent did not.[6]
• Data is gleaned from in-house satisfaction surveys lacking clear and uniform definitions, metrics and follow up. This low-quality data then gets pooled to create low quality, unreliable results.

See entire article at https://cmda.org/regretting-transition-for-gender-dysphoria/

• the lack of follow-up — regretters are not counted
• high rate of regret he sees in his post-op patients–26%

Who is Dr. Az Hakeem?

Dr Az Hakeem is a consultant psychiatrist, medical psychotherapist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is also a qualified Group Analyst who has used this training to develop and facilitate the unique therapeutic practice of mixed group therapy sessions with gender dysphoric patients both pre- and post-transition.

Who is Transgender Trend?

Transgender Trend conducted the interview. They say “We are an organisation of parents, professionals and academics based in the UK who are concerned about the current trend to diagnose children as transgender”

The entire interview is available at Transgender Trend: https://www.transgendertrend.com/interview-az-hakeem/

The entire interview is great reading. Here’s the relevant part to know today.

Dr. Hakeem says: (emphasis mine)

“As I stated in my publications 26% of my patients are post-operative regretters: this 26% of course does not represent the demographic of Gender Dysphoric patents but was the demographic of the people who had been referred to my service. These people were all non- existent data. No one had followed them up from the gender clinic since they had been given their sex changes. They had been free to live their lives as they had wanted to be without anyone asking later whether they had made a mistake. Many of them were too embarrassed to admit that they regretted their decision having persuaded the Doctors and Psychiatrists and gender clinic to give them what they wanted and felt they needed. Many of them were living in a post-operative role which they now felt to be fraudulent but from which they felt there was no return.

The public are often told that relative regret is extremely low. But this of course is a complete fiction. There are no follow-up studies, no one knows what the regret rate actually is and this low rate results from the lack of any information being collected. The patients I saw did not officially exist in any gender identity clinics’ books.”

Thank you, Dr. Hakeem!