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So I found an article on Catholic Patheos (cw: transphobia, shockingly) about a fourteen-year-old trans boy whose having his eggs harvested. The article quotes Dr. Wylie C. Hembree, who says, “Most children who have gender dysphoria actually lose it. There may be only 10% to 15% whose dysphoria continues throughout childhood and into puberty.”
It's not clear to me whether the blogger concludes from that that we shouldn't put prepubescent kids on hormone blockers (more on that below) or that we shouldn't start puberty blockers at all, that we should only start HRT after the completion of puberty; they don't allow comments on their blog so I can't inquire.
Curious, I clicked the link to Dr. Hembree's quote.
...
It's a 58-page pdf. But being an intrepid researcher, I am undaunted. I find the quote on 28 of this issue of Endocrine News. As far as I can tell the publication is reputable enough, and the article Dr. Hembree's quote appears in doesn't seem antagonistic at all to trans people. Except... there's no citation of Dr. Hembree's claim. However, there is a link to the Endocrine Society's guidelines for treating gender dysphoria which includes the line "We recommend against puberty blocking and gender-affirming hormone treatment in prepubertal children with GD/gender incongruence" (1.4). No explanation is provided, but at this point it looks like Dr. Hembree's quote probably reflects the general consensus of endocrinologists. I still don't have proof of that, but I'm not going to comb through medical journals to find out.
Importantly, the Endocrine Society does not recommend delaying treatment until the completion of puberty; in the section of treating adolescents they go into great detail about how to use puberty blockers and HRT on adolescent trans people; i.e. they don't think gender affirming therapy should start until the onset of therapy, not its completion. But based on the quote the blogger provided, and their comment that puberty has a "85-90% success" rate, I don't think that's the conclusion they wanted their readers to draw.
It's not clear to me whether the blogger concludes from that that we shouldn't put prepubescent kids on hormone blockers (more on that below) or that we shouldn't start puberty blockers at all, that we should only start HRT after the completion of puberty; they don't allow comments on their blog so I can't inquire.
Curious, I clicked the link to Dr. Hembree's quote.
...
It's a 58-page pdf. But being an intrepid researcher, I am undaunted. I find the quote on 28 of this issue of Endocrine News. As far as I can tell the publication is reputable enough, and the article Dr. Hembree's quote appears in doesn't seem antagonistic at all to trans people. Except... there's no citation of Dr. Hembree's claim. However, there is a link to the Endocrine Society's guidelines for treating gender dysphoria which includes the line "We recommend against puberty blocking and gender-affirming hormone treatment in prepubertal children with GD/gender incongruence" (1.4). No explanation is provided, but at this point it looks like Dr. Hembree's quote probably reflects the general consensus of endocrinologists. I still don't have proof of that, but I'm not going to comb through medical journals to find out.
Importantly, the Endocrine Society does not recommend delaying treatment until the completion of puberty; in the section of treating adolescents they go into great detail about how to use puberty blockers and HRT on adolescent trans people; i.e. they don't think gender affirming therapy should start until the onset of therapy, not its completion. But based on the quote the blogger provided, and their comment that puberty has a "85-90% success" rate, I don't think that's the conclusion they wanted their readers to draw.
