Transgender Treatments Distort the Purpose of Medicine

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 23, 2025 | Farr Curlin

[karpov]

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s ban on medical gender interventions for children, reflects a split in the Justices’ views of medicine: Is it about restoring patients’ health or satisfying their wants?

The court held last week that the Tennessee law permissibly distinguished between different medical uses of puberty blockers and hormones for children. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that medical treatments are defined not only by the drug used but by the purpose for which it is prescribed. Administering testosterone to a boy with delayed puberty is categorically different from giving it to a girl.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the law impermissibly discriminates based on sex: “Male (but not female) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like boys, and female (but not male) adolescents can receive medicines that help them look like girls.” In her view, the goal of testosterone for boys and girls is the same: it helps them “look more masculine.”

Behind the justices’ rift is a fundamental question: What is medicine for? In the traditional view, the purpose of treatment is the patient’s health—the well-working of the body. We don’t decide what health is. We observe health, recognize its goodness, and protect it.

Yet the rise of the “patient autonomy” model in the 1960s and ’70s directed physicians to administer treatment at their patients’ behest. This model led to a consumerist approach to medicine, which sees physicians as “providers” instead of healers. Providers of services fulfill customers’ wishes, regardless of whether doing so restores or compromises patient health.

[karpov]

full article

[norwaypinesavage]

The ancient primary rule for medical treatment is: "FIRST, DO NO HARM."

[Brian Griffin]

It is primarily a matter of the ability to give reasoned, informed consent. Woe be it to an adult prince that has sex with a 17-year-old. Boys who think they are girls clearly have a mental problem. Girls who think they are boys clearly have a mental problem.

It is also a matter of government regulatory power. Children aged 17 are not allowed to do certain things, such as buy alcohol or cigarettes, or drive alone at nighttime.

[quilterdebbie]

I agree! It is for treating legitimate medical conditions! Healing.

[Srednik]

Bravo and dittos.

Even the pagans understood Hippocrates’ “Do no harm” injunction. Further, if you read through this creed, he enjoined physicians to resist the urge to use the knife — something unheeded by the genital-change crew.

[Retain Mike]

The three opposed did so for political reasons.

Inside the Transgender Empire

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/inside-the-transgender-empire/

The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” And despite frequent claims to the contrary, this is not a temporary or reversible process. Of the children who begin puberty blockers, the medical literature suggests that approximately 95 percent move on to cross-sex hormones, and that 50 percent of the females who begin cross-sex hormone treatments move on to “trans-affirming” surgeries.

It is clear from this and from other transgender scholarship that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. In a collection of essays titled Transgender Marxism, activist writer Rosa Lee argues that trans people can serve as the new vanguard of the proletariat, promising to abolish heteronormativity in the same way that orthodox Marxism promised to abolish capitalism.

The evidence to support medicalised gender transitions in adolescents is worryingly weak

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/04/05/the-evidence-to-support-medicalised-gender-transitions-in-adolescents-is-worryingly-weak

Almost all America’s medical authorities support gender-affirming care. But those in Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden, while supporting talking therapy as a first step, have misgivings about the pharmacological and surgical elements of the treatment. The effectiveness and side-effects of the most common treatments are not well understood.

[SaveFerris]

(Transgender Treatments)

Largest Trans Survey Ever: Top Reason Trans People Stop Transitioning Is Transphobia

Here's what DEMOCRATS do to innocent children - (center picture)



(Transgenderism, decadence, sexual deviancy, and moral decay were all present in Rome when the republic became an empire.)

All According to SATAN'S Plan

Rainbow White House happened on Friday, June 26, 2015 - turning the White House into a Godless Reprobate Abomination



Do NO harm, Christians, but reject this
Godless Reprobate Agenda.
(For the thread)



This LGBTQ+ metastasizing cancer is all over our Society - AND the WORLD too 🌏🌎🌍 - Which is why I preach (and pray 🙏🛐🙏✝️🙏 others will SHARE the images and the SCRIPTURES (for the thread)

[quilterdebbie]

This is just evil! Seeing a counselor/psychiatrist to sort out the feelings should always be the first step! The hormone therapies and surgeries are barbaric!

[Tom Tetroxide]

How about turning those confused young men into eunuchs?

[allendale]

America no longer has a consensus of decent commonly held values. This includes the medical profession. There is a Josef Mengele branch of American physicians. They do abortions, euthenasia, perform mutilating surgery on children, prescribe puberty blockers, gender altering drugs, cater to perversion and accomadate schizophrenics. If you encounter a physician that does any of these things, stand clear.

[fwdude]

Please try to tell me that taking healthy, functioning body parts and medically rendering them UNfunctional is Medicine’s goal.

[Vigilanteman]

I have come to the conclusion that while the primary purpose of “gender affirming care” is to screw up society and validate the mentally ill as normal, a secondary purpose is to provide employment for hack surgeons who can’t do anything else.

[FormerFRLurker]

The Supreme Court was correct to uphold Tennessee’s law. Restricting medication to the medical condition it is licensed to treat (premature puberty) rather than gender dysphoria is not discrimination on the basis of sex.

[bobbo666]

Read the opinions in support. A couple judges make it clear that not only are trannys subject to state law/democracy; but if this issue comes back to SCOTUS the court will be forced to issue a clear(er) statement: only race and sex are protected as only they are immutable.
The strong hint her is that if the issue comes up on this about exactly who is a protected group not only will trannys lose out but also anyone engaging in any sexual practices. Hint, hint, gays. Your life choices are just that, choices. Choices are not special and deserve no non-discrimination protection.

[Albion Wilde]

This is just evil! Seeing a counselor/psychiatrist to sort out the feelings should always be the first step!

Proponents of transgender ideology were so determined, that over the past more than a decades they pushed for laws that would punish therapists for trying to help a gender-confused person, banning what they called "sexual orientation conversion therapy" even for children or adults who did not want to be attracted to the same sex, on the grounds that it was akin to witchcraft or lobotomy, and is so erosive to an LGBT person that it encourages suicide. (Which is like blaming speeding tickets for making motorists speed.) The first governor to sign on to such legislation was Chris Christie in 2013.

Since then, just four states have passed laws calling such bans unconstitutlional.

[quilterdebbie]

Thanks for the info!

[Albion Wilde]

You’re very welcome, quilterdebbie.