Guess who is back to making the same old nonsensical claims and false attributions about the Swedish Study.
"Don’t listen to their misinformation! Listen to
my misinformation!"
Twitter thread:
@ErinInTheMorn, tweet 1690087362767056896 (
archive)
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:46 PM UTC
Ever hear anti-trans activists claim "The Swedish Study" shows gender affirming care raises suicide rates by 19 times?
This is misleading and a lie.
The study says no such thing, and even the authors have refuted this.
Subscribe to support my work.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:47 PM UTC
This is one of the most persistent pieces of outright misinformation about trans care.
It was used in a congressional hearing recently.
Chloe Cole cites it in her lawsuit against Kaiser.
Even Elon Musk recently cited it!
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:49 PM UTC
Here's the problem:
The study says no such thing.
Instead, it looks at mortality between 1973-2003, a time when trans people experienced extremely high victimization rates, discrimination, and abuse.
It does NOT compare trans people receiving care to those not receiving care.
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:51 PM UTC
The continual spreading of this misinformation has resulted in the lead author, Dr. Cecilia Dhejne, to participate in an interview specifically debunking this disinformation. You can read her full interview here:
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:52 PM UTC
Even ardent anti-trans activists have started to pump the brakes on using this study. Dr. Leor Sapir of the anti-trans Manhattan Institute, for instance, called out colleagues for misinterpreting this study:
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:53 PM UTC
The fact is, we have tons of evidence that gender affirming care saves lives, including a recent study showing a 73% lower suicidality among transgender youth receiving care.
Here is a collection of 50 studies compiled by Cornell University:
Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) · Aug 11, 2023 · 7:54 PM UTC
Lastly, I am an independent journalist covering transgender legislation and life. I produce reporting that nobody else does.
Please subscribe to support my work so that I can keep doing this when 2024 comes and this issue is even more salient worldwide.
Substack post:
Debunked: "The Swedish Study" Doesn’t Say What Anti-Trans Activists Claim It Says (
archive)
Dhejne et al 2011
Paper’s here:
Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden | PLOS ONE (
archive)
Note that when I say "the general population" below, I mean the age- and sex-matched controls, not the population as a whole, and not "trans-identified people who’ve not had SRS". The SRS victims were matched with controls of both 10 women and 10 men, to allow for sex-at-birth and "reassigned sex" comparisons.
The baseline characteristics (ie before SRS) in Table 1 shows high psychiatric morbidity (ie additional mental health problems) compared to population controls (about 4-5×) but relatively low compared to what one would expect from the current cohort (17% of TIFs and 19% of TIMs).
Important to note the mean time to follow-up for all-cause mortality was 11.4 years, with a median of 9.1 years. This is significant because the mortality chart shows significantly worse outcomes with increased time to follow-up, but most of the cohort is in the period 0–10 years. We can’t conclude whether this means either (a) subjects who had SRS in earlier years had worse outcomes or (b) worse outcomes are a function of time since surgery.
Suicide
In Table 2 we find the oft-repeated 19× risk of suicide; to be clear this is people who’ve had SRS compared to the general population, not other trans-identified people. So we can say with some of confidence, but not certainty, that:
- Trans-identified people who have SRS are much more likely to commit suicide than the general population, and correspondingly
- SRS doesn’t reduce the risk of suicide among trans-identified people to the level of the general population.
We can’t say:
- SRS increases the risk of suicide among trans-identified people.
Later, the authors note that while MtFs had high suicide rates compared to both male and female controls, the FtMs were more suicidal than female controls, but not as suicidal as male controls.
Mental illness
Again in Table 2 we find, as you would expect from the suicide figures, that trans-identified people who’ve had SRS have worse mental health than the general population, being 2.8× more likely to be hospitalised for a mental health disorder.
Crime
And lastly from Table 2, trans-identified people who’ve had SRS were 50% more likely (ie 1.5×) than the general population to be violent criminals. The authors state that this was "only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989", but they don’t provide separate figures for the two groups. (As a reminder, most of the people in the study had SRS between 1993 and 2003.)
The authors note that both MtFs and FtMs committed crimes at the same rate as male controls. "This indicates a shift to a male pattern regarding criminality and that sex reassignment is coupled to increased crime rate in female-to-males. The same was true regarding violent crime."
Tony’s claims
From his Twitter thread;
@ErinInTheMorn, tweet 1690087362767056896 (
archive):
[The study] looks at mortality between 1973-2003, a time when trans people experienced extremely high victimization rates, discrimination, and abuse.
He doesn’t back this up with any evidence. You can’t "debunk" anything based on assumptions and gut feelings. There are plenty of reasons why today’s cohort may differ from those who had SRS in the period studied, but Tony is claiming that the outcomes shown in the study were driven by a particular factor, and provides no evidence to support that claim.
The fact is, we have tons of evidence that gender affirming care saves lives, including a recent study showing a 73% lower suicidality among transgender youth receiving care.
When Tony mentions "73% lower suicidality" he is referring to the Tordoff et al (2022) paper. We have been over this many times, so I will just let the headline of Jesse Singal’s analysis speak for me:
Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite. (
archive)
Here is a collection of 50 studies compiled by Cornell University:
Ah, the misleadingly named "What We Know Project". It’s just a list of papers, it provides no analysis as to how trustyworthy those papers are, as a systematic review would.
This is like if there was an exciting new field of Marshmallow Studies, and I collected together 50 papers that concluded various things like eating marshmallows gives you X-Ray vision, immortality, the ability to fly, etc. And I just read the conclusions of those papers, applied no critical thought, and put those on a website along with the statement that "Bottom Line: This search found a robust international consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that eating marshmallows will give you superpowers". It’s garbage and makes Cornell look like a fucking joke.
Tony goes further in his Substack post;
Debunked: "The Swedish Study" Doesn’t Say What Anti-Trans Activists Claim It Says (
archive):
The study recorded high rates of all-cause mortality and elevated suicide rates between 1973 and 2003. Such findings are consistent with the challenges faced by the transgender community during this period. Discrimination against transgender individuals was rampant. The AIDS/HIV epidemic disproportionately affected the community. While the gay rights movement made significant strides, transgender rights often lagged far behind. Past standards of care were extremely restrictive, mandating dozens of very costly therapy sessions. Access to hormone medication was heavily gatekept. Widespread discrimination was prevalent; during this era, many transgender individuals were compelled to present according to their assigned sex at birth in workplaces, schools, and various public spaces. It was a rough period for the transgender community.
He is just tossing theories out there. Some of them don’t even make sense in context: the study is about trans-identified people
who have had SRS, so they have cleared all the hurdles related to "past standards of care [being] extremely restrictive" and "access to hormone medicate [being] heavily gatekept". These people cleared those supposed barriers — it would be odd to commit suicide in response to something that absolutely doesn’t affect you!
In reality, the elevated suicide rates in the 1980s likely resulted from widespread sexual violence, abuse, and discrimination faced by the transgender community in that era. It’s likely that the suicide rates were even more pronounced among those who did not access care.
Just complete speculation. Tony complains about people (incorrectly) using the study to say that SRS increases suicide, but then goes on to say that SRS lowers suicide. No evidence! Debunker, debunk thyself.
Again, the study makes no evaluation of the risks or effectiveness of gender affirming care.
A rare correct statement from Tony. The study design is such that it can’t say whether SRS is an effective treatment for gender identity disorder. Perhaps other treatments have worse outcomes, or better outcomes, but this isn’t something we can tell from the paper because it’s just not part of the study design.
Despite this, there are a wealth of studies that show that gender affirming care does save lives. A recent report from the medical journal, The Lancet, dated July 26, indicates that gender-affirming care is a form of preventative healthcare.
This is the Restar comment. "Restar significantly mispresents the evidence used to support numerous claims on at least five occasions"
Misrepresentations of evidence in "gender-affirming care is preventative care" - The Lancet Regional Health – Americas (
archive)
It’s vital to be informed about such misinformation, especially as it is employed to support policies that undermine science and potentially transgender individuals globally.
Right back at ya.
(@witchbitchaddi) · Feb 20, 2023 · 9:01 PM UTC
