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Gender Affirming Procedures Now Illegal in Russia, While EU Tightens Laws
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed new legislation on Monday that effectively outlaws gender affirming care procedures, dealing a severe blow to Russia’s LGBTQ+ community.
The bill, which was overwhelmingly approved by both chambers of parliament, prohibits any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. Medical intervention to cure congenital abnormalities will be the lone exception.
It also nullifies marriages when one of the partners has “changed gender” and prohibits transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents.
The prohibition is supposed to be the result of the Kremlin’s crusade to safeguard the country’s “traditional values.” Lawmakers claim the act is necessary to protect Russia from “Western anti-family ideology,” with some calling gender transitioning “pure satanism.”
Russia’s persecution on LGBTQ+ individuals began a decade ago, when Putin initially declared an emphasis on “traditional family values,” which the Russian Orthodox Church embraced.
The Kremlin passed regulations in 2013 prohibiting any public encouragement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adolescents. Putin pushed through constitutional revision that prohibited same-sex marriage in 2020, and last year approved legislation prohibiting “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults as well.
European countries are becoming more cautious when it comes to gender-affirming care for kids. The Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board, for example, declared in March that it will change its present clinical recommendations for “gender-affirming care” for kids.
The new rules would limit the use of puberty blockers, transgender hormones, and transition-related surgeries to clinical research settings. Norway joins other European countries, including Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, in imposing restrictions on the provision of gender-affirming care to minors.
In the United States, a partisan divide is forming between states that allow and guarantee access to gender-affirming care for kids and states that prohibit or severely restrict gender-affirming care for minors. There doesn’t appear to be much room for compromise.
This year, 12 states have either prohibited or severely restricted gender-affirming care for adolescents. More Republican-led states are likely to follow suit soon.
Simultaneously, five Democratic-led states have enacted laws to preserve transgender healthcare coverage and access for youngsters.
According to proponents and advocates, the goal of gender-affirming care is to provide medical therapy that allows a person to “live as the gender they are.”
There appears to be some evidence that gender-affirming care improves health outcomes in the near term, with fewer despair, anxiety, and suicidality.
Access to healthcare for trans children, according to Angela Goepferd, programme director for gender health at Children’s Minnesota, is “lifesaving.” According to Goepferd, children who have access to gender-affirming care “have less anxiety, less depression, they think about suicide less frequently, and they act on those suicidal thoughts less frequently.”
In the United States, proposing guardrails can result in being labelled “transphobic” or a “science denier.”
However, as European experience suggests, prudence with regard to gender affirming care for minors may be necessary. A series of systematic reviews of evidence for the benefits and dangers of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones conducted in Europe found a low certainty of benefits.
Longitudinal data gathered and analysed by public health agencies in Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and England, in particular, have revealed that the risk-benefit ratio of youth gender change ranges from unknown to unfavourable.
As a result, there has been a gradual transition in care across Europe from one that prioritises access to pharmaceutical and surgical therapies to one that is less medicalized and more conservative, addressing potential psychiatric comorbidities and exploring the developmental aetiology of trans identity.
As a result, Europe has imposed restrictions on the availability of hormones.
Minors in most European nations can currently obtain puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones if they meet strict qualifying criteria. And this is becoming more common in the context of a closely regulated research setting.
Many European countries prohibit the use of transgender hormones until the age of 16, and then only after a series of psychotherapy sessions. Furthermore, the vast majority of European countries prohibit surgery until the age of 16.
From puberty blockers to cross-sex medications to surgery, European restrictions are either stricter than many states in the United States or tightening. For example, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare recommends that children under the age of 12 should not utilise puberty blockers outside of clinical studies.
In England, one of the grounds for closing Tavistock’s Gender and Identity Development Service in 2022 was physician concerns that some patients were referred to a gender transitioning pathway too soon.
Hilary Cass, who headed an independent evaluation of gender identity services for children and young people, stated that there is “insufficient evidence” to give clear recommendations on the widespread use of puberty blockers. She has instructed the National Health Service to “enrol young people who are being considered for hormone treatment into a formal research protocol.”
Gender experts in Finland have expressed worry that some patients administered pharmacological therapies did not match the stringent eligibility conditions outlined in the so-called Dutch Protocol.
In the 1990s, gender specialists in the Netherlands laid the groundwork for gender-affirming healthcare for minors. From the late 1990s through 2012, clinicians designed and thoroughly documented this “careful and cautious approach.”
The Dutch Protocol, originally envisioned, established a set of criteria for treatment eligibility. A proven early childhood development of gender dysphoria, a rise in gender dysphoria after pubertal changes, the absence of major psychiatric comorbidity, and demonstrable knowledge and understanding of the repercussions of medical transition are all required.
Treatment with puberty blockers can only begin after the age of 12. Cross-sex hormones and surgery, which have apparent permanent consequences, are not available until the ages of 16 and 18, respectively. If patients go through the transitioning process, they will receive psychotherapy throughout.
Finland was one of the first to adopt the Dutch Protocol for paediatric gender medicine. However, by 2015, Finnish gender experts had noticed that the majority of their patients did not fulfil the Dutch Protocol’s relatively tight qualifying conditions for pharmacological treatments.
Clinicians in other European nations also remarked that guidelines were not carefully followed, effectively allowing for what could be considered unauthorised treatment of many more youngsters, particularly females, than the Dutch experts who devised the initial protocol.
Finally, health authorities in Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom conducted comprehensive assessments of evidence regarding the benefits and hazards of hormone therapies.
As a result of these reviews, the findings suggested that research referenced in support of hormonal therapies for teenagers are of “very low” certainty. As a result, access to hormones was severely limited. It also promoted the idea that such treatments are still in the “experimental” stage.
De facto, there is no medical consensus regarding the use of pharmacological and surgical therapies in gender dysphoric minors, according to European health authorities and medical specialists.
In a February essay published in the Netherlands, the author concludes that “more research on sex changes in young people under the age of 18 is urgently needed,” emphasising the significance of studying the long-term implications of medicalized transgender care.
The article is notable for its comprehensive quotations from one of the founding members of the Dutch team of researcher-clinicians that pioneered the use of puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria over two decades ago.
To be sure, the Dutch have been more cautious—even more so than their European counterparts—in the use of therapies such as puberty blockers. Many Dutch doctors use “watchful waiting” before proceeding with therapies.
Furthermore, recent evidence analysed by Dutch physicians has given them pause concerning the Dutch Protocol’s watertightness. They discovered that some individuals who transitioned under a closely adhered to version of the Dutch Protocol appear to have significant reproductive regret, body shame, and sexual dysfunction when monitored.
Dutch academics presented these first findings at the World Professional Association for Transgender HealthWPATH Symposium in December 2022.
Americans who oppose state restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors frequently argue that Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have not eliminated hormonal interventions, and thus lawmakers who seek limits are presumably going against what European health authorities recommend.
Furthermore, proponents of America’s “affirmative-medicine” movement point to Europe, which does not prohibit gender-affirming care for youngsters. Because Europeans do not prohibit such care, legislators in the United States that pursue restrictions are contradicting European advice. However, this is simply a portion of a much larger and more complex story.
At the risk of generalising, the American approach gives kids more agency, with the medical establishment’s function primarily being to confirm a child’s claim that he or she is trans.
This affirmative model immediately removes several of the safeguards established by, instance, the Dutch Protocol, perhaps resulting in an inadequate lack of medical “safeguarding.”
A growing number of European countries are not providing “gender-affirming care” to kids in the same way that America does.
Indeed, Europe has been trending in a different path from the United States for several years, with Europeans exercising greater prudence when treating youngsters with gender dysphoria. Essentially, the message from European gender specialists is that until there is credible long-term proof that the benefits of youth gender transformation outweigh the hazards, it is best to limit most medical procedures to rigorous clinical research settings.
LGBTQ+ Mental Health: Challenges and Gender Affirming
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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue
Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.
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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.
(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million
Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.
Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.
The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.
Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.
Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.
He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.
“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.
Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.
SOURCE | AP
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