New data shows that more than 1,400 girls and young women in Australia started taking taxpayer-subsidised testosterone last year supposedly to treat the male disorder of androgen deficiency, which is typically caused by the testicles not doing their job.
This surprising trend follows a little-known rule change in 2015 removing the requirement that patients “must be male”, thereby enabling females who identify as the opposite sex or non-binary to get a public subsidy to masculinise their bodies with synthetic testosterone. The change was requested by an LGBTIQ+ lobby group, which complained of discrimination.
Last year, an estimated 1,433 females under the age of 34 started government-funded testosterone for androgen deficiency, almost 1,000 more than the number of males, who would indeed suffer from low levels of natural testosterone.
It is possible that the number of females starting testosterone is understated because for some years, trans-identifying biological females have been able to ask for their desired male “gender identity” to overwrite birth sex on their Medicare record, which flows through to PBS data, according to a spokesperson for the federal government agency Services Australia.
This use of testosterone is off-label, meaning the drug is not approved as a gender treatment by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which would need to be presented with studies showing the efficacy and safety of testosterone for gender dysphoria.
Advocates for the radical “gender-affirming” treatment approach claim that opposite-sex hormone treatment (testosterone for females and oestrogen for males) improves mental health and “saves lives”; advocates campaign for easier access to these hormones funded by taxpayers and insurers, and often resist safeguards as “gatekeeping”.
Systematic reviews, which make it difficult for activist clinicians to cherry pick studies and misrepresent findings, have found the evidence base for hormonal treatment of minors with gender dysphoria to be very weak and uncertain, so much so that it has been described as “experimental” in Finland and Sweden. Systematic reviews in the United Kingdom declared the evidence to be of “very low” quality.
The risks of testosterone drugs for females include cardiovascular disease, vaginal atrophy leading to hysterectomy, sterilisation and sexual dysfunction. Girls who begin taking the hormone as young as 13 are expected to continue it lifelong, suggesting potentially more serious health risks than for the typical male patient aged 40 or older.
Source: Gender on steroids – by Bernard Lane – Gender Clinic News