The transgender cult activity in the United States is alive and well when it comes to caring for children, being constantly enabled by the Democrats and their liberal media stenographers. But there are other nations with established liberal/socialist societies that have begun to examine the actual science around supposed treatment for gender dysphoria and started to step back from the edge. One country leading this movement back toward something resembling sanity is Sweden. As Wesley Smith reports this week at National Review, the country’s National Board of Health recently updated its guidelines on medical care for minors who begin to identify as transgender, nonbinary, or “gender fluid.” They will now focus on “psychosocial care” and counseling rather than rushing into hormone treatments, puberty blockers, or surgery.

Sweden’s national board of health just updated its guidelines on the care of children with gender dysphoria, and “caution” is its new watchword. It declares that extended psychosocial explorations are key. From its announcement (Google translation):

“Young people suffering from gender dysphoria need to be able to quickly receive an investigation and be offered adequate care measures, based on the health-care system’s assessments of care needs. Good psychosocial care is fundamental, says Thomas Lindén, head of department at the National Board of Health and Welfare.”

Contrary to the Biden administration’s and gender activists’ assertions that the science is settled — there is a paucity of studies on the best approach to caring for gender-dysphoric children.

Not only are the Board’s recent conclusions not shocking, but they should be obvious to anyone with a background in medicine. They concluded that insufficient documentation and follow-up care records for pediatric gender dysphoria patients exists to draw firm conclusions. They further noted that the available data is “insufficient to assess the effects of puberty-inhibiting and gender-sensitive hormone therapy of children and young people.”

We’ve covered this situation long enough here to respond by saying, “obviously.” There isn’t one long-term, comprehensive study that’s been done on the effects of pumping these levels of cross-sex hormones into children over extended periods of time. The so-called puberty-blocking drugs being given to young children were never approved for these uses by the FDA. (They were approved for treating a couple of specific forms of cancer.)

They are also putting the brakes on performing mastectomies on minors. They go on to refer to the “documented prevalence of detransition.”  That’s rather shocking to see because it’s almost completely verboten in American news media to even acknowledge the people who detransition and come back to reality, often being badly scarred (both physically and mentally) from their journey.

Smith makes the critical point that what we’re seeing, particularly among students in public schools, is very likely not an “outbreak” of actual gender dysphoria, which was considered until quite recently to be incredibly rare. We’re probably dealing with a “social contagion” akin to occasional spikes in suicide rates among specific groups of otherwise healthy people.

So how did the Swedes manage to figure this out, but governments and media outlets in the United States continue to plod down the same destructive path? Our own Dennis Prager sums up how we arrived at this juncture, declaring that,  “We are the worst” when it comes to protecting children.

We are, I believe, the worst society in the world in terms of hurting children deliberately in our medical professions. I’m referring specifically to the hormone blockers, mastectomies on girls who are perfectly healthy, and the like. I think we’re the worst society in the world in that regard.

Do you know how hard it is for me to formulate such words? Because I have so believed all of my life in American exceptionalism. Now America in this regard is exceptionally bad, sick, vile. The medical profession has disgraced itself in the United States of America. It’s a disgrace.

Harsh words indeed, but they need to be repeated loudly and the medical profession needs to take note. We have long since reached a crisis point and too many people are meekly going along with this and doctors are acting irresponsibly. The vast majority of people obviously know that biological sex is the same as gender. This is real, and critical to the development of our species. But they don’t speak up because a very loud and aggressive minority will try to cancel them if they do. It needs to end.