The fact that people submit to surgery proves that gender dysphoria is real and serious; but it is not well understood. Historically, medicine goes through three phases in the treatment of serious but poorly-understood ailments:
1. Observation plus placebos. This is cheap and ineffective.
2. Aggressive intervention into symptoms. This is expensive, risky, painful, and only partly effective.
3. Targeted treatment of causes. This is cheap, safe, painless, and effective; but it requires deep understanding of the relevant biology, which requires years of research.
Medicine is at stage 2 for the treatment of gender dysphoria. I speculate that a stage-3 treatment will involve medications that cause the patient's mind to match the body, rather than the other way around.
No comments:
Post a Comment