Influential trans care doctor once warned puberty blockers could cause permanent sexual dysfunction

[LGBTQIA+ InBev Child Butchers]

Marci Bowers, the 'Beyoncé of Bottom Surgery,' denies flip-flopping,
says blockers are 'safe and reversible'

The president of World Professional Association for Transgender
Health, Marci Bowers, has done a 180-degree turn on the use of sex
change drugs on minors during a critical puberty stage after
previously sounding the alarm about its potential to cause permanent
sexual dysfunction for the rest of a child's life.

The turn on hormone recommendations occurred around the time Bowers
joined WPATH as president, one of the most powerful organizations
which sets global standards for trans care for children and adults.
The professional standards set by WPATH are observed by leading
providers, including the U.S. Department of Defense, gender clinics
across the U.S. – such as Boston Children's Hospital, as well as
insurance companies.

Before joining WPATH, however, Bowers held views considered
controversial in the transgender health space.

"Unfortunately, [transgender care] has been hijacked by people who
have their own political agendas," she told Mount Sinai Health in
June 2021.

Bowers consistently spoke out about her concerns on whether puberty
blocking hormones should be used in critical early stages of
pubertal development called Tanner Stage 2.

"Every single child who was or adolescent who was truly blocked at
Tanner Stage 2 has never experienced orgasm. I mean, it's really
about zero," she said.

Bowers complained in a talk with Mount Sinai Health System that she
was getting heat from the left for "abandoning" the transgender
agenda by speaking out against puberty blocking hormones, also
called gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues (GnRHa), a class of
drugs which suppresses sex hormones by continually stimulating the
pituitary gland.

"I had concerns about initiating hormone blockers for children
because it affected their surgical results that might affect how
they respond sexually. And I got a lot of backlash on the left also
for people who felt like I was abandoning the cause," she said.

Regarding surgical results, Bowers was discussing the later
complications biological males who wish to have a sex-change
operation can face after taking GnRH because it can block penis
growth. Surgeons can have little tissue to work with for sex change
surgeries and will have to use skin grafts from other regions of the
body.

Such was the case for one of Bowers' patients who was put on puberty
blockers, Jazz Jennings. The penis Bowers operated on "was the size
and sexual maturity of an 11-year-old’s" and required a graft from
her stomach lining, according to the Free Press.

In 2019, Bowers performed Jennings' vaginoplasty surgery at age 17.
The surgery had a series of complications — including when it split
apart, requiring a visit to the emergency room – and numerous
revision surgeries. It appears that sometime after the surgery,
Bowers became opposed to administering puberty blockers to minors at
the Tanner 2 stage.

"I’m not a fan of blockade at Tanner 2 anymore, I really am not,"
Bowers told the Free Press in October 2021.

"We don't know [whether]… they are going to be able to achieve
sexual satisfaction," she also said at a Duke University event.

"It's important in relationships, and I know that from my work with
female genital mutilation survivors, that the lack of being able to
be intimate with a partner is very important. And so this is what
really raised the red flag for me," she told Mount Sinai.

However, according to the most recent standards from WPATH, which
Bowers endorsed, it stated they "recommend[ed] health care
professionals begin pubertal hormone suppression… after [transgender
children] first exhibit physical changes of puberty (Tanner stage
2)."

"The general problem with WPATH guidelines is that they are
primarily based on opinion and not on high quality research. That
judgment has been affirmed by structured reviews, carried out in the
United Kingdom, Norway, and Denmark. The current protocols used in
many if not most American clinics fail to adhere to the original
studies conducted in the Netherlands. And even those studies have
been harshly criticized for failure to adequately assess outcomes of
transition," said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of Do No Harm. "For Dr.
Bowers to demonstrate varied opinions on the use of puberty blockers
and other procedures is not surprising given the absence of high-
quality-evidence-based guidelines that are required to inform
clinical decisions."

That is the same stage at which Bowers warned can cause a child to
never able to be able to have an orgasm later in life.

Furthermore, an opinion article she published in The New York Times
in April did not mention the flags she raised about blockers, and
appeared to offer a full endorsement.

"When considering the growing body of overwhelmingly positive data
about adult transgender treatment, it makes sense that earlier
intervention, which can lessen the permanent effects of puberty,
would make gender transition easier for teenagers," Bowers said.

In the article, Bowers went on to definitively downplay the unknown
long-term effects that GnRH's can have on developing bones.

"Decreasing bone density — a side effect of puberty blockers — can
return to normal once puberty resumes, either by withdrawing the
blockers or administering cross-sex hormones," she said.

However, in direct contrast to Bowers' claim, one of Europe's top
medical schools recently said GnRH should be considered
"experimental" since it delayed skeletal development and bone
mineralization which may never fully restore – even with the
introduction of cross-sex hormones.

Bowers denied that she changed her point of view in a statement.

"My view of puberty blockers has never wavered— they are safe and
reversible. Medicine to delay puberty can be a helpful tool to give
adolescents, their families and their health care providers time to
understand a transgender young person's specific needs and develop a
plan for health care," she told Fox News Digital. "Puberty blockers
are in general a positive and important part of care for gender-
diverse adolescents. Medical science is constantly evolving, so
WPATH regularly reviews and updates Standards of Care to ensure they
reflect the latest science and medical research."

Bowers, a trained gynecologist, refers to herself as the "Beyoncé of
Bottom Surgery" for performing 2,250 vaginoplasties and 3,900 sex
change surgeries overall, including some on minors.

When Bowers was asked in the past about whether she believed WPATH
welcomed skepticism about GnRH, she replied, "There are definitely
people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t absolutely buy
the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there’s
no room for dissent."

"I think that’s a mistake," she told the Free Press.

Recently Bowers wrote an email to WPATH providers, which sails,
"Ultimately, what terrifies conservatives most is that gender
diversity is a force of nature that can no longer be contained by
religious conscription or enforcement of a gender binary."

https://www.foxnews.com/media/infleuntial-trans-care-doctor-once-
warned-puberty-blockers-could-cause-permanent-sexual-dysfunction