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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Yeah, that's some suss methodology

To gather a reliable data set, Do No Harm identified procedure codes and national drug codes (NDC) commonly used in “gender-affirming care.”

i.e. there's absolutely no reason to think these codes aren't also used for other things, they just happen to show up commonly in gender-affirming care.

The article itself notes that this contradicts basically every other study out there.

"Data from various sources, including NPPES and external data providers, was assumed to be accurate and used for enriching the dataset."

"We just assumed this stuff was accurate" should not inspire any confidence in these results

there remains a possibility that some of the billing data may reflect treatments administered for congenital conditions or other non-gender transition-related reasons. Consequently, caution should be exercised when interpreting the data, as these codes may capture a broader range of medical treat

The explicit disclaimer...

Source Data Accuracy: The accuracy of our analysis depends on the quality and reliability of the source data

The other explicit disclaimer...

Note: (...) ‘55970 - Intersex surgery; male to female’. (...) was designated “high confidence that the procedure/drug is used for gender transitions”

Oh, okay, are we including intersex people in this? I thought this was a conversation about transition.

Hair removal by electrolysis

This is listed under surgical codes...

Electrolysis.

I'm sorry to say this report is hot bullshit.

Looks like naraburns link is a lot more reliable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9555285/ gives us 209 patients over a 7.5 year period, so 30 instead of 5,7000

Looks like naraburns link is a lot more reliable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9555285/ gives us 209 patients over a 7.5 year period, so 30 instead of 5,7000

His paper is from a single clinic, not the whole country, and it's for a single type of surgery. A rough eyeball-extrapolation of that into the entirety of US would give you roughly the number from my link.