News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
There are almost 2 million people locked away in one of the more than 5,000 prisons or jails that dot the American landscape. While they are behind bars, these incarcerated people can be found standing in line at their prison's commissary waiting to buy some extra food or cleaning supplies that are often marked up to prices higher than what one would pay outside of those prison walls. If they want to call a friend or family member, they need to pay for that as well. And almost everyone who works at a job while incarcerated, often for less than a dollar an hour, will find that the prison has taken a portion of their salary to pay for their cost of incarceration. States and local governments spent $82 billion on corrections in 2019. To offset these costs, policymakers have justified legislation authorizing an ever-growing body of fees to be charged to the people (and, as a result, often their families) in prison and jail. Fees for room and board–yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic "boat" bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food–are typically charged at a "per diem rate for the length of incarceration." It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration. Those who work regular jobs in prisons such as maintaining the grounds, working in the kitchen, and painting the walls of the facilities earn on average between $0.14 and $0.63 an hour.
Note: Read about a woman who only served 10 months in bars, yet now owes $127,000 for her original 7-year prison sentence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case. Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing. This is a stunning rollback of due process rights for accused students. Under the new regulations, a student can be found responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he had committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the accused student to know the full evidence against him or providing a hearing during which he could defend himself.
Note: Sexual abuse is real and deeply important to address. Yet where is the due process in entrusting a single administrator working behind closed doors to decide the fate of accused individuals who aren't allowed to know the full evidence against them? Social justice activist adrienne maree brown has called attention to how abuse, harm, and conflict often get conflated, leading to damaging misinterpretations of behavior. Brown articulates: "We absolutely have a culture that affirms rape and abuse of power. But we also have a developing culture of moving to callouts and calling for cancellation very quickly." In a time where cancel culture has led to unprecedented in-house fighting and toxic public discourse, how do we honor context and healthy dialogue before accusing someone of sexual assault?
Physician and author Gabor MatĂ© is known for his insights into the imprints that trauma leaves on the mind and body–and for his compassionate guidance on healing. In MatĂ©'s most recent work, The Myth of Normal, written with his son, Daniel MatĂ©, he postulates that trauma–by which he means "wound," as in the original Greek–is woven into the fabric of Western society. It is so pervasive that it is the norm. "Take the politics of neoliberalism, [bestowed by] its patron saints of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and continued under different governments of all sorts: under neoliberalism, you've had more social isolation, elimination of social programs, insecurity and loneliness," [said MatĂ©]. "And each of these factors contributes to illness. In the U.S. last year [nearly] twice as many people died of drug overdoses than Americans who died in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars put together–in one year. This is strictly a result of social and economic factors. Politics has a lot to do with traumatizing people. And the other way [politics spreads trauma], which is a bit more subtle, is that very often we elect traumatized people to be our leaders, who then implement traumatizing policies." Once people realize that they were traumatized, they see there's nothing wrong with them fundamentally. They're not flawed, they're not damaged goods, but something happened that made them behave in ways that were self-harming or harmful to others.
Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to "understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul." Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.
Experts in illness and healing say the only way to come to grips with pain is to look at the root of things and understand the context. Dr. Gabor Maté and V (formerly Eve Ensler) have experienced personal trauma and turned it into effective fuel for making social change. "Loneliness is as much of a risk factor for illness as smoking 15 cigarettes a day," [said Maté]. "In the Western world, there's been an epidemic of loneliness. Twice as many Americans 10 years ago described themselves as lonely as 20 years earlier. Physiologically, loneliness works to undermine your immune system and disturb your hormones. It's a basis for illness. Loneliness is not an accident. It's an outcome and a factor in the way this society's organized, run, and managed day to day. It's an outcome of economic and political decisions made at the top over the last several decades." "Every time I have that "too much," I know this is what I must face," [said V]. "That's on a personal level. We have to do that on a historical level. If you don't want to look at the history of what happened to the Indigenous people in this country, it is where you must look. If you are afraid to look at what happened to African Americans in the 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow, that is where you must look. That does not mean it's going to feel good all the time. You're going to go through a process of humanization. You get to be deeply compassionate and deeply human and deeply open, more than you've ever been before."
Note: The Wisdom of Trauma is a powerful film that travels alongside Dr. Gabor Maté in his quest to discover the connection between illness, addiction, trauma, and society. Deeply touching and captivating in its diverse portrayal of real human stories, the film also provides a new vision of a trauma-informed society that seeks to "understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul." Anyone can watch this donation-optional film at the above link.
In the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, his legal team seemed to attempt to blame his heinous actions on junk-food consumption. The press dubbed the tactic, the "Twinkie defense." Various studies have demonstrated that consuming nutritious, whole foods rather than processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods improves mental health, mood, and academic outcomes. All heavily factor into one's likelihood of committing crime. In the 1980s. Under the direction of a nutritionist, food staff secretly altered the diet at a juvenile detention facility in Virginia to reduce the amount of refined sugar fed to inmates. Social scientist and criminologist Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler oversaw the trial. He found that prisoners on the better diet had a 45% lower incidence of documented disciplinary actions. This preliminary success led to a dozen trials at other correctional facilities. "In the twelve correctional institutions that we studied, through 1985, we found that there was a 47% reduction in documented offenses, infractions, and other indicators of antisocial behavior," Schoenthaler said. Is it possible that investing in better prison nutrition would save money overall? Schoenthaler thinks so. "A single preventable infraction that leads to four months of additional jail or prison time might cost us $10,000 or more. If you look at this through the larger lens of prevention and treatment along the entire criminal justice continuum, then the financial savings would be incalculable," he said.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
Widespread sexual abuse of children in the entertainment industry must be urgently stamped out, an independent UN expert told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, presenting hard-hitting findings and recommendations on how to end the scourge. "The sexual abuse and the exploitation of children within the entertainment industry resulting from unethical systems, structures, practices or abuse of power and authority is widespread," said Mama Fatima Singhateh, the UN Special Rapporteur on sale and sexual exploitation of children. Child performers in the entertainment industry are exposed to sexualized, violent and aggressive environments that are unsafe for their integral development and in which they can be exposed to the consumption of addictive substances, she said the report. The Special Rapporteur found that predatory sexual behaviour, including grooming, was accepted as the norm in the entertainment industry. Moreover, perpetrators often faced no repercussions for unlawfully exercising power and authority over young and aspiring child performers. "Abusive work conditions and portrayal of sexual abuse and exploitation of children in various entertainment platforms ... objectify and instrumentalise children," Ms. Singhateh said. "Victims and survivors have been met with silence, non-acknowledgement, lack of investigation, duress, intimidation or non-availability of reparation measures."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
In the 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Hussey and 16-year-old Leonard Whiting secured career-making roles in a film that retells the iconic love story of "Romeo and Juliet," the first film to use actors that were similar in age to the characters in the play. They were legally children when they were filmed in the nude together; the performance can now be found on sites meant for pornography. Fifty-five years later, Hussey, now 71, and Whiting, now 72, are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse. They claim that "Romeo and Juliet" director Franco Zefirelli assured the actors that they would be wearing flesh colored garments and would not be physically nude in the scene. This allegedly changed in the last days of filming when Zefirelli asked the actors to do the scene fully nude with makeup, according to the lawsuit. [Judy] Garland was forced to take barbiturates and other drugs and live on a death-defying diet while working with the studio. Garland wrote in an unpublished autobiography that she was constantly molested behind the scenes by older men, including Louis B. Mayer, the producer and cofounder of MGM. Alyson Stoner was made to act out a rape scene when she was only 6 years old. "At 6 years old, I enter a sterile white room where a stranger stands apathetically behind a camcorder on a tripod. On cue, I perform the scene. This morning, I'm being kidnapped and raped," Stoner wrote. She developed eating disorders – among other health problems – due to stress.
Note: Read more about the disturbing history of child sex abuse in Hollywood from the courageous voices of actor Corey Feldman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Several prominent Hollywood actors wrote letters of support for Brian Peck, the Nickelodeon dialogue coach convicted of child sexual abuse in 2004. In the Investigation Discovery documentary series "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," former "Drake & Josh" star Drake Bell accuses Peck of sexually assaulting him when he was 15, for the first time identifying himself as the victim at the center of the case. Peck was arrested in 2003 and the following year pleaded no contest to two child sexual abuse charges. But the documentary's fourth episode discusses Bell's surprise that Peck still received support in Hollywood after he was convicted. Before Peck was sentenced in 2004, several famous actors wrote letters of support for him, including James Marsden, 50, and Taran Killam, 41. In "Quiet on Set," Bell alleges that Peck, a dialogue coach on "The Amanda Show," subjected him to "extensive" and "brutal" sexual abuse. He also describes being "shocked" when he went to court for Peck's sentencing and found his "entire side of the courtroom was full" with supporters, noting there were "definitely some recognizable faces." During the sentencing, Bell ... made a statement to those supporting him. "I looked at all of them and I just said, 'How dare you?'" Bell recalled. "I said, 'You will forever have the memory of sitting in this courtroom and defending this person, and I will forever have the memory of the person you're defending violating me.'"
Note: Brian Peck was charged with 11 counts of child sex abuse. Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Corey Feldman says that the rejection of his self-financed documentary (My) Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys, in which he shared allegations of the abuse that he and his late friend, Corey Haim endured as children, left him with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). [The film] documents the sexual abuse Feldman and Haim allegedly suffered as child actors in the 1980s. Then known as "The Two Coreys," the actors starred in movies including The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. Feldman publicly named Jon Grissom, Alphy Hoffman and Marty Weiss as his alleged abusers in 2017. In the documentary, Feldman alleged that Haim told him that he was sexually assaulted by Charlie Sheen while they were filming the movie Lucas in 1986 when Haim was 13. Back in 2013, journalist Barbara Walters accused Feldman of "damaging an entire industry" with his abuse allegations. "The people that did this to both me and Corey [Haim] are still working, are still out there. They're some of the richest, most powerful people in this business," Feldman explained. "And they do not want me saying what I'm saying right now." Feldman and Haim had claimed that they were "passed around to pedophiles," adding: "They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and it would be mostly kids and there would be a handful of adult men. They would also be at the film awards and children's charity functions."
Note: Explore our archive of revealing reports from reliable media sources on high-level pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed during a Wednesday airing of The Five that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency can use information found on the Hunter Biden laptop to blackmail President Joe Biden. Watters' monologue was preceded by talks of the recent plea deal that the president's son reached with federal prosecutors earlier this week to avoid jail time on three federal charges. He failed to pay $1 million in taxes and faced a gun felony count. Conservative politicians and pundits in the media have used this to claim the Department of Justice is creating a two-tiered justice system. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump was formally indicted by the DOJ for 37 charges related to his handling of classified material. "The feds are never going to crack open the laptop as long as Joe Biden's president. His administration is not going to investigate corruption in the Biden family. It's just not going to happen," Watters told the Fox panel. "Plus, the FBI in the CIA has this is blackmail. They can just dangle it in front of Joe and he has to do whatever they say or else â€boop!'" Watters then called the former president an "outsider" in Washington. "But the bottom line is that insiders protect insiders. You said it the other day, Trump's an outsider. He goes to prison, his people go to prison. But if you're a Washington insider, you get to Hunter Biden treatment," Watters concluded.
Note: If the article fails to load, here's an alternate source. Read about how the intelligence agencies infiltrated the media to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and other important topics. While Hunter Biden was indicted for three felony gun charges and nine counts of tax-related crimes, his laptop also revealed suspicious business dealings with corrupt overseas firms.
Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as "I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me." In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier. A few months ago, [Konrath] and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s. Our biased minds tempt us to see the worst in people. The empathy decline reported 13 years ago fit that narrative and went viral. This decline is almost certainly an illusion. In other surveys, people reported on kindness and morality as they actually experience it – for instance, how they were treated by strangers, coworkers, and friends. Answers to these questions remained steady over the years. As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco's 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
[Loretta] Ross has worked at the forefront of the movement for reproductive justice. But recently she has become better known for championing "call-in culture," a philosophy that approaches someone's wrongdoing with accountability and, most importantly, love. In the summer of 2020 ... I felt myself crumbling. I called out snide comments by alumni of my college about Black Lives Matter protests, demanded people boycott the college newspaper ... and used Twitter to call out the behavior of fellow students. Each tactic left no room for discussion. Calling in, by contrast, asks us to always be the bigger person, even in the most hateful and painful situations. I ask Ross: Whose well-being are we prioritizing here? And why isn't it our own? Ross tells me about another Black woman who asked the same question. "I'm confused," Ross recalls the woman saying. "I don't want to fall into the stereotype of the angry Black woman. But I feel like if I embrace the calling-in strategies you're talking about, then I'm ... giving a pass to all this injustice. What should I do?" Ross responds with a question of her own: "Well, who are you inside? Go deep inside and find out who you are. What's the emotion that you feel is true to you?" "Inside, I feel like I'm filled with love," the woman replies. "Then, why aren't you leading with your authentic self?" Ross asks her. Accountability and love are not mutually exclusive, Ross explains.
Note: Smith College Professor and civil rights activist Loretta Ross worked with Ku Klux Klan members and practiced restorative justice with incarcerated men convicted or raping and murdering women. Watch Loretta Ross's powerful Ted Talk on simple tools to help shift our culture from fighting each other to working together in the face of polarizing social issues. Explore more positive stories about healing social division and polarization.
The Afghanistan Memory Home is a growing online archive of testimonies of endurance by ordinary Afghans during years of conflict and repressive rule under the Taliban. The virtual museum is an example of the kind of community-led initiatives that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described as "healing spaces" – local sites of nation-building where the traumas and resentments of war are salved through traditional forms of civic engagement based on cultural values, spirituality, and listening. These projects in reconciliation quietly persist almost everywhere people seek freedom from conflict or repression, from Afghanistan to Yemen. They often supplant the work of national transitional justice initiatives stalled by political disagreements or lack of cooperation. They also underscore that "justice isn't just punishment or prosecution and presenting evidence against perpetrators," said Ruben Carranza, an expert on post-conflict community healing. In South Sudan, for instance, a local peace and reconciliation process called Wunlit gave grassroots strength to a 2018 national peace agreement. Led by tribal chiefs and spiritual leaders, the "peace to peace" dialogue defused cattle raids and abductions between the Nuer and Dinka communities. In Iraq, the Ministry of Human Rights has relied on tribal, religious, and civil society leaders to help forge local support for a national dialogue on reconciliation. History has "taught us that relying solely on military force will not bring about lasting peace and stability," Hodan Ali, a Somali presidential policy adviser, wrote. The more durable work of peace involves empowering individuals and communities to tell their own stories – and listen to each other.
Note: Explore more positive stories about healing the war machine.
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America's leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option. Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There's a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness–it dies behind paywalls. Less than a third of Americans in a recent Gallup poll say they have "a fair amount" or a "a great deal" of trust that the news is fair and accurate. Part of the problem ... is that the platform companies, which are the largest distributors of free news, have deprioritized news. Meta has long had an uncomfortable relationship with news on Facebook. In the past year ... Meta has changed its algorithm in a way that has cost some news outlets 30 to 40 percent of their traffic.
Note: It's ironic that this story is behind a paywall. Read the complete article here using Textise, an excellent tool that converts most webpages into text-only versions. For a powerful reflection on the rise of paywalls and online ads in news outlets, read this Substack piece written by our news editor Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.
The House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the "compelled assistance" of US communications providers. The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge's permission. The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers. "They're pushing for a major expansion of warrantless spying on Americans," US senator Ron Wyden tells WIRED. "Their amendment would force your cable guy to be a government spy and assist in monitoring Americans' communications without a warrant." "Section 702 has been abused under presidents from both political parties, and it has been used to unlawfully surveil the communications of Americans across the political spectrum," says Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The Senate must add a warrant requirement and rein in this out-of-control government spying."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
One ALS drug made $400 million in sales for its maker. It doesn't work. A cancer treatment brought in $500 million. That one turned out to have no effect on survival. A blood cancer medication made nearly $850 million before being withdrawn for two of its uses. That drug had been linked to patient deaths years prior. All of them were allowed to be sold to Americans because of the US Food and Drug Administration's drive to get new drugs to patients quickly – sometimes even before they're done testing. Drug companies are profiting, though. Since 2014, they've made at least $3.6 billion in global sales of medications that have either later been shown to be ineffective or had most or all of their uses withdrawn in the US. There are a number of ways a drug company can get its treatment to patients faster: There's the "priority review" pathway, then "fast track," "accelerated approval" and "breakthrough therapy." The majority of new drugs in the US are approved through one or more of these sped-up pathways. Last year two thirds of all new drugs reached the market this way. One of the problems is that sometimes drugmakers resist pulling a drug off the market, even after it's obvious it doesn't work. Makena, a drug to reduce the risk of premature birth, received a sped-up approval in 2011. Eight years later, a large trial found it didn't work. Yet it took another four years for the FDA to force it off the market. Makena ... generated over $1.6 billion in sales.
Note: The US spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes among high-income countries. More than half of children now have chronic health conditions. What is behind this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on Big Pharma corruption and health from reliable media sources.
The publication of Hilary Cass's final report on healthcare for gender-questioning children laid bare the devastating scale of NHS failures of a vulnerable group of children and young people, buoyed by adult activists bullying anyone who dared question a treatment model so clearly based on ideology rather than evidence. Cass is a renowned paediatrician and her painstakingly thorough review was four years in the making. She sets out how the now-closed NHS specialist gender clinic for children abandoned evidence-based medicine. Significant numbers of gender-questioning children ... were put on an unevidenced medical pathway of puberty-blocking drugs and/or cross-sex hormones, despite risks of harm in relation to brain development, fertility, bone density, mental health and adult sexual functioning. Cass finds a childhood diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not predictive of a lasting trans identity and clinicians told the review they are unable to determine in which children gender dysphoria will last into adulthood. If this is indeed impossible, is it ever ethical to put a young person on a life-altering medical pathway? If there are no objective diagnostic criteria, on what basis would a clinician be taking this decision other than a professional hunch? Cass's vision is what gender-questioning children deserve: to be treated with the same level of care as everyone else, not as little projects for activists seeking validation for their own adult identities and belief systems.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
A robust British review found guidelines for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria ignored standards and are based on flimsy foundations. Pediatrician Hilary Cass' much-anticipated report found no reliable evidence on which to base gender-affirming care for youth; the rationale for blocking puberty in young children remains unclear and muddled and that the use of cross-sex hormones in the under-18s presents numerous unknowns. Cass said published studies suffer from "remarkably weak evidence," that results are "exaggerated or mispresented" by people on both sides of the debate over transgender health care to bolster their own viewpoint. Cass found that there is no solid evidence on the long-term outcomes of any of the interventions. Cass said the toxicity of the debate has been exceptional. "There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop," Cass wrote. The systematic review on puberty blockers found no evidence the drugs improve body image or dysphoria. The drugs might temporarily or permanently disrupt adolescent brain maturation, "which could have a significant impact on the young person's ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as having possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences," according to the Cass report.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
The toxicity of the culture war over youth gender medicine is well known to most of us. What's less well understood is how that poisonous climate affects the very cohort being argued about – and those who care for them. The Cass Review, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, examines the events and evidence (or lack thereof) that led to the closing of the UK's only public youth gender clinic, the Gender Identity Development Services. Social justice/civil rights framing has made it harder to reckon with what Cass calls the "exponential rise" in adolescent patients starting around 2014. Once it was mostly natal males who transitioned, but now it is mostly natal females, many of whom had no history of gender distress but did suffer from other mental health issues. As for the evidence about how to treat these patients and others who have sought care, Cass concludes: "The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." Individual studies may make claims about the efficacy of social transition, puberty blockers, or hormones, but they are too biased and low quality to draw conclusions from. As for the claim that these interventions prevent suicide, Cass reports that "the evidence found did not support this conclusion." Perhaps most important, Cass notes that "clinicians have told us they are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
Experienced professionals are increasingly scared to openly discuss their views on the treatment of children questioning their gender identity. This was the conclusion drawn by Hilary Cass in her review of gender identity services for children this week, which warned that a toxic debate had resulted in a culture of fear. Her conclusion was echoed by doctors, academic researchers and scientists. Some said they had been deterred from pursuing what they believed to be crucial studies, saying that merely entering the arena would put their reputation at risk. Others spoke of abuse on social media, academic conferences being shut down, biases in publishing and the personal cost of speaking out. Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology ... received abuse after publishing a systematic review of studies that investigated the impact of puberty blockers on brain development. Her review found that "critical questions" remained around the nature, extent and permanence of any arrested development of cognitive function linked to the treatment. The paper, which summarised the state of relevant research, was met with an immediate backlash. "I've been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away," Baxendale said. "Imagine what it's like if that is the first thing that comes up when people Google you? Anyone who publishes in this field has got to be prepared for that."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.