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The debate on gender dysphoria perfectly captures all that is unsavoury about the intersection of science, medicine, and social media. Entrenched, even aggressively argued views are nothing new in science and medicine. But when it comes to gender dysphoria, just as with covid-19, there is little room for constructive dialogue. Unfortunately, what suffers is people’s welfare.
The priority for health professionals must be to offer the best possible care to their patients. Difficulties arise when the evidence base is preliminary or inconclusive. In that situation, when faced with a person seeking care, what is the best care to offer?
The dilemma is more acute if the person seeking care is a child or adolescent. This is the complex and difficult challenge that specialists in gender dysphoria must master to provide the best possible care to young people. John Launer describes the hostility and criticism that colleagues experienced at London’s Tavistock Clinic in striving “to make the best decisions they could in a situation where evidence was thin and the politics noisy” (doi:10.1136/bmj.p477).1