“It's very motivating to me to actually provide the evidence to show the benefits of hormones that I see every single day,” said clinician Brendan Nolan.

Actual evidence from actual scientists.

[Image description: A patient holds bottles of medications for hormone replacement therapy as part of her gender-affirming care.]

  • Jo@readit.buzz
    2·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for that.

    Lack of blinding is a serious issue for subjective outcomes but blinding when treatment effects are obvious to both intervention and control groups is dishonest (Pharma does it all the time to make their trials look more credible than they are).

    Open label is the norm for cancer trials for exactly this reason. It is important to consider the biases that may arise, in subjective endpoints especially. But it is ludicrous to dismiss research on this basis alone. We can’t randomise 12 year olds to become lifetime smokers or not, let alone use placebo controls, but we do know that smoking kills. It’s just a bit more complicated to prove it when perfectly designed RCTs are not possible.