Victor Davis Hanson
When I was young in the late 1950s, all 5–8-year-olds customarily had a rendezvous with a surgeon or GP “to take your tonsils out,” regardless of the absence of any prior chronic sore throat or infection.
(NB: I had forgotten that painful operation at six in 1959—until in 2006 I had inhaled ether to put me partially out during an emergency operation, on a wooden table in a red-crescent clinic in Tripoli, Libya for a ruptured appendix. The awful smell under the mask created an instant recollection of the hospital in Fowler, California 48 years prior, and the beloved elderly “Doc Nielsen” saying to a terrified six-year-old, “OK, Vic, Twin One, you are going first to sleep now.” Then came the gas mask, the horrific smell—and waking up with a sore throat and a terrible headache—but assuaged by a nice nurse with promises of endless postoperative ice cream!)
In those days, we were told the “science” mandated such a necessary preventative procedure to ensure a healthy throat for the rest of one’s life. (I had more, not fewer, strep throats after the operation, a plague that ended only in my early 40s.)
And the science now? We are told unless there is chronic infection, tonsils are valuable organs in preventing throat problems and they are not customarily removed. (My wife and I insisted that our three children never have their tonsils out, and yet never had to fight with doctors since the children’s sore throats were of normal frequency and the “science” we were told was now on our side.)
I note in addition that as a young kid my father suffered from “ulcer-like” pains due to “stress” and was given Rolaids and told to quit smoking and cut out an occasional martini. When I was in my fifties, he took a short dose of antibiotics and was told that H. Pylori was the real culprit but was now obliterated and his stomach suddenly healed. Will H. Pylori or a new enemy be the cause of ulcerative stomach distress two decades from now?
So let us be wary that the new science has recently discovered a pandemic of gender dysphoria that requires an arsenal of dangerous hormonal drug therapies, puberty blockers, and de facto mutilating surgeries on over a million young children who may well regret the pharmaceutical or surgical consequences decades from now.
Or was the growth, then, in the incidence of transgender identity by a factor of 20, from 250/100,000 in 1971 to 5,000/100,000 today the effort of academics, the media, and others to reboot what once was a rare phenomenon into something all young people might consider? Was it to be the Left’s last civil rights frontier? Was it to be the duty of legions of progressive teachers to advise their students, trapped in a matrix of right-wing intolerance, that “transitioning” is something that is natural, common, effective, and to be considered by every student regardless of their old-fogy parents, something perhaps akin to commonplace tonsillectomies in the 1950s?
Discussion (14)
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Your tonsillectomy story reminds of of the writer Roald Dahl in his autobiography “Boy” While on holiday in Norway he was walked to family doctor’s clinic and without any anaesthesia had his tonsils cut out. He was then then walked home! It was while sitting at the table with family that his grandmother said maybe he should go and rest as he’d just had an operation! Those were the days!
"The teacher said he was ADD and needed to see his pediatrician for medications." Unless the teacher, or any other school official, was (is) also a licensed MD they have no business practicing medicine without a license.
Well put, Prof Hanson. Lesson taken.
Good article and comments. Accepting "the science" is especially dangerous when it's pushed by self-serving media and politicians. Buyer beware.
When my oldest son was about 6-7 years old, he would often daydream in class. The teacher said he was ADD and needed to see his pediatrician for medications. To not do so would, my husband and I were told, would put our son at risk for a lifetime of failure. Dutifully we took our son in and his provider without hesitation prescribed Ritalin. After just a few days, my usually happy go lucky son was morose and verbalized that he wanted to die. The medication was stopped immediately. We sought other avenues including a low sugar diet and natural supplements. Though his teacher was not happy with our decision, we did not want to sacrifice our son to the pressures of a school system which expected compliance. Now, parents run the risk of losing their children if they don't hand them over to this woke transgender movement.
Maybe 1-out-of-20 of today’s “transgender personalities” is a psychopathological match for an actual subject of 1917 who was certain of being misgendered (in a body of the wrong sex). The rest are either weakly under the psycho-influence (psy-op?) of the current, woke trans-hysteria. Or they’re playing along to join in with the growing trans-crowd. Or using this govt-supported insanity for a con: male convict gets put into a female prison; horny HS jerk in girls’ locker room, &c. Let’s not miss the tsunami coming because our shoes got uncomfortably soaked.
Were there studies in 1917?Maybe a mistake Victor;if not I'm surprised.The advocates of this current ideolgy are far more injurious to youth then tonsilectomies ever were.Not to imply they were assinine.Thankfully,none of us 10 siblings ever had the procedure.Luck to have had our dear old Dr. Williams as our Pediatrician.The trans movement is so immoral it's hard to imagine these proponents as anything but evil incarnate.
Victor, thank you. At 74, I still have my tonsils and “wisdom” teeth. Happy to have them. You have hit the proverbial “nail on the head” yet again. That poor nail keeps getting smacked with your every article. Let’s imagine the nail head started out rusty, but now is getting shinier with every solid blow. This should be required reading. Thanks again.
The silver lining to leftist overreach (into obviously harmful absurdity) is the prospect of mounting, successful pushback.
Dear Dr. Hanson: My dad suffered from ulcers until his late 60's and is now still cured at 89 and eating anything he likes. My thought is that this modern hatred for anything historical extends even further to hating things learned from life experiences. If carried to its logical conclusion, let's just welcome back the "Dark Ages!" After all, people who lived then did not know it was dark! : )
Victor, I'm about the same age as you but I made it though will all my organs intact, although I think you have more scars from the events of life. I can also attest that many many so called standards and best practices I was taught as dogma have been amended several times. From my profession (engineering), to hobbies such as SCUBA, to CPR training, to just maintaining my house, things have changed due discoveries or trial and error. But other things more fundamental have not, or should not. Will we be soon mandated to believe directionality is relative and the sun does not necessarily rise in the "East", and that it is a western bias?