should be

“perhaps as much as 1 in 3 (or worse, depending on the measure used)”

This report description of a follow-up managed to reach to a record-tying pace of two hole sentences. But again, there are no details: no test descriptions, no data, no independent evaluation.

If I remember your reporting correctly, Jim, the head researcher, who went on to distance himself from therapy of this type for homosexuals, noted that quite often ‘feminine’ behaviors dissipated post-adolescent, on their own.

So, another factor, again, is no control group. That is, even in the presence of the data you rightly note is missing, e.g. independent eval, it is entirely possible that any given case would have turned out with exactly the same result, including doffing of feminine behaviors, if NO therapy had been done.

Finally, these considerations also give a moral insight into the public question about this therapy (which is often wrongly framed as individual rights).

You have a therapy that might help 1 in 6, say (even with my being generous here, the point stands).

At the same time, that therapy might damage up to 1 in 4 or perhaps as much as 1 in 5, with *increased* anxiety or worse, exacerbation of borderline feelings (or conflicted emotions/”values”), something that might be akin to aggravating a borderline personality disorder. At their worse, exacerbation might result in heightened risk of death (suicide), in some percentage of cases.

Is it ethical to offer such a treatment?