According to LessWrong, there appears to be virtually no published research on whether hormones matching someone's birth sex might help treat gender dysphoria—despite this seeming like an obvious area to study. A recent post surveying the literature finds only one historical reference: gender medicine pioneer Harry Benjamin noted in his nineteen-sixties work that testosterone treatment for his transgender patients generally failed to reduce dysphoria. The observation raises a meta-question about medical research: why do some straightforward research directions go unstudied, even when they might inform treatment options?

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