Testing the so-called “volunteer’s dilemma” — individuals being less likely to cooperate when they are in a large group — researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom have found an exception the rule: Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), small fish with colorful, feather-like tails, were more likely to risk approaching a predator to gather information for the shoal when they were part of a larger group.
Various studies have demonstrated “volunteer’s dilemma” in humans, and mathematical models suggest that individuals in larger groups should be less willing to cooperate. Individuals in larger groups face greater competition and an increased risk of disease, compared to those in smaller groups.
Rebecca Padget, a postgraduate research student at Exeter’s Center for Research in Animal Behavior, said, “When faced with a possible predator, guppies have to balance risks. At least one guppy needs to approach to find out if there is a threat, and if it does that, it could get eaten; but if none of the guppies take this risk, the whole group is in danger.”
For their test, the researchers placed a clay model of a pike cichlid (a natural predator of guppies) in a tank containing groups of five, 10, and 20 guppies. It turned out that the guppies in the large groups were most likely to approach and inspect the predator and return to the group. Previous research has shown that their behavior can signal danger to others.
In military situations, that willingness to take a personal risk is part of the job, but in civilian life, people tend to hesitate to act in hopes that someone else can do it. There is the reputation of the cold New Yorker who will ignore someone dying on the sidewalk.
Yet that is not always true. People rally together during emergencies such as the recent flooding across the country and particularly in our corner of the Northeast. People from the Lakes Region of New Hampshire traveled to Vermont to assist those cut off by flood waters or to help reinforce structures against flood damage.
Yet it is in the small things that cooperation excels. Even in “cold” New York, when someone is lost or confused, there is usually someone to step forward to help. In gatherings like concerts, swimming holes, and hikes, if someone is hurt or needs attention, someone is always ready to respond.
That was apparent when a music patron at Meadowbrook (Bank of NH Pavilion) was apparently overcome by the heat. When efforts to wake him up failed, a stranger went to alert authorities, and there was a prompt response from medical, fire, and police personnel. By the time they arrived, the individual had awakened and had no need for the care they were prepared to provide.
Examples of such cooperation are more abundant than people generally realize, and perhaps “volunteer’s dilemma” is an unsubstantiated social theory that has been accepted as fact without enough research to duplicate the initial findings.
That is something that appears to be happening in the medical field with “gender-affirming care”. Hannah Barnes, an investigations producer at the BBC’s Newsnight and author of Time To Think, has followed the use of puberty blockers and other procedures for youths with gender dysphoria at Tavistock, from its inception to its imminent closure. Britain’s National Health Service has ordered the closure of the Gender and Identity Development Service at Tavistock and recently announced it would be banning the use of puberty blockers for children, except for those enrolled in a tightly regulated clinical trial.
An independent review had discovered “significant uncertainties” about the long-term effects of the drugs, which had previously been touted as totally reversible. Tavistock, which operated for nearly 35 years, was found to be promoting options that are “not safe or viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender related distress,” according to the National Health Service. Tavistock will close in March 2024.
“No one is questioning someone’s identity or that trans people should have anything other than happy lives free of harassment,” Barnes said. “It wasn’t about identity…. It’s about ‘Are vulnerable young people being given the best and safest care possible in each and every case?’”
The National Health Service is advocating a more holistic approach with a greater emphasis on mental health with people who are experts in working with young people. “You didn’t have to be a gender expert; you needed to understand adolescents and mental health, and maybe autism and neurodiversity and trauma,” said Barnes.
Yet while the U.K, Sweden, and Norway have made similar policy decisions to limit gender care for children, there is a strong push for gender-affirming care for minors in the United States, and treatments with puberty-blockers, mastectomies for young girls, and hormone treatments are being promoted by the medical community.
Barnes told The Free Press, “This is about children receiving off-label drugs and doing something potentially major to their bodies. For some children, that will obviously be the right path, but when we started looking into it, we found that there were ten clinicians — a quarter of the staff — at the Gender Identity Development Service (or GIDS) that had expressed quite serious concerns at this point.”
Barnes obtained the audit by David Freedman, a social sciences researcher, through a Freedom of Information request. Freedman found that young people in England and Wales were being referred too quickly for physical interventions, without adequate exploration into some of the issues the youths were experiencing. The clinic’s medical director, Dr. David Taylor, had written in a report, “if we’re going to do this, we need to do it properly. We need to conduct proper research. How are these young people using the blocker? Are they using it as time to think, or what else is going on? Who are the people that we’re seeing?” Taylor felt that puberty-blockers should be a last resort, after therapy.
The CQC, Britain’s healthcare inspectorate, found there was a lack in expertise to deal with young people with autistic traits who, according to Tavistock’s own figures, made up 35 percent of referrals at one point.
“[J]ust as there were different ways into gender dysphoria, there had to be different ways out of it as well,” Barnes observed.
There have been movements in several states to ban gender-affirming care to minors, giving them time to consider the risks as adults, but those efforts have been misconstrued as anti-LGBTQ sentiments. To be sure, anti-LGBTQ beliefs help to get such legislation passed, but there also are those who recognize that gender dystopia is too complicated an issue for a single simple solution. Health care is a nuanced profession, but many professionals are reluctant to speak up in the current polarized social culture.
“These are professional people who’ve dedicated their working lives to helping young people, and what they were saying boils down to: This is not good clinical practice. This isn’t how we’ve ever practiced in other places we’ve worked. Somehow, … the same questions that we would ask normally were not welcome.”
Someone must be willing to take the risk for the good of the group.
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