I think his comment is
interesting, serious, and still very speculative.
What I think he gets
right is the broad frame: pedophilia is not well explained as a mere moral failing or simple bad habit, and the research literature really has reported
neurobiological, neurodevelopmental, and connectivity-related findings. Reviews summarize structural and functional findings, while also stressing major methodological problems and heterogeneity across studies. A recent scoping review of biomarker research found focused DTI differences tied to genital responses to child stimuli, and also reported default-mode/frontoparietal connectivity differences in some studies. (
PMC)
What I think he
overstates is the jump from “there are connectivity differences” to “there may eventually be a cure by fixing the connectivity.” The current literature does
not give us a single known connectivity defect, a single developmental pathway, or a validated biomarker that clinicians can reverse. Even the newer biomarker review is mainly a map of heterogeneous findings and gaps, not a blueprint for targeted rewiring. (
PMC)
I also think his explanation is a bit too
white-matter/axon-centered. That is a sensible intuition, but it is not the only way a sexual pattern could become stable. A pattern could be hard to change because of a distributed organization across valuation, salience, inhibition, memory, body representation, and learned cue structure, even without needing massive long-range axon regrowth. That part is an inference, but it fits better with the broader neuroscience picture than “just add white matter.” The existing reviews show brain and cognitive differences, but not a simple lesion-like target. (
PMC)
His
cake analogy is good as a metaphor for developmental timing, though. Current treatment and prevention literature is still much more about
management, prevention, and risk reduction than about converting the attraction itself. The 2020 WFSBP guidelines say most paraphilic disorders are chronic, note that treatment choice depends on severity and risk of sexual violence, and explicitly state that
usually there is no change of sexual orientation or paraphilia content with treatment. (
wfsbp.org)
That point matters a lot: even in the one area where society has the strongest ethical reason to want change, the mainstream clinical literature still mostly supports
controlling fantasies/behavior, lowering drive, improving self-regulation, and preventing harm—not reliably creating a new adult attraction pattern. The 2026 review of arousal-management techniques says these methods remain a mainstay in offending treatment programs, but it frames them around modifying or managing paraphilic interest in rehabilitation contexts rather than demonstrating true preference conversion. (
PMC)
And that matches what prevention specialists themselves seem to think. In a 2024 qualitative study, most prevention-specialist clinicians believed attraction to minors was
unmodifiable or doubted its modifiability, even though they still worked to reduce risk and improve wellbeing. (
PMC)
So my honest take is:
- His first step is plausible: connectivity/development may contribute. (PMC)
- His second step is speculation: today’s science does not show that we can reverse that architecture in a targeted way. (PMC)
- His third step is probably too anatomically simple: the obstacle may be a distributed, multilayered sexual system, not just missing white-matter links. That is an inference from the broader literature, not something directly proven. (PMC)
So if I compress it into one sentence:
Cantor’s idea is a reasonable long-range hypothesis, but at the moment it is much closer to neuroscience speculation than to an evidence-based path to cure.
And this connects directly to our earlier discussion: even when a sexual pattern may have neurodevelopmental underpinnings, that does
not mean the practical answer is “rewire it.” Sometimes the realistic answer remains management, prevention of harm, and acceptance of what cannot currently be converted. (
wfsbp.org)
