The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reaffirmed its support Thursday for providing children with transgender hormones and surgeries – so-called “gender-affirming care” – at the same time, it announced a review of medical research on the life-altering treatments.
The medical organization reaffirmed its 2018 position on providing hormone drugs and surgeries to young people who are uncomfortable with their biological sex.
The AAP will commission a systematic review of the evidence backing transition care for minors, while reaffirming its 2018 statement of support for such treatment. UK and Sweden's reviews have found the evidence backing such treatment is of low quality. https://t.co/iZikTds9cR
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) August 3, 2023
“The board has confidence that the existing evidence is such that the current policy is appropriate,” AAP Chief Executive Mark Del Monte told the New York Times. “At the same time, the board recognized that additional detail would be helpful here.”
European nations such as the UK, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, and Switzerland have all moved to a far more cautious approach in recommending transgender medical treatments for children and teens – even to the extent of establishing psychotherapy as the primary treatment for gender dysphoria.
Regarding the reassessment in these countries, Del Monte told the Times, “They engaged in their process, we’re engaging in our process.”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, an organization of physicians and others concerned about the politicization of healthcare, said in a statement sent to The Star News Network that “by reaffirming its support of so-called gender-affirming care for minors, the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to condone the harm of children who deserve so much more.”
Nevertheless, Goldfarb added he is “glad to see them acknowledge the reality that current scientific evidence raises serious doubt about the safety and efficacy of pediatric gender medicine by commissioning a systematic review of current medical research.”
Last week, Do No Harm applauded those “doctors around the world” who are “speaking up” about the “significant” risks associated with childhood medical gender transition and the lack of evidence supporting the claim that transgender hormone drugs reduce suicide risk.
The Wall Street Journal published a letter to the editors, signed by 21 clinicians and researchers from South Africa, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the United States, that challenged the Endocrine Society’s latest statements still recommending “gender-affirming care.”
The letter’s signers challenged what they referred to as Endocrine Society President Dr. Stephen Hammes’s “misleading claim that more than 2,000 studies published since 1975 validate his belief” that transgender hormone treatments “improve the well-being of children with gender dysphoria and reduce the risk of suicide,” he wrote.
Hammes stated in a Journal letter to the editor dated July 5 that a recent op-ed titled “The Endocrine Society’s Dangerous Transgender Politicization,” penned by Do No Harm senior fellow Dr. Roy Eappen and the organization’s research director Ian Kingsbury, “ignores scientific evidence and the conclusions reached by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other reputable medical organizations.”
The signers of the letter challenging Hammes, however, observed:
Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret.
“Dr. Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review, including the review published by the Endocrine Society, which states, ‘We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide,’” the signers continued. “There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide-prevention measure.”
The American College of Pediatricians, which counters the AAP’s recommendation of “gender-affirming care,” has noted as well:
There is not a single long-term study to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transgender-believing youth. This means that youth transition is experimental, and therefore, parents cannot provide informed consent, nor can minors provide assent for these interventions. Moreover, the best long-term evidence we have among adults shows that medical intervention fails to reduce suicide.
During a recent House subcommittee hearing, de-transitioner Chloe Cole testified that transgender hormone drugs and surgeries “ruined” her childhood and left her with “lifelong irreversible harm.”
“The gender specialist I was taken to see told my parents that I needed to be put on puberty blocking drugs right away. They asked my parents a simple question: ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter, or a living transgender son?’”
Cole explained to the lawmakers the fear of suicide in the “transition-or-die” narrative hits parents very hard:
This was the moment we all became victims of so-called “gender-affirming care.” I was fast tracked onto puberty blockers, and then testosterone. The resulting menopausal-like hot flashes made focusing on school impossible. I still get joint pains and weird pops in my back but they were far worse when I was on the blockers.
After her double mastectomy at age 15, Cole told the members of Congress her grades in school “plummeted,” and she became suicidal:
Everything that I went through did nothing to address the underlying mental health issues that I had. My doctors, with their theories on gender, thought that all my problems would go away as soon as I was surgically transformed into something that vaguely resembled a boy. Their theories were wrong. The drugs and surgeries changed my body but they did not, and could not, change the basic reality that I am, and forever will be, a female.
Goldfarb said Do No Harm “will closely monitor” AAP’s systematic review of current medical research on gender-affirming treatment “to ensure it is robust and expansive in nature, unbiased, and thorough.”
“We also encourage other societies, such as the Endocrine Society, to commission the same,” he added.
The AAP’s reaffirmation of “gender-affirming care” while they review the research on its practice comes as the issue has generated a firestorm of controversy.
As the Journal reported last week, Democrat governors in 14 states have signed either legislation or executive orders that declare their states to be sanctuaries for parents wanting their children to have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries, such as elective double mastectomies.
The flurry of outreach to the increasing number of children claiming to be of a gender that is incompatible with their biological sex appears to be a reaction to Republican-led states, 19 of which have sought to protect children and teens from a booming transgender medical industry by prohibiting the drugs and surgeries that even some transgender medical professionals say produce such life-altering effects that most young people are not able to competently consent to the treatments.
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
