In light of its politicized vote in 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently reaffirmed its support for hormones and surgery for minors but also seemed to bow to pressure by stating it will conduct more research. That reassurance didn’t mean much to the doctors at the American College of Pediatricians, a rival and more right-leaning organization.
Quentin Van Meter, speaking for the American College of Pediatricians, tells AFN the Academy is not promising a “systemic review” of its practices.
“They allude to there has been so much published that bolsters our original conclusion,” he says, referring to their recent claims, “and what we're doing is that we're redoing this statement with what we call a ‘systemic review’ to prove that we're right.”
That doesn’t meet the definition of a “systemic review,” he counters, because such a review must be down outside of the organization by an independent body, which obviously is not the case.
Over the previous five years, since that 2018 vote, the transgender controversy has exploded and influenced everything from college sports and military readiness to elementary school lessons and school district policies.
What was once recognized by the American Psychology Association as a mental disorder was watered down in 2013 thanks largely to homosexual activists who embraced the “T” as part of their expanding alphabet. According to those activists, a transgender person should be encouraged to “live your truth” and “be your true self." Critics who push back – especially women – are called “transphobic” and, worse, are accused of making transgender people suicidal by “misgendering” them or “deadnaming” them.
The medical community has been sucked into the controversy, too, and supplying puberty hormones and performing surgery on minors is referred to as “gender-affirming care.”
Over in liberal Europe, meanwhile, medical boards in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, and France are pumping the brakes on under-18 “gender-affirming care” based on scientific reviews, according to a U.S. News and World Report story from July.
Last year, the National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden said hormone treatments should be given “only in exceptional cases,” the story said. Norway considers hormone blockers experimental and a medical board in France similarly cited concerns about growth, weakened bones and a risk of infertility.
Back in the United States, Van Meter says our country’s own national pediatric group is merely pretending to conduct a thorough review.
“It's gonna be a sham,” he predicts. “It's so obvious the outcome has already been determined before the review has even been launched and so it's no benefit at all. It's just more non-science, more ideology trumping science.”
