HHS on Thursday released its report titled, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices.” The review, an HHS news release says, is sourced by an “evidence-based medicine approach” and reveals serious concerns about puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments and surgeries in an attempt to turn young boys into girls and vice versa.
This new guidance from the federal government emphasizes behavioral therapy and is a 180-degree turn from Joe Biden’s administration which saw more than 7,000 children chemically treated with “transition” drugs and more than 4,000 surgical interventions.
“These interventions were marketed to children on the basis of ideologically driven and financially motivated junk-science,” the report states.
Biden administration guidance relied heavily on standards devised by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization that critics say does not rely on evidence-based medicine (EBM) and whose members frequently improvise treatments without considering long-term patient outcomes.
Biden’s assistant secretary for Health, whose biological male name is Richard Levine, actually lobbied WPATH to lower proposed age limits for surgical interventions when the organization was drafting its controversial “Standards of Care Version 8.”
“Levine then issued federal guidance which promoted the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors,” the report states.
Levine, the admiral heading the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps from 2021-2025, presents as a female and prefers to be called "Rachel."
“HHS has systematically updated, eliminated all of the junk, fake science that was produced under the Biden administration promoting sex changes on children, promoting the idea of sterilizing children. That's been cleaned out. That's been removed, and new guidance is being issued,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said.
WPATH faced internal dissension a year ago when leaked documents and video footage showed members debating whether a minor should be allowed to give consent for his or her own life-altering surgery.
“What has been currently happening is, frankly, not what we need to be doing, ethically,” one medical professional tells his colleagues in that footage.
It was far from the first internal controversy at WPATH, freelance journalist Jesse Singal reported.
Gov't has a duty, NIH head says
“Our duty is to protect our nation’s children – not expose them to unproven and irreversible medical interventions,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”
Critics are attacking the HHS report, saying it questions standards for the treatment of transgender youth issued by the WPATH and is likely to be used to bolster the government’s abrupt shift in how to care for a subset of the population that has become a political lightning rod, The Associated Press reports.
Major medical groups and those who treat transgender young people sharply criticized the new report as inaccurate, the AP adds.
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, the director for Family Research Council’s Center for Family Studies, said on Washington Watch Thursday that Donald Trump’s administration is following the lead – a new lead – of many European nations on how to treat gender dysphoria.
Denmark is among the latest nations to alter its approach.
The Danish Medical Association provides one of the most sober discussions to date of the inherent medical and ethical uncertainties of providing minors with profound, life-altering interventions in the context of very limited understanding of the epidemiological shift in the population presenting for care, the growing rates of detransition, and the profound uncertainty about long-term outcomes, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine reports.
SEGM writes that while countries in Europe are increasingly leaning on one another to reevaluate practices, “the American medical establishment continues to double-down and do it alone.”
“Our counterparts over there who've been doing so-called 'gender-affirming care' for years … they have a lot more data to work with. They’ve all kind of backed away based on the research and also from clinical experience,” Bauwens told show host Jody Hice.
“During the Biden years, while we were moving full steam ahead, despite these reviews coming out of Europe, a lot of us were raising red flags saying the (U.S.-favored) studies have major methodological errors to them,” Bauwens added.
The studies preferred by the Biden administration failed to provide evidence that chemical interventions and surgeries reduced the psychological distress associated with gender dysphoria, she explained.
“Our government under the Biden administration was falsely using research to scaffold around gender-affirming care when really what this report showed in the bottom line is basically everything that has come from Europe, and what we have been talking about, that the science is just not there to support [gender-affirming care],” Bauwens stated.
Cass Review impact
Much of the European turnaround stems from The Cass Review, a comprehensive evaluation of gender identity services for children and young people in the United Kingdom. The review was commissioned in 2021 by National Health Service (NHS) England in response to growing concerns about such treatments.
The Cass Review found a lack of substantial evidence for the long-term safety and efficacy of puberty blockers and hormone treatments in minors. It stressed the need for psychological support and assessment before any medical interventions.
Bauwens argued it has had a big impact on government policy and approaches to treatment.
The Cass Review found that “if we strip away the topic and just look at the methods used to cause a reduction in distress, there’s no question you have to scrap this so-called intervention because it’s not making a difference in what it purports to do,” Bauwens said.
