Medical associations counter calls to investigate critics of child sex change surgeries
A group of medical associations are refuting claims that questioning the ethics of performing sex change surgeries on children and teens will lead to threats against hospitals and physicians that perform such body-mutilating procedures.
Led by the American College of Pediatricians and the Catholic Medical Association, leaders of a group of medical associations sent a letter to the American Medical Association, the Children’s Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics on Friday, urging child advocates within the medical community to embrace science rather than ideology.
Other signatories included the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, the Coalition for Jewish Values Healthcare Council, the Coptic Medical Association of North America and the National Association of Catholic Nurses, USA.
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The letter comes nearly a month after its intended recipients urged U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate “the organizations, individuals, and entities coordinating, provoking, and carrying out bomb threats of personal violence against children’s hospitals and physicians across the U.S.” The Oct. 3 letter to the DOJ claimed that “from Boston to Akron to Nashville to Seattle, children’s hospitals, academic health systems, and physicians are being targeted and threatened for providing evidence-based health care.”
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The purported “evidence-based health care” the letter refers to prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children and teens and performing irreversible, body mutilating surgeries, including the castration of boys and elective double mastectomies on girls who say they're suffering from gender dysphoria and want to look more like the opposite sex.
Signatories of Friday’s letter agreed with those who sent the Oct. 3 letter to the DOJ, adding that “tactics of harassment, intimidation and threats of violence can never be justified,” stressing that “we join you in advocating for the elimination of these immoral activities.”
“Many of our members have been the recipients of these same tactics of harassment, threats, intimidation, and job loss in efforts to bring attention to the major deficiencies in current data and on the safety and efficacy of ‘gender affirming’ medical interventions,” the letter continued.
“There is a profound difference between eminence-based medicine and evidence-based medicine. We see ongoing active efforts to suppress any discussion of the merits of the existing data used to support gender-affirming medical interventions to adolescents seeking to alter the appearance of their body to conform to their perceived gender identity.”
Leaders of the medical organizations contended that such practices are “not only violate of the principle of scientific inquiry, but also of constitutionally protected free speech.”
They added: “Expression of concern over the ability of youth to understand and consent to irreversible surgical interventions that result in loss of fertility and adult sexual function does not constitute harassment or intimidation. The posing of these questions and concerns reflects the normal scientific and medical dialogue process. Respectful debate and disagreement provide a basis for furthering scientific inquiry that leads to genuine improvement in medical care to the patients we serve.”
The letter concluded with a call on the recipient organizations to “join the organizations we represent in critical appraisal of the merits and limitations of current scientific evidence in the growing field of gender medicine.” The signatories urged the groups to express “a willingness to consider alternate hypotheses on both the etiology and optimal management of sex-gender identity discordance.”
“The integrity of the scientific method and adherence to true evidence-based medicine depend upon genuine efforts to recognize and minimize bias, avoidance of contamination by ideological agendas, and a continual striving to elevate knowledge to the highest standards of excellence.”
The letter comes as several states, including Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas, have banned prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors and disfiguring surgeries in light of concerns about the long-term effects of such procedures. The American College of Pediatricians, one of the groups that signed onto the letter, has identified some of the side effects of puberty blockers as “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.”
The medical organization listed side effects of cross-sex hormones as “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.” The Oc
t. 3 letter from the American Medical Association and other major medical organizations follows undercover reporting from Chaya Raichik, who operates the Twitter account Libs of TikTok.
Raichik has contacted several children’s hospitals in the U.S., posing as a parent seeking to obtain gender transition services for her child. Raichik’s recorded phone conversations with children’s hospital officials revealed a willingness on the part of hospital staff to schedule appointments for such procedures.
Her undercover phone calls, combined with additional reporting by Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, prompted children’s hospitals to edit their websites to remove references to gender transition procedures that they perform on children. Raichik shared her undercover conversations with Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., while Walsh’s reporting focused on Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Following pushback from Walsh’s reporting, Vanderbilt announced that it was halting the performance of gender transition surgeries on minors. For its part, Children’s National Hospital has denied all allegations of wrongdoing in a previous statement to The Christian Post.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
