Are the walls closing in on the trans-industrial complex?

Are the walls closing in on the trans-industrial complex?

To answer that right off the bat: It sure looks like the walls are closing in, though it’s way too early to be spiking the football. But there is good news on protecting children from ideologues who want to harm young bodies with toxic drugs and other irreversible procedures.

And that news is coming from an unlikely source — The New York Times, a reliable left-wing news outlet that is bucking progressive orthodoxy on so-called “gender-affirming care.”

As you likely know, “gender-affirming care” is the left’s euphemism to mask its radical tactics in treating individuals with gender dysphoria. The White House is so intent on offering these dangerous treatments to minors that they will deny federal funds to hospitals that refuse to engage in human experimentation. Health and Human Services head Xavier Becerra made this threat explicit in recent Congressional testimony.

Make no mistake, though — these are experiments. The “science” behind this “care” isn’t settled, despite what the left would have you believe. How could it be, when both the protocols for gender dysphoria and the rapid rise of kids thinking they can change their sex are recent phenomena?

One would expect a cautious approach to guide the medical and political establishments, not a rush to prescribe cross-sex hormones to minors. Remarkably, it seems some at The New York Times agree with this prudent strategy.

Recently, one of their writers interviewed Dr. Hillary Cass, a renowned pediatrician in England who was the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health before retiring. She’s a big deal, in other words.

The name Hillary Cass may sound familiar to those following the Alphabet Army’s march on America’s youth. In 2020, the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) tasked Dr. Cass with conducting “scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care.” In addition, she interviewed “young patients, their families, transgender adults, people who had de-transitioned, advocacy groups, and clinicians.”

The review was comprehensive and spanned four years.

Dr. Cass was appointed in the first place because of the “disarray” stemming from the U.K.’s only transgender clinic, as The New York Times put it. Whistleblowers complained about the “pressure” to prescribe children “puberty-blocking drugs.” What’s more, the clinic was sued by a former patient who alleged she was prodded into transitioning “after superficial conversations with social workers.”

The medical corruption was enough for British officials to shut down the Tavistock operation and get serious about genuinely helping young people confused about their gender. This is where Dr. Cass’s multi-year study comes in.

Here’s how The New York Times summarized her findings:

“Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was ‘remarkably weak.’ On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with ‘extreme caution.’”

Consequently, Britain, like many other European nations, has suspended puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children, with very few exceptions.

But here’s the kicker. The New York Times didn’t just highlight Dr. Cass’s discoveries; it gave her a platform to expand on her analysis and address her critics.

Dr. Cass reiterated “just how poor the evidence base is in this area,” stating that the rush to transition youngsters was a failure of the medical profession:

“Some people have questioned, ‘Did we set a higher bar for this group of young people?’ We absolutely didn’t. The real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of pediatric practice.”

She added that the medical industry’s goal should be to help young people “thrive” holistically rather than isolating gender as the sole factor. This means assessing the patient’s mental health and any “undiagnosed neurodiversity” before deciding that little Johnny should have been born a Jane.

The Times reporter then questioned why the American Academy of Pediatrics can look at “the same scientific literature” and arrive at “very different conclusions,” such as the claim that the transitioning model is “grounded in evidence and science.” Cass responded by accusing the group of “misleading the public” by “doubling down” on flimsy research, suggesting they’re under “political duress” to reach certain predetermined outcomes because they are a “fairly left-leaning organization.”

Perhaps more surprising than the NYT giving a critic of today’s gender identity craze a platform is that even the paper’s readers agreed with Dr. Cass in the comments section, which was highlighted by Hot Air’s John Sexton.

This is one from a high school teacher:

“15th year of high school teaching here, and I just want to say, PLEASE, AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics], wake up. Every single student I have worked with who is trying to transition has other major comorbid mental health struggles. All of those struggles were pre-existing to gender dysphoria. How can anything mental that is diagnosed as ‘rapid onset’ in the adolescent years not at least be critically studied for social contagion?

Cass is so correct when she says that many of these amazing young people need treatment for depression, neurodiversity struggles, ADHD, or eating disorders. As an educator who has worked with ‘clusters’ of students experiencing ‘rapid onset’ gender dysmorphia, so many teachers are horrified by what we are ‘throwing’ at these kids without studying it.”

Or how about this remark from an avowed lib:

“Physician who votes Democratic here. Increasingly over the past 10-20 years, the distinction between advocacy and research has been lost. Researchers on topics such as this skew heavily progressive and they often work backwards from desired conclusions to produce shoddy research which supports them.”

If progressives are starting to lose both The New York Times and their readers on the subject, maybe the walls of the trans-industrial complex really are closing in. And not a moment too soon.

A newly published study bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health — our version of Britain’s NHS — shows that rather than decrease suicidality, which the political left repeats ad nauseam, transgender surgeries instead increase suicide attempts by a factor of 12.

Yes, you read that correctly: “Individuals who underwent gender-affirming surgery had a 12.12-fold higher suicide attempt risk than those who did not.”

The data is in, and the experiment has failed. It’s time to stop sacrificing our kids on the altar of transgender ideology.

Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center.