Medical consensus on gender transitions in children is shattering We must protect children
The legal stakes in this case are high, but it also reveals a deeper divide about how society responds when children experience gender-related distress—and how public health officials like us can shape policy to help these children thrive.
Until recently, this discussion has been dominated by extreme theorists of sexuality, who insist on affirmation at all costs.
From their point of view, a girl who thinks she is a boy is a boy. They believe that failure to assert this new identity will cause more harm than irreversible surgeries or a lifelong regimen of sex hormones.
TEXAS DETRANSITIONER shares how doctors and Internet cosplayers prepared her for permanent surgery
A transgender rights supporter participates in a march outside the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in a case involving transgender health rights in Washington, D.C., on December 4, 2024. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)
In California, the pipeline to these radical interventions begins in classrooms, where state law requires teachers to hide confusion between children and parents, even if it means sitting across from them at parent-teacher conferences and lying by omission to the people most responsible for those children’s care and well-being.
Children who transition socially at school put them on a collision course with sex-negative medical interventions that cause low bone density, infertility, cardiovascular problems, and other painful and costly health problems.
There is no off ramp. California’s ban on “conversion therapy” applies not only to the abusive practices that most people associate with the term, but also to any counseling that might reduce children’s sexual distress without converting them. (Multiple states have imposed broad bans on her books, though the Supreme Court just struck down Colorado’s book.)
Parents, not bureaucrats, raise America’s children and the Supreme Court agrees
These policies are rooted in academic “queer theory” rather than science, but after a long campaign of infiltration and intimidation, activists have managed to align the medical profession with their ideology. Just a few years ago, they could claim that “a very major medical association” considered sex rejection interventions for transgender youth “safe and life-saving.”
But that confidence was never matched Strong evidence.
Fortunately, the tide has turned. There is a growing international consensus that gender activists were wrong. Scientific reviews in Sweden and Finland, as well as the UK’s rigorous CASS report, helped persuade those countries to significantly scale back sex rejection interventions in children and adolescents.
I was a child and thought that gender transition would heal my pain. It has become a new shock
Last fall, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a comprehensive review titled “Treatment of gender dysphoria in children: a review of the evidence and best practices,” Which reached the same conclusion: medically converting minors carries no proven benefits.
The choice between a “mutated son or a dead daughter” convinced thousands of parents to consent to interventions that irreparably harmed their children. It turns out to be a false duality.
Children who transition socially at school put them on a collision course with sex-negative medical interventions that cause low bone density, infertility, cardiovascular problems, and other painful and costly health problems.
Evidence also increasingly points to this Identification of children They were not merely “born in the wrong body” but instead may be suffering from deeper issues.
The recent rise in gender dysphoria among young people has coincided with a massive decline in teen mental health (likely due to smartphones and social media). Both trends were more pronounced among girls.
An influential one He studies found that 63% of adolescents with sexual distress had at least one co-occurring neurodevelopmental disability or mental health disorder.
These children do not need puberty blockers and hormones. They need psychotherapy, family counseling, a comprehensive clinical evaluation, and perhaps treatment for anxiety or depression, not rushing into irreversible medical interventions.
Based on these results, CMS and HHS took action in December by proposing two new rules to ensure that taxpayer-funded health programs are guided by evidence, not ideology. The first prevents taxpayer dollars from supporting sex-denying interventions for children through CHIP and Medicaid; The second prohibits hospitals that implement these interventions from participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, given the significant risks to children’s safety.
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In January, CMS convened a meeting of all major medical societies involved in sex refusal interventions for minors and held “grand rounds” on the available evidence. A month later, American Society of Plastic Surgeons He issued a brave and principled statement admitting that there was “insufficient evidence to demonstrate a positive risk-benefit ratio… for endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents.”
These policies are rooted in academic “queer theory” rather than science, but after a long campaign of infiltration and intimidation, activists have managed to align the medical profession with their ideology.
the American Medical Association quickly I followed suit. The false “scientific consensus” in favor of medically converting children has finally shattered.
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Not long ago, the parents who stood up to California were standing alone. But not anymore. This administration has its back.
We will continue to defend scientific rigor and genuine compassion against the bullying dogmatism of those with extreme gender ideologies. We will liberate this country’s institutions from the long captivity to which activists and their allies have subjected them. We will always – always – Parents and children Firstly.
Stephanie Carlton is deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Click here to read more from Dr. Mehmet Oz
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