The Patriot Post® · Major Medical Groups Are Changing Policy on Treating Gender-Confused Kids
The cultural protections for the diabolical practice of “gender-affirming care” are starting to crumble. This week, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) issued a position statement against gender affirmation for minors. The timing is fascinating, because Fox Varian — a detransitioner — recently won a $2 million malpractice lawsuit against her psychologist and surgeon.
You’d think that as representatives of plastic surgeons, the ASPS would only disavow the part they usually deal with: gender mutilation surgery. But no — the group also came out against cross-sex hormones for gender-confused kids.
The society wrote:
ASPS concludes there is insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents. ASPS recommends that surgeons delay gender-related breast/chest, genital, and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old.
It also added this caveat, which concerns the fact that it believes minors are not in a position to understand the life-long consequences of what they are asking for:
ASPS acknowledges that many plastic surgical clinical recommendations and standards rely on lower levels of evidence compared to those of other medical specialties. However, ethical decision-making in medicine does not depend on evidence quality alone, but on the relationship between evidence uncertainty, anticipated benefit, potential harm, and patient vulnerability.
This very clear and firm stance against the brutal and barbaric practice of “gender-affirming care” for children won the praise of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We commend the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for standing up to the overmedicalization lobby and defending sound science,” Kennedy triumphantly said. “By taking this stand, they are helping protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz also applauded ASPS’s move. “When the medical ethics textbooks of the future are written, they’ll look back on sex-rejecting procedures for minors the way we look back on lobotomies,” Oz stated. “I applaud the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for placing itself on the right side of history by opposing these dangerous, unscientific experiments.”
The ASPS isn’t alone in opposing pediatric gender medicine. The American Medical Association, which hasn’t entirely capitulated, nevertheless told National Review, “The AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”
For the AMA, this is a major concession. It was originally pro-“gender affirmation,” including surgical interventions, until five seconds ago. As The Daily Wire pointed out, the AMA stated after the Supreme Court’s United States v. Skrmetti decision last June that it was “disappointed” because it “opens the door to further intrusion into patient care.” That SCOTUS ruling essentially green-lighted state bans on child gender mutilation surgery.
Children’s Minnesota Hospital has also announced that it will no longer be providing pediatric gender care, though its reasoning isn’t as altruistic as ASPS’s. CMH decided to discontinue giving kids cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and gender mutilation surgeries because of “threats from the federal government.” Whatever makes these people actually do the right thing, I guess.
Whether doctors are doing the right thing out of fear of lawsuits, threats from the federal government, or simply out of ethical inclination, it’s a major victory in the fight for sanity.
The fight is far from over, however. Author J.K. Rowling had a poignant response to the Fox Varian verdict, posting:
This will go down in history as one of the worst medical scandals of all time. Adults inside and outside the medical profession sold troubled young people like Varian the idea that all of their complex trauma would be resolved by removing healthy body parts.
As more and more detransitioners arrive in court, the public will learn the full extent of the harm done to kids in the name of an ideology. Clinicians performing these ‘treatments’ will go down in history as barbarous activists who betrayed a sacred oath: to do no harm. But we should never forget how many people outside the medical profession urged these young people on, gleefully assuring them that anyone advising caution was an evil bigot. There are people in elitist professions like publishing and academia, not to mention politicians and celebrities with young fan bases, who did all they could to champion the idea of gender identity, and kept pushing it even as the evidence of harm mounted. They’re just as culpable as the clinicians. Too lazy to think more deeply than the fashionable mantras that got them social media likes, too arrogant to look at evidence from anyone outside their political bubble, they’ve slurred whistleblowers and attacked anyone with valid questions. In doing so, they’ve created a cultural climate without which this appalling tragedy could not have taken place.
Never forget, because only by learning the lesson can we stop this happening again.
Other detransitioners have also pointed out that while these victories are palpable, they didn’t come soon enough to save them.
Unfortunately, other important medical bodies have actually doubled down on their endorsement of this experimental, damaging, and irreversible method of treating gender pathology. The American Academy of Pediatrics stated, “The A.A.P. continues to hold to the principle that patients, their families and their physicians — not politicians — should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.”
The hubris of these medical professionals continuing to align themselves with the “transing the kids” lobby is ultimately going to prove their undoing. Detransitioners will be the key to bringing down their pseudoscientific experimentation on kids.