Recently uncovered emails have revealed that Health and Human Services apparatchik Admiral “Rachel” Levine coerced drafters of “standards of care” to remove recommended age limits on so-called gender-affirming treatment for confused children who are told they’re transgender. According to his chief of staff, Levine worried that age limits on dangerous medical interventions such as puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and even mutilating surgeries would cause political problems for the trans industry and result in more regulation of these lucrative practices.
But the emails showed that Levine wasn’t the only one objecting to age limits on these Mengelian interventions. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) – the most prominent medical association for thousands of U.S. pediatricians (very few of whom actually have a say in AAP’s pronouncements) - was complicit in Levine’s coercion.
This scandal illustrates the utter corruption of formerly respected medical associations in the U.S., and the need for alternative institutions that can be trusted to put patient well-being over politics.
The crux of the issue is the so-called Standards of Care (SOC) issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Though WPATH claims to be the go-to authority for treating children and adults confused about their sex, in fact it’s just an advocacy group, not limited to healthcare professionals, and dedicated to medicalizing anyone who expresses such confusion.
Despite the sketchiness of the organization, WPATH’s SOC are considered gospel. And the small cliques of people who control policy in medical associations such as AAP, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Psychiatric Association are devout worshippers in this new and dangerous religion.
In updating its SOC in 2021, WPATH issued an SOC draft that suggested minimum-age limits for these medical interventions (14 for hormonal interventions, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for facial-alteration surgeries and breast augmentations, and 17 for genital surgeries and hysterectomies). Injecting irreversible wrong-sex hormones into a high school freshman would horrify sane observers, but specifying any age limits at all was too much for Admiral Levine. (The White House responded to the email revelations by backtracking a bit, claiming the Biden administration opposes trans-related surgeries, but not other interventions, for minors. Levine apparently didn’t get the memo.)
AAP, supposedly the repository of all professional wisdom about children’s healthcare, agreed with Levine that all age-related protections should be removed. In fact, the emails showed that AAP issued an “ultimatum” threatening to “withhold [its] endorsement” and “publicly oppose” the SOC guidelines if any age limits remained.
Predictably, WPATH caved. So now the highly lucrative trans industry can cite the sacred SOC to justify any medical interventions, however experimental, however harmful, at any age.
Medical associations in this country have increasingly been captured by radical ideologues who are quite willing to sacrifice patients’ health and well-being to leftist dogma. But sadly, most Americans (including elected officials) don’t realize how sweeping the woke takeover has been. They still assume that these medical associations’ guidelines represent the gold standard for patient care. The good news, though, is that many doctors are fed up with the capture of their organizations and are creating their own associations to counter the dangerous politicization of medical practice.
One such physician group, created as a counterweight to the extremism of AAP, is the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). Members of ACPeds represent what all doctors should be – professional, science-based, and most of all, dedicated to the best interests of the children and families under their care.
ACPeds recently issued a Doctors Protecting Children Declaration calling on the corrupted medical associations to stop promoting these harmful medical interventions for sex-confused children and adolescents. The Declaration instead endorses thorough psychological evaluations to treat “underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria” – in other words, recognizing that rejecting one’s sex is a psychological problem that can’t be solved with Frankenstein experiments and lifelong medicalization. Medical professionals in Europe are increasingly adopting this view, leaving the U.S. as a scientific outlier.
For now, AAP seems determined to keep the trans gravy train rolling. Whether motivated by political radicalism or simply old-fashioned greed, the organization has lost all credibility. It’s time for pediatricians of integrity to abandon this sinking ship.