Federal Trade Commission to Investigate Deception, Fraud in Transgender Industry

Doctors who pitched irreversible surgeries and sterilizing hormone regimens to minors struggling with gender dysphoria may have illegally deceived patients and their parents, according to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson.

The statute that created the Federal Trade Commission authorizes it to prevent “unfair or deceptive” practices affecting consumers. The FTC hosted a daylong roundtable called “The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care for Minors.” to hear from stakeholders and determine if the transgender industry has deceived families.

Informed by the findings of the roundtable, the FTC will issue a public request for information on transgender medical interventions next week.

When asked by The Daily Signal whether the request would lay the groundwork for the rulemaking process, Ferguson said the quickest way to better people’s lives is to bring enforcement actions.

“If people are making material misstatements, sue them,” Ferguson told The Daily Signal. “Sue them either for injunctions if they’re violating existing rules, which they may be, or sue them for civil penalties. But I think it’s taking people to court if the law is being broken, rather than undertaking a two-year long rulemaking process, followed by lengthy litigation.”

He said typically when a business has salespeople making misleading statements, the FTC goes after the entire company.

“I just don’t think we need to apply rules here any differently than we apply everywhere else when we pursue these types of claims,” he said.

The FTC has a long history of enforcement actions against false and misleading health claims, the agency’s chief said.

“I acknowledge that many people feel passionately about this issue, but if a medical claim is false or misleading, it is the commission’s sworn duty to protect American citizens from that claim, no differently than it would for any other false or misleading claim,” Ferguson said, adding:

“Refusing to investigate these health claims and the potential consumer harm to parents and children merely because one political party supports those claims as a matter of its ideology would be the politicized choice, and that is why we are here today: to ensure that parents and children seeking professional help in a period of intense distress do not make potentially life-altering choices under veil of deception, misinformed about the risks and benefits of gender-affirming care.”

Chronically or terminally ill people are more prone to being deceived by health care scams taking advantage of their conditions, and the FTC is statutorily mandated to protect vulnerable people from deceptive claims about health and cures, Ferguson said.

For an act to be deceptive, it must mislead the consumer, “either through commission—for example, making a false or misleading claim; or through omission—for example, failing to disclose certain information that would support the claim from being misleading to the reasonable consumer,” he said.

“Second, the act or practice must be likely to mislead a reasonable consumer, acting in similar circumstances. In the case of acts or practices that target specific groups, for example, children or vulnerable parents, the test is whether the act is likely to lead mislead a reasonable member of that specific population,” the FTC chief said.

The act or practice must be material to the consumer’s decision to purchase the service. If a child or family wouldn’t have chosen puberty blockers if they were aware of the risks, the omission by the doctor could be considered material.

“Americans have a right to health claims substantiated by reliable scientific evidence,” Ferguson said. “They have a right to be informed about information that would be material to their decision to accept hormone therapies for sex-change surgeries.”

Ferguson promised the FTC will do “everything in its power” to provide every concerned parent with the material information of the risks of transgender medical interventions.

Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist and a senior fellow at the medical watchdog group Do No Harm, said she thinks Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits transgender ideology from being pushed on minors.

“When I examine gender-affirming care, and the history that led up to it,” Grossman said at the FTC event, “I see fraud and deceptive practice everywhere, going back decades.”

Prisha Mosely, a 27-year-old detransitioner, considers herself to be a victim of medical fraud and abuse.

“I didn’t understand what was being taken away from me when I gave consent,” she said of her transition as a minor. “I was too young, and I was not being given accurate medical information. My consent was stolen.”

When Claire Abernathy started taking testosterone and underwent a double mastectomy at 14 years old, she had no idea it would cause pelvic-floor dysfunction, urinary incontinence, menopause symptoms, and more.

After she regretted the surgery and left a negative comment on her surgeon’s website, he deleted it, she said.

“A surgeon permanently altered my healthy body when I was a middle-school student and then erased my negative feedback to protect his reputation,” Abernathy said on a panel. “If that doesn’t sound like fraud, I don’t know what does.”

“In any other context, selling a medical product in this way with half-truths and hidden side effects would be considered fraud,” Abernathy, now 20, said. “If a pharmaceutical company pushed a drug on children without disclosing the lifelong damage it can cause, they would be sued out of existence.”

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