SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: HHS Releases New Report Revealing the Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors

The Department of Health and Human Services released a report Thursday detailing the dangers of experimental transgender medical interventions euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.”

The report marks a sea change from the Biden administration, which forcefully advocated for off-label use of hormones to make males appear female and vice versa, and surgical interventions to remove healthy body parts to “affirm” a person’s gender identity that is at odds with the person’s biological sex.

“HHS is committed to protecting children and restoring the federal government’s commitment to follow the gold standard of science,” HHS press secretary Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

“Despite growing pressure to promote harmful medical interventions for minors, this review makes one thing clear: There is extremely weak evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries have any benefits in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria,” Feliciano added (emphasis original). “At the same time, the risks—particularly permanent harm like infertility—are becoming increasingly undeniable.”

“Major medical guidelines, including those from WPATH, have been shaped more by ideology than by science,” she added, referring to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (emphasis original).

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our nation’s history, and it must end,” President Donald Trump said in Executive Order 14187, which ordered the HHS review.

The review focuses on gender dysphoria, the persistent and painful sense of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex.

According to the executive summary, the HHS review found that most children will grow out of their gender dysphoria: “The natural history of pediatric gender dysphoria is poorly understood, though existing research suggests it will remit without intervention in most cases. Medical professionals have no way to know which patients may continue to experience gender dysphoria and which will come to terms with their bodies.”

“Nevertheless, the ‘gender-affirming’ model of care includes irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions on minors with no physical pathology,” the summary states. (The endocrine system involves the hormones that drive growth and other functions in the body.)

“These interventions carry risk of significant harms including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret,” the executive summary adds. “Meanwhile, systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions.”

The full report laments that “there is a dearth of research on psychotherapeutic approaches to managing gender dysphoria in children and adolescents” that is “due in part to the mischaracterization of such approaches as ‘conversion therapy.'”

The HHS review is “not a clinical practice guideline, and it does not issue legislative or policy recommendations.” Even so, it makes the case that experimental “gender-affirming care” likely does more harm than good for minors.

This marks a sea change from the Biden administration, which full-throatedly endorsed “gender-affirming care.”

Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman and who served as assistant secretary of health in Biden’s HHS, tried to enlist children’s doctors and nurses in the transgender activist movement.

On Sept. 22, 2022, he spoke to doctors at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Pediatrics, urging them to become “ambassadors” for what he described as “gender-affirming care.”

He championed “acceptance” as a lifesaving message and painted opponents of his ideology as driven by an “agenda” that has “nothing to do with warmth, empathy, compassion, or understanding.”

“I encourage all of you to think of yourselves as ambassadors to your communities, ambassadors for science, ambassadors for compassion, and ambassadors for care,” Levine said. “These conversations don’t have to be limited or restricted to a medical setting. Offer yourselves as informational resources not just for youth but for schoolteachers, principals, school boards, professional organizations, recreation centers, county commissioners, and others who would benefit from this information and your perspective. Please proactively seek opportunities to speak about what you know.”

The HHS review noted that “thousands of American children and adolescents have received” the “gender-affirming care” from “social affirmation of a child’s self-reported identity, puberty suppressing drugs to prevent the onset of puberty, cross-sex hormones to spur the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex, and surgeries including mastectomy and (in rare cases) vaginoplasty.”

Indeed, one study showed that more than 3,500 children underwent some form of transgender surgery in a 5-year period.

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