By Katrina Trinko, The Daily Signal | October 26, 2024
Forget following the science. Now it’s about hiding the science—at least when it comes to experimental gender transition medical procedures for children.
“U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says,” blares a New York Times headline earlier this week.
This study, which involved putting 95 children struggling with gender dysphoria on puberty blockers, was led by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who has long been involved in promoting experimental medical treatments for minors.
It would seem that the study, which followed the children for two years, didn’t have the results Olson-Kennedy was looking for.
“The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care,” states the article’s subhed.
That’s a major finding—and one that the public deserves to have access to.
After all, the argument for providing these experimental medical treatments for children is that they will help the children’s mental health. That was seen as a pro that for some outweighed the cons of puberty blockers, which pose health risks along with the unknowns about the long-term effects of delaying a young person’s development.
But this data won’t be released because “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” writes New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, summarizing Olson-Kennedy’s reasoning.
In other words, when it comes to how to medically treat children suffering from gender dysphoria, it’s not about the science. It’s about the ideology—and ensuring that ideology triumphs in American law and all states.
In early December, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case about whether Tennessee’s ban on experimental medical treatments for children suffering from gender dysphoria violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, is the defendant. The Supreme Court decision in the case will likely have ramifications for other state bans.
Olson-Kennedy may want to smear these bans as political. But listen to the stories of detransitioners—who now regret having experimental trans medical treatment as minors that will affect their lives permanently—and it’s clear that this isn’t about politics.
It’s about ensuring that vulnerable minors aren’t making life-altering medical decisions after encouragement from activist doctors.
Take the story of Clementine, who recently spoke to Billboard Chris, a Canadian activist who walks around wearing “billboards” that spur conversations about gender ideology and its effect on children. When talking to Clementine, he wore a billboard stating, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.”
Clementine said she went on puberty blockers when she was 12 and testosterone when she was 13, then had “top surgery”—a double mastectomy— at 14. “Totally messed my life up,” she said.
“I was sexually abused as a child, and that was totally ignored,” Clementine recalled. “I started having a lot of negative feelings about my body around puberty.”
“I was egged on by some guidance counselors that I might be transgender, and I later decided that I was really a boy,” she added, “and my life would be so much easier because of all this abuse that I had experienced because of being a woman and I totally just rejected womanhood because I thought that all that it meant for me was pain.”
Later, Clementine was able to discuss her sexual abuse in therapy and she started to change her mind about her gender transition.
“The loss of my fertility and my body just started to really sink in and I realized like, ‘Oh, my God, I built this entire persona around misogyny,’” Clementine told Billboard Chris.
Her doctor when she got puberty blockers at 12?
Johanna Olson-Kennedy. (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles did not respond to an emailed request for Olson-Kennedy to comment about Clementine’s claim.)
“Politics” might have saved Clementine from losing her fertility. (She admits that she’s not absolutely sure she can’t have kids, but it doesn’t look likely to her.)
“Politics” also might have saved her from stopping her own natural puberty and suffering the effects of using testosterone, which she said gave her “psychosis” for years.
Don’t today’s Clementines—and their parents or guardians—deserve the latest scientific data as they grapple with this issue?
Nor is this the first time that politics, not science, are driving the gender activism movement.
In an amicus brief supporting Tennessee in U.S. v. Skrmetti, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, details how a prominent Biden-Harris administration official changed a medical group’s recommendations for treatment of transgender kids.
This only became known because Marshall, in the course of a legal fight over Alabama’s ban on children with gender dysphoria receiving experimental medical treatment, gained access to emails from Adm. Richard Levine. A trans person who is a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services, Levine now wants to be known as Rachel.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, in 2022 emailed Levine proposed new guidelines recommending that children be 14 or older to receive cross-sex hormones, 15 to get mastectomies, 16 for facial surgery, and 17 for hysterectomies.
Levine objected to these age minimums.
Marshall writes in the brief: “According to a WPATH participant, Levine ‘was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to health care for trans youth … and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse.’ Levine’s solution was simple: ‘She asked us to remove them.’”
WPATH initially resisted Levine’s request, which came after health professionals had been consulted on the guidelines. Then the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, got involved. Between the pressure from the Biden-Harris administration and the American Academy of Pediatrics, WPATH caved, eliminating almost all age recommendations.
“[B]oth the United States and AAP sought, and WPATH agreed, to make changes in a clinical guideline recommending irreversible sex-change procedures for kids based purely on political considerations,” writes Marshall.
“Dr. [Eli] Coleman was clear in his deposition that WPATH removed the age minimums ‘without being presented any new science of which the committee was previously unaware,’” adds Marshall, referring to the University of Minnesota sexologist who chaired the committee behind WPATH’s guidelines. (Emphasis mine.)
So much for the Left’s “follow the science” mantra.
At a bare minimum, we owe it to kids and their parents to give them the latest scientific data about these medical experimental treatment for gender dysphoria.
It’s a shame that the Left is prioritizing politics over science—and the rights of parents and children to make informed decisions.
Katrina Trinko is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal.
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