Medical Societies Provide Cover for Transgender Industry’s Propaganda
Robin Rayne/AP Photo
by Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart.com
Radical LGBTQ organizations and the transgender drug and surgical industry are obtaining name-brand support from the nation’s large medical and mental health societies who provide cover for their experimentation on children who suffer from gender dysphoria.
Just as the abortion industry used Obamacare and medical societies such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to spread a narrative that abortion is “health care,” the transgender industry has similarly sought to protect its highly lucrative business of puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and body-mutilating surgery for children and adolescents.
Attorney and researcher Jane Robbins recently examined the relationship between the transgender industry and medical associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Endocrine Society, at Townhall.
Robbins noted AAP has partnered with the radical Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — known for its bullying and coercive attacks in order to force acceptance of the LGBTQ lifestyle.
“But do the views of HRC and AAP leadership align with those of AAP’s over 65,000 physician members?” Robbins asked. “We don’t know, because the pro-experimentation policies were passed without input from those members.”
She explained that AAP’s positions statements are drafted by a small committee and then voted on by a board of directors consisting of about a dozen members.
“The broader membership has no direct input into the statement and would generally learn of it only after it’s issued,” Robbins said. “So the only thing the AAP policy tells us is that less than 0.05 percent of the pediatricians who are still members of AAP believe in experimenting medically on gender-confused children.”
Robbins points to the mental health practitioners who have condemned AAP for its cave to the groups seeking to convince more parents and children the transgender lifestyle is normal.
In September 2018, for example, Dr. Susan Bradley, a child psychiatrist who founded the Toronto Gender Identity Clinic, told National Review she is “deeply concerned that AAP’s guidance has gotten so far ahead of the current knowledge base about gender dysphoric children.”
Bradley added:
We know from multiple studies that around 80 percent of gender dysphoric children will desist from their cross-sex identification in childhood to identify with their natal sex. Most of these will grow up to be gay or lesbian; a substantial minority have also been diagnosed with autism.
Yet the AAP guidance incorrectly dismisses these studies as flawed and outdated. There is no professional consensus on medical treatment of gender-dysphoric children and young adolescents.
Similarly, Robbins noted the Endocrine Society, which approves of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender-confused children, admits that 68 percent of its transgender guidelines are of “very low” or “low” quality.
“In fact, none are supported by high-quality evidence,” she observed. “The Society thus admits the scientific evidence for its recommendations is weak at best. Yet physicians across the country are using these guidelines to justify horrendous interventions that cannot be undone.”
The Pediatric Endocrine Society has gone as far as to claim “gender-affirming care,” such as puberty-blocking drugs, are a “reversible treatment that decreases the distress of having the ‘wrong’ puberty.”
Pediatric Endocrine Society Statement Against Public Discourse that Risks the Well-being of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth and their Families pic.twitter.com/9XTDKZ8MCK
— PES (@PedsEndoSociety) November 6, 2019
Seeking cover, the Society touted “the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest academic organization of pediatricians in the US, has released a Policy Statement supporting the approach to gender-affirming care” that is consistent with that of the Society.
The group added that “gender-affirming care” includes allowing a child or adolescent “to explore their gender identity freely, and in some circumstances allow for a social transition (change of name, pronouns, attire).”
The Society stated such “gender-affirming care” may include “puberty suppression once puberty has started.”
“This is a reversible treatment that decreases the distress of having the ‘wrong’ puberty,” the organization claimed. “This treatment alone does not cause infertility.”
However, in November, California-based endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw told Breitbart News organizations such as the Pediatric Endocrine Society “have created an institutionalized childhood pathway towards sterility.”
“Why would organizations, that are ostensibly out to help children, actually harm them in a most profound way?” he asked, and then explained the progression of how medical societies have been infiltrated by radical transgender activists with “one of the most insidious child sterilization programs ever devised”:
It’s really critical to understand that our medical organizations beginning with the Endocrine Society and moving on to the Pediatric Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatricians, that with respect to this topic they have been taken over by the most radical elements. These radical trans activists were involved in writing the Endocrine Society guidelines in 2009 and 2017. These are low to no quality evidence guidelines, and anyone can read for themselves the poor evidence they have for these treatments for children and adolescents.
Laidlaw cited a study in which the majority of children prescribed puberty blockers went on to cross- or wrong-sex hormones, and the majority of these went on to sex reassignment surgery.
“All of those who started on blockers and went to cross-sex hormones are infertile,” he said. “Those who had gonads removed are sterilized.”
He said this path begins at the earliest phase of social transition, when the child is “affirmed” in dressing as the opposite sex and changing his or her name.
“Social transition has the psychological effect of convincing the child that they are in the wrong body,” he explained. “The puberty blockers are a drug-induced model of not only blocking essential aspects of development, but also solidifying the belief that they must take wrong-sex hormones to escape from their situation.”
More young adults in psychological distress who ultimately identified as transgender and then “detransitioned” are speaking out about the harms that came to them through experimentation with the trans lifestyle.
Chiara Canaan, 22, a founder of the Pique Resilience Project with three other young women who experienced Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), identified as a “trans man” when she was 16, but then detransitioned at 19.
Writing at the Velvet Chronicle, Canaan said she latched onto the trans community on social media in high school after ending a lesbian relationship:
My immersion into this online space kicked off a period in which I very quickly developed intense social and body dysphoria. I became convinced that I was a boy trapped in the body of a girl, and that the only way forward was for me to begin a medical transition. I began to envision myself as a straight guy (rather than a gay girl), which alleviated a large amount of the discomfort I felt with my sexuality.
I begged my mother to let me take testosterone and wanted to schedule “top surgery” (a double mastectomy) right away. My mother wouldn’t allow it, but she voiced support for me to be as “gender-non-conforming” as I pleased. Our relationship remained rocky until I graduated high school at seventeen and traveled to another state for a nine-month internship on a horse farm. While working there, I had limited internet access, which shifted my focus; I started paying attention to other things going on in my life. This shift, coupled with the emotional maturity I gained during that time, allowed me to return home and take a step back—to question the narratives I’d been exposed to online.
Canaan wrote she would have “greatly regretted medical transition” and is now “immensely grateful my mother knew better.”
Also of great importance is the fact that Canaan has exited her trans experience with greater psychological insight because of her time away and her introspection. She also is aware that detransitioners have been “silenced” by the media.
“Identifying as a ‘trans man’ set me back years in accepting my own sexuality,” she explained. “In the interest of young people’s ongoing health and self-image, we need to acknowledge that there is an epidemic affecting kids at an alarming rate. Medical transition isn’t a frivolous, easily-reversed experiment; it is a significant undertaking.”