RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-white-houses-transgender-tangle

New evidence suggests that the White House is taking its marching orders on so-called gender-affirming care for kids from transgender interest groups. A messaging blunder last week revealed that the Biden administration likely knows that gender hormones and surgeries for kids are unpopular but fears that saying so will alienate the powerful organizations that support these controversial procedures.

In late June, documents released in Boe v. Marshall—a case challenging Alabama’s ban on sex-trait modification procedures for minors—revealed that the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine, pressured the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) to eliminate age minimums from its latest “standards of care,” due to fear that specifying adolescent ages for surgeries would invite political backlash and result in legal restrictions on teen gender surgeries.

Even worse for a group that claims the mantle of medical science, internal emails reveal that WPATH suppressed the publication of evidence reviews that it had commissioned from researchers at Johns Hopkins University. As The Economist reported, WPATH also required the researchers to secure the organization’s approval before publishing their findings. And, according to a court document, WPATH forced the authors to add a disclaimer that they were “solely responsible for the content” of their published work.

Within days of the Alabama documents being unsealed, the White House told Fox News and the New York Times that it opposes gender surgeries for kids. It did so despite the administration’s longstanding, well-documented support for these very procedures. On July 2, 19th News, a progressive news site, published another statement that it had received from the White House. This one reiterated the Biden administration’s opposition to surgeries but added that the White House “continue[s] to support gender-affirming care for minors like mental health care and respect[s] the role of parents, families, and doctors in these decisions” (emphasis added). Notably absent was explicit support for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones; the statement seemed to equate “gender-affirming care” with “mental health care.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-supreme-court-showdown-looms-on-transgender-surgeries-and-puberty-blockers/?utm_source=recirc-

The Supreme Court took seven cases this morning to hear next year, including a long-running lawsuit by Holocaust survivors against Hungary for expropriation of property. The big one is United States v. Skrmetti, a Biden administration challenge on equal-protection grounds to Tennessee and Kentucky laws that restrict the use of potentially irreversible gender-transition treatments such as transgender surgeries and puberty blockers on minors.

I explained, back when the lawsuit was filed in May 2023 as part of Merrick Garland’s campaign to stamp out self-government in the states on any issue where states dissent from cultural progressivism, why it was nuts:

The legislature reached its own conclusions about whether the treatments at issue were medically supported or abusive to children. . . . Are these really interests no legislature is permitted to consider? The complaint cites the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM-V-TR”) as “an authoritative source for psychiatric conditions,” ignoring how often the DSM has been revised — and politicized — over the years. Of course, unlike the Tennessee legislature, the authors of the DSM are neither representative of, nor accountable to, a democratic populace. Moreover, on transgender issues, there is a significant divide between the American medical establishment and the European medical establishment. I’m as rah-rah USA as the next guy, but when that happens, it’s at least reasonable to allow the democratic process to consider the possibility that the Americans are wrong. Once upon a time, the American medical profession refused to accept the European consensus that doctors should wash their hands.

We may get a sense of how this Court resolves this question soon in this term’s big abortion case, Moyle v. United States, in which the Biden administration and the liberal justices argue that a federal statute puts an unelected national “medical consensus” above the elected legislatures in determining the standards for emergency-room care. Then again, Moyle is a statutory case rather than a constitutional one, and it might well be resolved on other grounds.

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Dr. Richard Ogden Roberts III is a pediatric endocrinologist at the Texas Children’s Hospital who’s administered puberty blocking and cross-sex hormone medications to young patients suffering from gender dysphoria. He was also one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that sought to halt a ban against child sex changes, leveraging his medical credentials as he worked alongside radical activist organizations.

Now he’s found himself at the center of a new scandal at the hospital, which has been enveloped in criticism after one whistleblower exposed the hospital for lying to the public about their offerings of transgender medical interventions to children and was then targeted by the federal government as a result.

New allegations that Roberts committed Medicaid fraud have cast further doubt on his so-called “gender-affirming care” operation, with a whistleblower claiming that the hospital “is illegally billing Medicaid for transgender procedures” with the help of Roberts, who is now being investigated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton since the state bars the use of Medicaid funds for any and all medical interventions that seek to change people’s sex.

Roberts embodies the partnership between radical transgender ideologues and the medical establishment. A closer look at Robert’s effort to halt Texas’ ban on child sex changes indicates that the doctor formed an alliance with far-left ideologues and activist groups, many of which enjoy the backing of the pharmaceutical companies that stand to profit from transgenderism in the process.

https://www.afterbabel.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has long been a leader on the youth mental health crisis. He wrote a book in 2020 on loneliness (Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World), and in 2023 he issued a landmark report on loneliness. In 2023, he also published a major report, a Surgeon General’s Advisory reviewing the research on social media and concluding that:

The current body of evidence indicates that while social media may have benefits for some children and adolescents, there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.

Yesterday, June 17, Dr. Murthy dropped a bomb: An essay in the New York Times in which he called for government-mandated warning labels on social media, akin to those that a previous Surgeon General called for in 1964, on cigarettes.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-murky-business-of-transgender-medicine
The “gender-affirming care” business has always had an aura of madness around it. Wielding the authority of white coats and prestigious degrees, doctors have convinced large swaths of the public that some children are “born in the wrong body.” The solution? Stop puberty, prescribe cross-sex hormones, and then, with the stroke of a knife, remove body parts—most commonly breasts, less frequently genitalia.

These medical practices use scientific rhetoric to affirm what is, at bottom, an ideological program. And gender activists have been successful enough at capturing the legitimizing institutions—medical societies, regulatory bodies, and teaching hospitals—to repel most challenges to the burgeoning child sex-change industry. 

Now, though, the consensus appears to be shifting. European governments have backed away from many of these dubious procedures. In England, the Cass Review has raised grave questions about the scientific evidence behind “gender-affirming care.” In the United States, the public has turned decisively against the use of puberty blockers and gender surgeries on minors, with some state legislatures banning the practice. 

I have reported on one of these programs, the pediatric gender clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital. Last year, I published an investigation demonstrating that, though it had promised to shut down its program, Texas Children’s had continued to administer hormone drugs to children as young as 11. Following the story, the state attorney general launched an investigation, and state legislators passed a bill, SB 14, prohibiting all transgender medical interventions on minors.

While these scandals caught the headlines, another story involving the same institution was brewing in the background: medical fraud. 

According to a new whistleblower, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital were willing to falsify medical records and break the law to keep practicing “gender-affirming care.” Caught in the wave of ideological fervor, two of the hospital’s prominent physicians, Richard Ogden Roberts and David Paul, cut corners and, according to the whistleblower, committed Medicaid fraud to secure funds for the hospital’s child sex-change program.

(Texas Children’s Hospital, Roberts, and Paul did not respond to a request for comment.)

This is a story of fanaticism, hubris, and the murky business of transgender medicine. It would have remained hidden, except for the courage of two people inside the hospital, a surgeon named Eithan Haim and a nurse who has now decided to come forward. Both have risked much to alert the public to the barbarism that is occurring at the nation’s largest, and arguably most prestigious, children’s hospital.

https://doctorsprotectingchildren.org

The American College of Pediatricians just put out a statement calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids. They ask for these groups to “IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.” The full statement
“Therefore, given the recent research and the revelations of the harmful approach advocated by WPATH and its followers in the United States, we, the undersigned, call upon the medical professional organizations of the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the  Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.  Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria. We also encourage the physicians who are members of these professional organizations to contact their leadership and urge them to adhere to the evidence-based research now available.” They link to MANY studies on their site:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/06/anthony-fauci-has-made-a-mockery-of-science/

In Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb, former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, observed that the six-foot social-distancing rule was ‘probably the single most costly intervention’ recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that ‘was consistently applied throughout the pandemic’.

You might have expected such a significant intervention to have had a strong evidential basis. Yet in remarks made in January before the US Congress, though only made public last month, Dr Anthony Fauci, the lead Covid-19 adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden, described how the social-distancing recommendation came about:

‘It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be five or six or whatever. I was not aware of studies that in fact [supported the six-foot recommendation]. That would be a very difficult study to do. I think it would fall under the category of empiric. Just an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even data that could be accomplished.’

This was a curious admission coming from the man who described himself last year as ‘fundamentally about science’. In 2022, he said in an interview with a medical journal:

‘There are, in many respects, people who have complete disregard for facts, or distort facts, distort reality, deny data and make statements that are not at all backed by scientific information. What scientists have to do is just stick with the science and stick with the data. It is very frustrating when you’re dealing with individuals, institutions or groups that actually deny the reality or make statements that are not backed by facts. You can’t get rattled; just make sure you stick with the science.’

But did Fauci ‘stick with the science’? Of course not.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-new-medical-coalition-rebuts-the-propriety-of-gender-affirming-care/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

It took too many years, but finally some countries in Europe are pushing back against so-called gender-affirming care that promotes irreversible body-altering interventions to gender-confused children and adolescents. Meanwhile, the thoroughly researched and soberly written Cass Review — authored by a highly respected pediatrician from the U.K. — exposed how evidence supporting the benefits of such drastic measures is scant while the potential harm is demonstrable. There’s no question that, in Europe at least, the tide has turned.

But not here. For some reason — ideology, politics, hubris — the American medical establishment (except for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has agreed to re-review the data) has barely acknowledged these newest scientific studies and reforms. Neither has the Biden administration.

But now, a new American medical coalition — Doctors Protecting Children — has organized to fight back against the ideological thrall and to restore a more rational and efficacious standard of care for children. It has just issued the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration — authored by the American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with the AAP) — setting forth specifics. (Full disclosure: My think tank, the Discovery Institute, supports the declaration.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dei-will-destroy-our-trust-in-doctors/

In September of last year, I wrote about the University of California system’s truly radical embrace of DEI ideology in every aspect of its hiring, teaching, and administrative processes — an activist commitment so striking that even the New York Times wrote about it with genuine alarm. The issue back then was the barring of an academic from an expected position at UCLA because he had once evinced skepticism about the value of “diversity statements.” But what really worried me was what I saw coming over the horizon:

I am left wondering what our next generation of doctors and scientists will look like . . . where all present have been screened either for their desirable racial and sexual characteristics or their ability to demonstrate fulsome and abject fealty to this approach. Because that is the world these people are constructing.

I am not optimistic. I don’t take the occasionally alarmist gibes I hear about how “in a generation we’ll no longer even know how to build [X]” seriously, if for no other reason than projects involving engineering, mathematics, and the hard sciences tend to have pretty strict metrics for success. . . . But in other fields the decline will be disguised — reflected only indirectly over time in statistics like life expectancy, infant mortality, or suicide and addiction rates. There is no way that scientific (and particularly medical and psychological) fields permeated by these standards . . . will not be negatively and seriously affected in the long run.

My depressing vision of the future is arriving even faster than anticipated. Though I don’t often encourage people to go read someone else, I beg you to check out Aaron Sibarium’s nuclear-grade journalistic bombshell at the Washington Free Beacon about the scandalous state of the UCLA medical school. By the end of “A Failed Medical School,” you will agree with the title’s assessment, which the article copiously documents. Yet you might not even quite believe what you are reading.