Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent a letter to health care providers and medical boards on Wednesday afternoon urging them to stop the chemical castration and genital mutilation of children with gender dysphoria.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published a review of medical evidence showing that there is zero evidence that the irreversible medical interventions help children confused about their gender. Kennedy told health care providers that they should no longer rely on debunked studies claiming to show benefits.
“The Review documents the ‘weak evidence and growing international retreat’ from the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in minors and the ‘risk of significant harm.’ The Review explains that ‘many treatments (e.g., surgery, hormone therapy) can lead to the relatively common and potentially serious long-term adverse effects,’” Kennedy wrote. “Given your ‘obligation to avoid serious harm’ and the findings of the Review, HHS expects you promptly to make the necessary updates to your treatment protocols and training for care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria to protect them from these harmful interventions.”
“Providers should no longer rely on discredited guidelines that promote these dangerous interventions for children and adolescents based on ideology, not evidence,” HHS said on social media.
As The Federalist reported, the review found that doctors who pursued the interventions “lacked sufficient scientific and ethical justification” and that any rationalization of the destruction of children through these interventions “lack[s] … robust evidence.”
Kennedy’s letter notes that health care providers should stop basing decisions on the standards of care created by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the world’s foremost promulgator of child mutilation and chemical castration advocacy, because it was “fraudulent and marked ‘a clear departure from the principles of unbiased, evidence-driven clinical guideline development.’”
“In the context of developing its recommendations, WPATH suppressed systematic reviews of evidence, failed to manage conflicts of interest, and relied on legal and political considerations rather than clinical ones,” the letter continued. “Health care risk managers should take note that a recent systematic review of international guideline quality did not recommend either the WPATH or the Endocrine Society guidelines for clinical use after determining they ‘lack development rigour and transparency.’ These and other guidelines based on the so-called ‘gender-affirming’ model of care should not be relied upon to harm children any further.”
Predator doctors, school teachers, counselors, corporate media members, and many others on the left have been pushing the idea that children need to be mutilated and castrated in order to keep them from committing suicide at purportedly high rates due to their gender confusion.
The review found no evidence of this, stating, “No independent association between gender dysphoria and suicidality has been found, and there is no evidence that pediatric medical transition reduces the incidence of suicide, which remains, fortunately, very low.”
Debunking another left-wing claim that the interventions are “fully reversible” and harmless, the report noted that they can actually cause irreversible harm, “including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret.”
“Health care providers should not rely on an organization that suppresses evidence and has pushed a political agenda when it comes to caring for children with gender dysphoria. For too long, vocal, activist doctors and medical associations have relied on WPATH guidance to inform treatment guidelines,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director at Do No Harm, said in a press release. “Children with gender dysphoria deserve evidence-based, high-quality care, not irreversible experimental interventions grounded in a political ideology.”
Kennedy’s letter goes on to warn providers that HHS has already “created a portal to receive complaints” from whistleblowers about the interventions, adding that the department “may soon undertake new policies and oversight actions, consistent with applicable law, to ensure the protection of children, and to hold providers that harm children accountable.”
The letter came the same day as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), housed within HHS, announced it was launching an initiative to provide oversight of hospitals performing “sex trait modification.”
“These are irreversible, high-risk procedures being conducted on vulnerable children, often at taxpayer expense,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a press release. “Hospitals accepting federal funds are expected to meet rigorous quality standards and uphold the highest level of stewardship when it comes to public resources — we will not turn a blind eye to procedures that lack a solid foundation of evidence and may result in lifelong harm.”
CMS’s announcement noted that the concerns about the procedures for minors have raised “serious questions about informed consent protocols, adverse outcomes, and financial incentives driving these interventions, many of which are reimbursed by federal health care programs.”
The oversight project seeks information on how health care providers relay such information to potential patients and also requests all billing codes related to the interventions. As The Federalist reported, detransitioners and their families say that the harmful procedures can simply be fraudulently logged using unrelated codes and therefore hidden from public oversight.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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