Health Care Professionals Demand Halt on Gender Affirming Treatments
In a significant move last week, over 100 healthcare professionals issued a declaration urging America’s major medical associations to cease promoting the “social affirmation” of gender ideology. The declaration, from the group Doctors Protecting Children and associated with the American College of Pediatricians, denounced the use of puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries on minors.
The declaration presented extensive scientific evidence, arguing that gender procedures “harm healthy bodies” and called on the medical industry to “respect biological reality.” Signatories included physicians, therapists, medical researchers, and medical ethics advocates from across the nation. They emphasized a shift in focus from “harmful interventions” to addressing “underlying mental health issues” often linked with gender confusion. The declaration highlighted psychotherapy for conditions such as depression, anxiety, autism, emotional trauma, and abuse should be the primary treatment for “vulnerable children” rather than resorting to “irreversible” interventions.
Doctors Protecting Children affirmed that biological sex is “dimorphic” (existing in only two forms) and that a person’s genetic makeup “is not altered by drugs or surgical interventions.” They criticized the gender ideology agenda, which they claim affirms thoughts, feelings, and beliefs by removing healthy body parts, calling this approach “inadequate” and stating it fails to recognize “innate sexual differences.”
Growing influence of gender ideology
The declaration targets the growing influence of gender ideology in the mainstream medical industry, projected to reach $5 billion by 2030. It specifically called on the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to cease promoting the notion that “children can be born in the wrong body.” Despite this appeal, these organizations have recently reaffirmed their support for gender-affirming procedures.
The declaration also addressed the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), criticizing their “Standards of Care” guidelines that recommend puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for children with gender dysphoria. Citing the April 2024 Cass Review—a comprehensive four-year, 388-page report that found “remarkably weak evidence” supporting these procedures—the declaration described WPATH’s guidelines as “demonstrably flawed.”
Leaked WPATH files, according to the declaration, revealed “widespread medical malpractice,” with doctors “improvising treatments as they go along,” despite knowing that children cannot provide informed consent to these procedures. The declaration stated, “Informed consent is not possible” due to the immaturity of an adolescent’s brain to “strategize, problem solve, and make emotionally laden decisions that have life-long consequences.”
Unhelpful and harmful
“Despite all the above evidence that gender-affirming treatments are not only unhelpful, but harmful, and despite the knowledge that the adolescent brain is immature, professional medical organizations in the United States continue to promote these interventions,” asserted Doctors Protecting Children.
The group ultimately recommended that the American medical community “follow the science” and that health care professionals urge their leaders to “adhere to the evidence-based research now available.”
Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, supported the declaration, stating, “Gender ideology has led to horrible atrocities on children. Counseling, not mutilating surgeries, is the only rational and medically sound option. The American medical community needs to return to sound science and recommit to ‘do no harm.’”
