On Tuesday I sent a letter to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), demanding their cooperation with an investigation into the advice they continue to offer doctors and patients across the country relating the dangers of puberty blocking hormones and transgender surgeries. Twenty other attorneys general joined me in this effort, as the AAP has offices and affiliates in every state, which makes this a matter of consumer protection and under the jurisdiction of every attorney general across the country.
As confirmed by the recent disclosures from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, or WPATH, the advice from the AAP is based more on political pressure and activist agendas than actual medical science, peer-reviewed studies, and clinical trials. Most concerning is the AAP continued claim that using puberty blockers on children is safe and reversable. This is patently false, and the key reason that medical professional associations around the world are backpedaling from their previous support for transgender hormone treatments for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Our letter stated, “When used to suppress hormones below normal ranges during or before puberty, puberty blockers: (1) may interfere with neurocognitive development; (2) compromise bone density and may negatively affect metabolic health and weight; and (3) block normal pubertal experience and experimentation. And when puberty blocker use is followed directly by cross-sex hormone use, which is often the case, infertility and sterility is a known consequence, at least for those who began puberty blockers in early puberty.”
This harm is even more egregious when combined with the fact a majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria grow out of that diagnosis in later adolescence or early adulthood. There are reports of hormone blockers being prescribed to kids after a single visit to the doctor. A single visit and a child can walk out with a life-altering prescription, with no counseling, no therapy, or no coping skills taught for the myriad of co-occurring disorders that quite frequently accompany a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and being on the autism spectrum.
We are also asking the AAP to disclose their communications with those in the Biden-Harris administration who pressured the AAP to remove their guidance on age limits for these dangerous treatments. Communications to and from Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine or her staff have been specifically included in our request.
The Idaho legislature passed the Child Protection Act in 2023 that stopped transgender hormone puberty blocker and surgeries for minors. My office has defended this law multiple times in court. Other states followed our lead, and I have every reason to believe this issue will find its way to the Supreme Court of the United States. More and more evidence is being revealed showing that Idaho was right all along to protect our kids from this dangerous and irreversible social experiment.
In the middle of the 20th century, over 50,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States to treat depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Looking back, the practice was dangerous and barbaric, and the mere mention of lobotomies now conjures images of horror movies. History has judged that medical guidance and those doctors that performed such mutilation very harshly. These experimental treatments for gender dysphoria will be no different, as we cut away healthy organs, suppress natural and necessary physical and cognitive development with chemicals, and destroy future fertility.
Perhaps doctors prescribing these puberty blockers and surgeries to kids will say they were just doing their job – just doing what they were told to do. Our children deserve far better than to be experimented on as a pawn in a social movement. Our struggling children cannot have their legitimate mental challenges met with destructive and irreversible chemicals and surgeries instead of compassion, competence, and conscience.
It is shameful the most basic tenet of medicine – do no harm – has been abandoned by professional associations when politically pressured. These organizations are sacrificing the health and well-being of children with procedures that leave a wake of permanent damage. Children with gender dysphoria need and deserve love, support, and medical care rooted in biological reality. Parents should be able to trust that a doctor’s medical guidance isn’t just the latest talking point from a dangerous and discredited activist agenda.
