When it comes to children who are confused about their gender, major medical associations have relied heavily on beliefs and activists, not science, according to an op-ed Tuesday in the New York Times.
Journalist Jesse Singal, who describes himself as “left-of-center,” writes about the emerging shift away from whole-hearted endorsements of cross-sex hormones and surgeries to remove the healthy body parts of gender confused children.
These include the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which, earlier this month, published a “position statement” advising against transgender surgeries for young people under age 19.
The American Medical Association followed soon afterward, announcing that “in the absence of clear evidence, the A.M.A. agrees with A.S.P.S. that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”
A number of university medical centers also have stopped cutting off the healthy body parts of children who believe they might be transgender. Notably, Vanderbilt’s hospital just ended these surgeries for adults as well, The Tennessean reports.
Up until now, however, these groups were trusting “belief over science,” Singal writes:
Dr. Julia Mason, a 30-year member of the organization, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, with the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir, that the [American Academy of Pediatrics] deferred to activist-clinicians and stonewalled the critics’ demands for a more rigorous approach. Dr. Sarah Palmer, an Indiana-based pediatrician, told me she recently left the A.A.P. after nearly 30 years because of this issue. “I’ve tried to engage and be a member and pay that huge fee every year,” she said.
“They just stopped answering any questions.” This is unfortunate given that, as critics have noted, in many cases the A.A.P. document’s footnotes don’t even support the claims being made in the text.
The shakiness of the guidelines didn’t matter, though — they were cited numerous times in news accounts and court documents as evidence that the most important pediatric association in the country supported youth medical transition.
Singal, who has been covering the transgender issue for more than a decade, also writes about the attacks on anyone with a heterodox opinion:
… and I’ve found that anyone who questions these treatments, even mildly, is invariably accused of bigotry. It would be shocking if the professional organizations chiming in on these issues — which, like all such organizations, exist in part to increase the esteem of their members and to enhance their own influence — were immune from such influences. And now that the political winds have shifted radically, with the Trump administration launching an all-out assault on both the practice of and research into youth gender medicine, it seems some of them are realizing they would benefit from appearing a bit more moderate.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. But it’s impossible to know, because these organizations are quite opaque about the processes that give rise to their public statements. They’ve tried to have it both ways: They’ve presented themselves as representing “the science” while sometimes violating science’s traditional norms of transparency and open debate.
He concludes, “Should we ‘trust the science’? Sure, in theory — but only when the science in question has earned our trust through transparency and rigor.”
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