The Department of Health and Human Services published a review on Thursday that found that the quality of the evidence regarding the effects of care related to minors “is very low”, and that, as a result, many American doctors have managed to “fail their patients” without wanting to provide such care.
“A central theme of this review is that many American professionals and associations have not achieved their duty to prioritize the health interests of young patients,” establishes the conclusion of the 409 -page report.
The HHS review found that there is limited evidence on the effects of medical interventions for young people with gender dysphoria in “psychological results, quality of life, regret or long -term health.” At the same time, he found that “the evidence of the damages associated with the pediatric medical transition in the systematic reviews” is “scarce”, but said that “this finding must be interpreted with caution” because there are no studies that track and denounce the denounced damage.
He also abruptly criticized the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a Non -profit composed of medical professionals That develops guidance on trans medical care, arguing that their guidelines are politically biased and motivated. The HHS report alleges that WPath has influenced the medical associations of the United States to create a false perception that there is a consensus regarding the transition care for minors despite the concerns of the complainants and detransitros, or the relatively small number of people who no longer identify as transition care or regret they received.
The review also establishes doubts about the growing number of studies in recent years that have found a significant independent association between gender dysphoria and suicide, and in studies that have linked access to transition care to improve the results of mental health for young people.
The HHS review finally demands psychotherapy as “an unbeatized alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria” and for greater research on the effects of exploratory psychotherapy in minors with gender dysphoria.
The report marks the most recent escalation of the efforts of the Trump administration to delay access to care related to transition and other rights for trans people. President Donald Trump issued several executive orders aimed at trans people during his first weeks in office, including one declaring that there are only two immutable sexes assigned to birth, another that prohibits trans people from serving or enlisting in the army and another prohibited federal funds for hospitals that provide transition care to minors.
The Order on Trans Care of Minors, signed on January 28, required HHS to publish a review of the existing literature on “best practices to promote the health of children who affirm gender dysphoria”, the medical term for anguish caused by misalignment between the birth sex of someone and gender identity. The HHS review indicates that “it is not a clinical practice guide”, which is intended to help doctors and patients to make decisions about care, “and does not issue legislative or political recommendations.” However, the review could still affect access to transition care for minors throughout the country by adding fuel to the political storm that surrounds it.
The findings of the review mark a significant break between the federal government and the position of the main medical associations of the United States, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Association of Psychology, which support access to care related to the transition for minors and oppose the restrictions.
As a result, the review was found immediate reaction from medical associations and trans activists, which criticized their methods and lack of transparency. In particular, HHS did not list any of the authors of the review in what appears to be a rest with the protocol, since the names of the authors must generally be included in any scientific publication.
“While this is a systematic review of the literature on this subject executed by experts in the field, the credibility of this report collapses in the minds of many people in the scientific and medical communities because these experts are not named anywhere,” said Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
He added that a scientific report of this type generally also lists the names of the experts who reviewed it by pairs, and this review is not.
It is not clear if the entire report was reviewed by pairs or only part of it. A press release issued by the HHS on Thursday establishes: “The chapters of this review were subject to a peer review before this publication, and a revision by pairs after the publication will begin in the next few days that involve the interested parties with different perspectives.”
Ladinsky said that is very common, and that the pairs after the publication usually only occurs when there has been a “serious doubt” about the findings of a study or report.
The HHS did not return a request for comments on the names of the authors that are excluded from the report or the peer review process.
Susan J. Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the organization is “deeply alarmed” by the report.
“For this analysis to have credibility, you must consider all the available data and the complete spectrum of the clinical results instead of depending on selected perspectives and a narrow data set,” Kressly said in a statement. “This report misrepresent the current medical consensus and does not reflect the realities of pediatric care.”
The review also promotes “exploratory psychotherapy”, which refers to conversation therapy as an alternative treatment for puberty blockers or hormonal therapy. In this type of therapy, therapists try to help young people “reach an agreement with their bodies,” according to the review, or accept their birth sex.
Some of the largest LGBTQ defense organizations in the country, including Glaad, a LGBTQ media defense organization and the Trevor project, a LGBTQ Youth Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention Organization Organization that specialize in research on the care of LGBTQ care. or gender identity.
“This is the argument they have been using for decades, and it really is the light of conversion therapy,” said Doug Haldeman, a psychologist and professor of clinical psychology at John F. Kennedy University. “We are in an era in which the administration has made clear since the first day that its desire is to erase the trans identity completely.”
Haldeman, who is also the author of “the case against the ‘therapy’ conversion: evidence, ethics and alternatives,” he said that there are years of research that shows that trying to get trans people “accept” the sex of their birth has negative results of mental health.
The HHS revision goes back in the riding of “exploratory” therapy with the so -called conversion therapy, arguing that all psychotherapy is “exploratory by definition.”
The review also mentions multiple “complainants”, or people who previously helped provide attention to trans young people who have been denounced this attention since then. He mentions Jamie Reed, a former social worker at the Transgender Center of the Children’s Hospital of St. Louis, who alleged in an affidavit of 23 pages that the children were being prescribed by puberty of puberty or hormonal therapy without “appropriate or precise” mental health evaluations. His accusations were used by state legislators in support of the legislation that finally prohibited the attention that gender affirms to minors in the state of Missouri.
The review says that the concerns of the complainants have been “discarded, dismissed or ignored by outstanding defenders and professionals of the pediatric medical transition.”
Reed said that, “as a complainant appointed in the report, and as a lesbian myself with an internal knowledge of this field, I agree with the conclusions” of the review.
“Gender medicine has been a gay conversion therapy from the beginning,” Reed said in a statement to NBC News. “The HHS review shares that the story and concludes that the practice increases the” serious concerns related to justice “due to the overrepresentation of LGB young people among patients. As a life of a lifetime, I think it is time for bipartisan support to recognize the findings of this report.”
Ladinsky previously practiced as a pediatrician in Birmingham, Alabama, for 10 years, where he treated hundreds of trans adolescents until the State approved a prohibition of transition care for minors in 2022. The State is one of the 25 that has promulgated such restrictions.
“All of us in the first line will tell you that in these 25 states where the elements of attention are prohibited, we still have to learn from a young person who is no longer transgender,” Ladinsky said.
