Republicans bash top U.S. pediatrics body for harmful ‘woke’ trans care policy and seek scrutiny

Republicans have accused the top pediatrics body of bowing to ‘woke activists’ and fast-tracking trans teens into puberty-blockers and hormones, saying they will investigate the health scandal if they re-take the House in November’s midterms.

DailyMail.com spoke with Republican lawmakers Dan Bishop and Buddy Carter after a whistleblower revealed how the American Academy of Pediatrics was suppressing members’ concerns that its transgender policy damaged teens.

Leaked internal AAP files showed dozens of U.S. pediatricians accusing their own professional body of pushing a ‘harmful’ drugs-first approach on adolescents — and of deliberately blocking efforts to review the policy.

Bishop, a North Carolina representative, promised ‘rigorous oversight’ of the AAP’s ‘radical and harmful gender policies’ and praised rank-and-file pediatricians for pushing the academy to review its drugs-first approach.

‘Forcing radical gender ideology on children causes them immeasurable harm, and these whistleblowers are doing us a great service in exposing how the medical establishment is putting wokeness above sound medical care,’ said Bishop.

Carter, a Georgia representative and pharmacist who sits on the House subcommittee on health, said the AAP had ‘serious questions to answer’ and outlined plans to ‘invite them in and have them testify’ if power shifts in November.

Democrats have a slim 220-211 majority in the House and control its committees. The president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, meaning Republicans are poised to win back the chamber and its powerful committees.

House committees weigh information, consider bills, oversee agencies and hold hearings.

‘I’m so disappointed that the AAP is not taking this seriously. It appears to me, they’re willfully ignoring the evidence that exists … essentially suppressing members from raising legitimate concerns,’ said Carter.

‘Woke-ism has invaded healthcare, and activism has no place in healthcare.’

Republicans will launch oversight investigations should they win the chamber in November said Carter. While private organizations like the AAP do not answer to Congress, the health subcommittee can subject it to scrutiny and questioning.

Carter currently co-sponsors a House bill against ‘potentially sterilizing’ minors with drugs or surgery. Bishop famously authored his state’s controversial 2016 ‘bathroom bill’, barring trans people from washrooms aligned to their gender identity.

DailyMail.com readers also aired their views about the whistleblower leaks. They overwhelmingly voted 98-2 percent that the AAP should ‘review its transgender care policy’, in our poll of more than 500 respondents this past week. There is still time to vote. 

The AAP declined to comment on the prospects of scrutiny by the House of Representatives.

The academy says its guidelines — to reinforce the gender a youth selects, including through drugs, cross-sex hormones and eventually surgery — are evidence-based, widely accepted, subject to review, and the best bet for vulnerable teens.

Yet they remain controversial. Powerful drug cocktails takes a huge toll on young bodies and can lead to sterility and osteoporosis, critics say. For many teens, transitioning is celebrated, but others regret the treatment and seek reversals.

A Reddit forum for trans people who regret transitioning and seek to reverse treatments has clocked up 37,000 members. They share online their experiences about taking cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and other issues

California teen Chloe Cole has publicly warned parents not to let their children transition, after she underwent puberty blockers and surgery that ‘irreversibly and painfully’ damaged her body from the age of 13.

Testifying to a medical panel last month, she warned of the dangers of online LGBTQ+ activism, unreliable therapists and a medical process and its reversal that left her unlikely to be able to have children and unable to breastfeed.

‘The AAP represents the needs of pediatricians, not the children affected by their stances,’ Cole told DailyMail.com.

‘The average parent and the average child isn’t properly represented by the AAP. I have heard from pediatricians that are part of the AAP sounding the alarm. We are damaging children irreversibly, and you don’t need a PhD to see it.’

DailyMail.com last week published a trove of leaked internal documents showing pediatricians across America are at war with their own professional body over controversial puberty-blocking drugs routinely handed to teens wanting to change gender.

Dozens of rank-and-file pediatricians accused the AAP of pushing the ‘harmful’ drugs and cross-sex hormones on transgender-identifying minors and deliberately silencing internal criticism by blocking moves for a crucial policy review.

In the comments, members said the academy was ‘endorsing great harm’, that its care package for trans-identifying teens was based on ‘scant and shoddy’ evidence and that dolling out drugs and hormones was ‘unsafe and unsustainable’.

‘Before promulgating gender-affirming care, with all of its ethical implications (irreversible bodily changes, sterility, etc.) … don’t we want to be sure this is the best path?’ wrote one anxious pediatrician.

Another member said there was ‘no good long-term outcome data’ for those who undergo the arduous physical process of transitioning.

‘What is most needed right now is better research to make sure we do the right thing for our patients,’ wrote the pediatrician, who, like others, we did not identify, as such views have led to online harassment in the past.

Others bashed the academy for stonewalling Resolution 27, in which five members asked the AAP’s leadership conference in Chicago earlier this month for a ‘rigorous systematic review’ of the academy’s 2018 gender-affirming policy.

One AAP member complained they were ‘unable to comment’ on the document; another said they ‘no longer trust the AAP’ as the resolution was ‘removed’ and ‘debate on the matter was silenced egregiously’.

The Damning Documents

‘There is NO open dialogue on these medical treatments by the AAP,’ posted another. ‘Input from the membership MUST occur.’

Members posted their concerns from New York, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, Idaho, Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado, California, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, Maine, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The academy has some 67,000 members. Five members wrote Resolution 27, dozens posted critical comments online, but it is unclear how many question the academy’s policy to affirm the choice of trans-identifying youngsters.

The critics say trans teens would often benefit more from counselling or therapy instead of drugs — and urge the professional body to follow a more cautious approach currently being adopted by similar bodies in European countries.

Britain’s health service recently decided to close the country’s only gender identity clinic for children, after a damning review and a slew of allegations by former staff and patients about rushing young people onto treatment.

A major Swedish clinic last year stopped giving puberty blockers and hormones to children, and Finland’s health chiefs decided that psychotherapy, not drugs and hormones, should be the first-line treatment for gender-dysphoric youngsters.

Parents have complained about being sidelined as their children make rash decisions about switching gender, which are reinforced by clinicians who follow AAP guidelines and hand out drugs even to pretreens.

The AAP says there is strong consensus support for its transgender care model, which includes repeated psychological evaluations of patients, involves their parents and does not always lead to cross-sex hormones or surgery.

The academy’s advice guides the work of some 67,000 members and the gender-affirming policies of President Joe Biden’s administration. Its policy echoes the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and other bodies. 

Transgender issues have gained special significance in the U.S. and frequently feature in ferocious ‘culture war’ rows between liberals and conservatives.

Republicans have passed several bills this year directed at transgender youth, including measures to stop classroom debates on gender identity, restrict participation in sports and blocking access to drugs for transitioning.

Laws in Arizona, Texas and Alabama are aimed at stopping doctors from performing gender-reassignment surgery or deterring parents from providing gender-affirming care to their transgender children. Some face legal challenges.

Polls show Americans are divided, but hew to traditional gender norms.

A Pew Research Center poll in May found that most Americans — 60 percent — said sex was determined at birth, rather than by an individual’s choice, while 46 percent favored laws against providing children with medical care to transition.

An NPR/Ipsos survey the following month found that 31 percent of respondents supported state laws preventing transgender youngsters from undergoing medical transitions, while 47 percent opposed them.