Transgender Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine insists “there is no argument” among doctors specializing in kids and teens about “the value and importance of gender-affirming care” — i.e. the use of hormones and puberty blockers — for the young. Bull.
In fact, Levine and the Biden administration simply refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees, including medical organizations across the globe.
Sweden’s Karolinska Hospital — one of the world’s top hospitals — decided last May to stop treating under-18 patients with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
And in March 2021, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence found that hormone treatments did not provide clear benefits for kids suffering gender dysphoria.
Don’t forget the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, an international group of doctors who dispute the idea that getting these treatments is a matter of life or death for kids.
Here in America, the Florida Department of Health has come to similar conclusions and does not recommend such treatments for kids.
Legitimate, evidence-focused dissents like these Levine dismisses as “the language of medicine and science . . . being used to drive people to suicide.”
No, no and no.
Puberty blockers and other hormone treatments can help some people suffering from severe gender dysphoria. But like many serious medical interventions, they come with costs. The most severe being that their effects, despite advocates’ claims, are not fully reversible (per the UK’s National Health Service, which also says their long-term side-effects for kids are unknown). That’s why prescriptions should only follow serious consideration.
Crucially, many kids who experience gender dysphoria age out of it. Which means that rushing to implement these medical protocols while they’re young doesn’t always make sense.
Pointing all this out is simply following the science. It’s not an attempt to drive trans people to suicide or, as Levine has also implied, a form of “slander, bigotry and gender-baiting hate speech.”
Trans people deserve all the dignity and respect we afford to anyone else. But that doesn’t mean giving strongly contested scientific claims a free pass. And it sure doesn’t mean that Adm. Rachel Levine — a high-ranking civil servant with the full might and power of the American state and its fearsome regulatory apparatus behind her — gets to play victim and stick her fingers in her ears whenever she hears viewpoints she dislikes.