Twenty state attorneys general are accusing the nation’s largest association of pediatricians of violating state consumer-protection laws in relation to gender dysphoria care for minors and transgender children.
The AGs’ letter, spearheaded by Idaho Attorney General Raul R. Labrador, was addressed to leaders of the Itasca, Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics.
“It is abusive to treat a child with biologically altering drugs that have an unknown physiological trajectory and end point,” Labrador wrote. “It is also inhumane to endorse such experimentation without a confident safety profile, especially if more times than not, it proves to be medically unnecessary.”
Labrador says in the letter Tuesday that an Idaho law, Code § 48-603(17), prohibits “engaging in any act or practice that is otherwise misleading, false, or deceptive to the consumer.”
In a 2018 report, the pediatricians’ association claimed that giving puberty blockers to children was “reversible,” and then doubled down on that last year, according to the attorneys generals’ letter.
But the National Health Service of England in April released a document, the “Cass Report,” which was created to help transgender children get safe care, and according to Labrador’s letter, explains possible “irreversible consequences” of puberty blockers for children.
Among the consequences listed are irreversible neurocognitive development, problems with bone density and metabolic health, difficulties with normal pubertal experience, and infertility and sterility.
“Telling parents and children that puberty blockers are ‘reversible’ at the very least conveys assurance that no permanent harm or change will occur,” the heavily footnoted, 10-page letter states. “But that claim cannot be made in the face of the unstudied and ‘novel’ use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.”
Labrador also highlighted the AAP’s affiliation with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and insinuates that the pediatricians association’s stances on transgender children’s health have been inappropriately influenced by political agendas.
“We are additionally concerned about AAP’s involvement in pressuring WPATH to make last-minute changes to [Standards of Care, Version 8] based on political considerations—and then assuring the public that those same standards are ‘evidence-based,’” Idaho’s top law enforcement officer wrote.
The “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8” (SOC8), is a guide from WPATH that it says is meant to lead clinicians in helping trans people.
The organization also claims that the standards are meant to “maximize” the overall health, psychological well-being, and self-fulfillment of trans people and that the assistance from ‘health professionals’ may include primary care, gynecologic and urologic care, reproductive options, voice and communication therapy, mental health services, or hormonal and surgical treatments.
Earlier this year, two investigative reporters, Michael Shellenberger and Mia Hughes, published the WPATH files, which exposed WPATH’s own knowledge of the harmful side effects from “gender-affirming care,” The Daily Signal reported in March.
The attorneys general are demanding transparency from the pediatricians association, with the letter containing a list of 14 questions that it says it wants answered by the AAP on or before Oct. 8.
The letter calls on the pediatricians group to provide, among other things, “substantiation for the AAP’s claims that puberty blockers are reversible when used to treat adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria.”
The AAP and WPATH did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
