HHS Report Challenges Trans Youth Care

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has released a 400-page report entitled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria” attempting to discredit gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The report comes at the request of the new administration through an executive order seeking to ban lifesaving medical care for transgender people. Sinead Murano-Kinney, Health Policy Analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality stated, “This report, initiated by the Trump administration’s January 28th Executive Order, is a deeply ideological & politically motivated distortion of scientific evidence. It lacks the substantial time, rigorous & objective assessments & strong methodological tools that literature reviews require & it fails to maintain even a thin veneer of intellectual rigor or objectivity. Public health policy should be achieved through evidence-based constructions of policy, not policy-based constructions of evidence. Although it has become nakedly clear that scientific integrity is not valued by this administration.” Caleb Smith, Center for American Progress added, “This report wants so badly to be mistaken for expertise—but that’s impossible for 400 pages of rambling, incoherent, dangerous propaganda that waxes poetic about conversion therapy & anti-trans activists. Let’s follow the science here. Gender-affirming care is evidence-based, life-saving care. No politically motivated MAGA report can change that.” Sarah Kate Ellis GLAAD’s President & CEO concluded, “A report in the suggestion that someone’s authentic self & who they are can be ‘changed’ is discredited junk science. This so-called guidance is grossly misleading & in direct contrast to the recommendation of every leading health authority in the world. This report amounts to nothing more than forcing the same discredited idea of conversion therapy that ripped families apart & harmed gay, lesbian & bisexual young people for decades.”

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