The failure of scientists to “slowly and systematically” study prescribing children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is responsible for both a lack of medical clarity regarding their safety and effectiveness in treating gender dysphoria and the fact that the issue is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Washington Post editorial board wrote Sunday.
The editors of the left-wing media outlet came to their astounding change of heart along with their acknowledgment that the state of Tennessee actually has a “colorable claim” before the High Court in United States v. Skrmetti, the Biden administration’s challenge to the state’s law that protects minors from a profitable and fast-growing “transgender” medical industry.
The issue of experimental “trans” medical interventions on minors, the WaPo board asserted, “is subject to legal dispute in part because the medical questions have not been properly resolved.”
Noting that the promising future of practicing so-called “gender-affirming” medical care on children was founded on a Dutch study (initially conducted with only 70 patients but dwindling down to 55 in a follow-up study), the editors observed that “[t]reatment results that look impressive in small groups often vanish when larger groups are studied.”
The editors added:
Yet as other doctors began copying the Dutch, clinical practice outraced the research, especially as treatment protocols rapidly evolved. A British study attempting to replicate the Dutch researchers’ success with puberty blockers “identified no changes in psychological function” among those treated.
While the WaPo editors failed to mention the Biden-Harris administration’s drive to normalize “transgender” ideology and provide cover for the so-called research put out by those who profit from the trade of “trans medicine,” they did mention several of the recent scandals that suggest a failure to adequately assess whether puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are a safe and effective means to treat gender dysphoria in children.
For example, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the director of the nation’s largest child “gender clinic” at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, told the New York Times in October she was withholding the results of her taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) study because she feared its unexpected outcomes would be “weaponized” and used in lawsuits as evidence that puberty blockers are not an effective means to treat children with gender confusion.
“Medical progress is impossible unless null or negative results are published as promptly as positive ones,” the WaPo board argued.
Additionally, the editors observed that court documents from a youth “gender medicine” case in Alabama revealed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) attempted to interfere with a systematic review commissioned from the Johns Hopkins University.
“[I]n the absence of clear data – and with the possibility of significant publication bias or researchers massaging their results – parents might not have adequate information,” the editors likewise concluded.
“Congress should nevertheless fund new research of maximum possible rigor, overseen by scientists who are not gender medicine practitioners,” the WaPo board recommended.
Former U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, guest host of Washington Watch with Tony Perkins, said Monday the WaPo board did the “unthinkable” with their editorial that reflected a significant “about-face.”
Hice interviewed Dr. Quentin Van Meter, immediate past president of the American College of Pediatricians and current executive committee member, who agreed the WaPo board’s editorial was remarkable and “a big breath of fresh air.”
“They essentially spoke the truth,” Van Meter said:
They indicated that they had agreed that the science wasn’t there, that this direction, perhaps, was not the direction that we should be doing … it comes out of, I think, a realization that the rest of the world is going in a correct direction and protecting these kids who are suffering emotionally with this … concept in their head, trying to live the life of happiness, but not finding it in their current situation and grasping at straws for someplace to go to be happy.
Van Meter said children suffering from gender dysphoria often do not realize that the problematic issue is “deep inside of them,” likely “depression,” “anxiety,” and “a number of things which had been previously glossed over by those advocates who wish to intervene and essentially create a new persona – somebody who appears to be the opposite sex from their biologic sex.”
In the wake of a systematic review of studies and guidelines led by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, the UK government recently announced an “indefinite” ban on subjecting children to puberty blockers. Other European nations have also urged extreme caution in prescribing experimental drugs to children, citing a lack of evidence of their safety and effectiveness.
Van Meter said that, in the United States, however, “it’s the legal battles which are now beginning to come forth”:
… kids who were transitioned both medically and surgically as minors here in the country, who are now speaking up and bringing lawsuits against not only the physicians that did this to them, but the healthcare systems that support those physicians. And in some cases that may extend to the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies who have facilitated this kind of thing happening, wittingly or unwittingly.
Contrary to the claims of far-left activist groups who have made child access to experimental drugs a political issue of “rights,” Van Meter said those who want to protect young people from being subjected to the “transgender” industry’s practices are truly concerned about the children and want them to have access to the care that will also keep them from harm.
“We know the right answer and that is counseling, counseling, counseling – right down to the root of the problem, as opposed to putting a Band-Aid over a volcano and hoping that it stays quiet,” he said.
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