(LifeSiteNews) — As I have been consistently documenting in this space, hairline cracks have been slowly widening in the mainstream media’s once rock-sold commitment to transgender ideology for several years now. The New York Times, despite furious backlash from LGBT groups, has published a string of investigations on the impact of puberty blockers, the stories of detransitioners, and the controversy surrounding child sex changes.
The latest salvo, published on July 12 and running to nearly 3,000 words, signals the end of the transgender movement’s iron grip on the Gray Lady. The headline alone would have been unthinkable a few years ago, and takes direct aim at one of the transgender movement’s central premises: “Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?” The column — published, it must be noted, in the Opinion section — was penned by Pamela Paul, and begins with this broadside:
Imagine a comprehensive review of research on a treatment for children found “remarkably weak evidence” that it was effective. Now imagine the medical establishment shrugged off the conclusions and continued providing the same unproven and life-altering [intervention] to its young patients.
This is where we are with gender medicine in the United States.
It’s been three months since the release of the Cass Review, an independent assessment of [transgender interventions] for youths commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Nor, she said, is there clear evidence that transitioning kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of [“gender transitions”] claim. These findings backed up what critics of this approach have been saying for years.
Paul goes on to detail the findings of the Cass Review, which we have already covered extensively. She notes, however, that the Cass Review not only impacted medical practice in the UK, where the British government issued an emergency ban on puberty blockers for minors — it triggered an international response, as well.
“Medical societies, government officials and legislative panels in Germany, France, Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium have proposed moving away from a medical approach to gender issues, in some cases directly acknowledging the Cass Review,” Paul wrote. “Scandinavian countries have been moving away from the gender-affirming model for the past few years. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called the review’s recommendations “seminal” and said that policies on transgender procedures have “breached fundamental principles” of children’s human rights, with “devastating consequences.”
Conversely, she observed, the United States under President Joe Biden has ignored these findings completely — this is also true in Canada, where the Trudeau government, the LGBT movement, and the press are collectively pretending that the Cass Review was never published.
“(F)ederal agencies and professional associations that have staunchly supported the gender-affirming care model greeted the Cass Review with silence or utter disregard,” Paul reported. “There’s been no response from the Department of Health and Human Services, whose website says that ‘gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse [i.e., gender-confused] children and adolescents’ and which previously pushed to eliminate recommended age minimums for gender surgery. Nor has there been a response from the American Medical Association, which also backs gender-affirming care for pediatric patients.”
Paul noted that although she reached out to officials in the HHS, none would speak to her on the record. Nor would anyone from the AMA speak to her. Clearly, she notes, these institutions have chosen ideology over science — Cass told the Times back in May that the American approach to gender dysphoria is simply “out of date,” and noted that “not a single American medical association or governmental official had reached out to discuss her report.” Paul asks the question:
Why would our government and medical institutions continue to frame [“gender transitions”] as medically necessary and lifesaving despite Cass’s assessment? Especially given growing concerns about the risks and irreversible consequences of gender interventions for youths, including bone density loss, possible infertility, the inability to achieve orgasm and the loss of functional body tissue and organs including breasts, genitals and reproductive organs?
In part, Paul noted, it is because the Biden administration has been captured by trans activists:
The Biden administration has essentially ceded the issue to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, incorporating gender-affirming protocols into Department of Health and Human Services policy. Moreover, recently revealed emails indicate that President Biden’s assistant secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician and transgender woman, successfully pushed WPATH to remove age requirements from its guidelines for gender medicine before their publication, because — mixing political and public health concerns — she thought supporters of gender treatment [sic] bans might cite them to show that the procedures are harmful. (WPATH’s draft guidelines had originally recommended age minimums of 14 for cross-sex hormones, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgery and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.)
Conversely, the United Kingdom’s new Labour government — despite being stacked with devout leftists — recently announced that the emergency ban placed on puberty blockers for minors after the release of the Cass Review will likely be made permanent, as recently indicated by the UK’s new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting. LGBT activists are livid, but all sides of the political spectrum in the UK are committed, for the moment, to following the science and protecting children.
It is a criminal shame that leaders in North America refuse to follow suit. They will have much to answer for when this is all over.