CV NEWS FEED // According to an email obtained via litigation, the Biden-Harris administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) greenlit hormonal drugs for children despite acknowledging that it could lead to an increased suicide rate among minors.
The January 2022 internal email was sent by Clinical Team Leader Shannon Sullivan of the FDA’s Division of General Endocrinology to Theresa Kehoe, MD, the division’s director. The division’s Deputy Director Naomi Lowy was copied on the email.
Sullivan referred to a “safety review” of puberty blockers that was conducted years earlier. She described that a “handful” of the patients in the review “were transgender kids using the drugs off-label.”
“We did find increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk,” Sullivan wrote, adding, “there is definitely a need for these drugs to be approved for gender transition.”
The Daily Signal Managing Editor Tyler O’Neil reported that “conservative nonprofit America First Legal obtained the email in the discovery process of a lawsuit.”
The legal group had sued the Biden-Harris FDA “for illegally concealing records related to the off-label use of ‘puberty blockers’ and cross-sex hormones on children,” O’Neil reported.
America First Legal wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday afternoon: “Our litigation just exposed that Biden’s FDA recommended approving puberty blockers to minors despite noting that these drugs are associated with an ‘increased risk of depression and suicidality.’”
America First Legal Senior Advisor Ian Prior told the Signal:
It is shocking and unacceptable that the FDA would admit that puberty blockers cause suicidal ideation and depression, yet in the same breath recommend their approval for transgender ‘medical’ procedures for children.
The advocates of these brutal practices on children claim that they are necessary to prevent suicide and depression, but in reality, the treatments themselves cause the very thing they claim they are trying to prevent.
“This barbarism has no place in a civilized society and it’s time for the federal government to follow the lead of Europe in banning these experiments on children,” Prior emphasized.
>> UK COURT UPHOLDS ORDER PROTECTING MINORS FROM PUBERTY BLOCKERS <<
In his report, O’Neil noted that the email contradicts a talking point widely used by LGBTQ activists to justify subjecting minor children to puberty blockers and other “transgender” procedures.
“Many activists claim that children struggling with gender dysphoria must receive experimental drugs to make their bodies resemble bodies of the opposite sex to stop them from committing suicide,” he wrote, “yet the FDA study suggested these drugs actually increase the risk of suicide.”
The results of a long-term study out of Finland, released earlier this year, appeared to refute such claims.
CatholicVote reported in February:
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, one of the lead researchers for the study, said that it is “most unethical” for so-called “gender clinics” to bring up the prospect of suicide when talking to parents when they are considering “transgender” procedures.
“It’s not based on facts,” she said, referring to the reportedly common question clinicians ask of parents: “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?”
>> STUDY: ‘TRANS’ PROCEDURES DO NOT REDUCE YOUTH SUICIDE <<
Former U.S. Congressman and retired plastic surgeon Greg Ganske, MD, scrutinized the popular pro-LGBTQ talking point last December in a column for The Des Moines Register.
“What a choice! Either get your child castrated or they will kill themselves. But is it true?” Ganske wrote:
In an article published in Plastic Surgery News, my friend and colleague Dr. Mark Constantion who is an expert on childhood abuse and body shame did an extensive review of the medical literature. He found that transgender adolescents do have higher incidence of suicide in comparison to cis-gender patients but they also have 25-75% higher chances of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as drug abuse, eating disorders, depression, and childhood trauma.
…
One Danish transgender study looked at 3,759 patients. There were 92 suicide attempts and 12 were successful, or 0.3 per cent. Certainly not the high rates suggested by gender doctors. Furthermore, Dr. Constantion found that it is not known if transition surgery lowers the 0.3 percent rate.
“What is known is that transgender patients have six times more psychiatric co-morbidities and ACEs than do non transgender patients,” Ganske stated. “It is data like this that has caused several European countries to put a pause of most transgender surgery in minors.”
