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While leaders of the establishment organization of pediatricians in the United States gave Biden-Harris top health official Dr. Rachel [born Richard] Levine a platform to double down on subjecting children to unproven “trans” treatments, another organization of pediatricians says children are in danger because of an ideology that embraces “unethical, harmful, and experimental treatments promoted by activist organizations.”
“All you can imagine is we’re dealing with a personal agenda,” Michael Artigues, M.D. told CatholicVote during an interview Wednesday.
The president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), Artigues has been a practicing pediatrician for 29 years. He says the Biden-Harris administration, with help from Levine – who claims to be a woman – is “choosing to ignore” the “evidence against gender-affirming therapy – the dangers of hormone treatments, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and certainly surgery.”
As CatholicVote has noted, Levine told members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) at their annual conference last weekend that states that have passed legislation to protect children from the experimental treatments transgender activists call “gender-affirming health care” are promoting “hatred” and “discrimination.”
Levine first turned attention toward himself during his remarks, claiming, as reported by AAP News, “Despite the criticisms that I face … personally I have no room in my heart for hatred or discrimination. Frankly, I have no time for intolerance.”
“Gender-affirming” health care, Levine said, is about social justice and fairness.
“We need to continue to work until everyone living in America can live with equal rights to health, and equitable access to services they need without political interference,” he urged.
But Levine also insists that “gender-affirming” treatment is “evidence-based.” In 2022, the U.S. health official referred attendees at the Out for Health Conference to the source of the “evidence”:
Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health published evidence-based standards of care more than a decade ago, in 2011, and is planning to release a full update this year.
Artigues said Levine’s claims are not grounded in reality.
“To base any treatment on WPATH [World Professional Association for Transgender Health] recommendations at this point – which have been revealed to be so weak an organization that is so much in disarray – says that you’re willing to sacrifice the health of children for an apparent agenda,” Artigues said.
Levine clearly continues to make the claim transgender medicine for children is “evidence-based” even after revelations in June that the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services pressured WPATH to remove recommended age minimums for gender hormone drugs and surgeries from its draft guidelines in order to make it easier to subject children to such interventions.
Court documents exposed that Levine “pressed WPATH to eliminate the age minimums to foster the Biden administration’s pro-‘transgender’ political agenda.”
Artigues pointed to the widely acclaimed independent review of child gender medicine conducted by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, who, along with her team from the University of York, conducted a systematic examination of studies and guidelines focused on the use of puberty blockers and other medical interventions used to treat young people suffering with gender dysphoria.
In their final report, published in April, Cass and her team concluded that the “gender-affirming” model for young people is based on “remarkably weak evidence.”
Artigues asserts the Biden-Harris administration, including Levine, and the medical organizations still backing “gender-affirming” treatments for children are “on the wrong side of this argument”:
This isn’t about hate. This is about medicine. And while no one should have any room in their heart for discrimination, we certainly, as physicians, need to be sure our priority is the health and well-being of children through the use of evidence-based medicine. They’re just on the wrong side of this argument. It’s one thing to make claims and stick with it, but when the evidence keeps mounting up against what they’re promoting, I can’t imagine, it’s anything more than a personal agenda, rather than looking out for what’s in the best interest of children.
Artigues observed that 20 state attorneys general recently demanded that the AAP, which has backed the gender treatments, retract “misleading and deceptive” statements claiming the effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children are “reversible.”
“I imagine they’re just in a defensive mode at this stage,” the ACPeds president told CatholicVote. “And it’s unfortunate that you play legal and political games rather than, again, trying to step back and say what is in the best interest of kids.”
In a piece published Monday at the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse, Artigues’ colleague at ACPeds, the group’s Executive Director Jill Simons, M.D., also expressed disbelief that the U.S. government is backing dangerous medical interventions for already stressed children, many of whom, she wrote, suffer from “autism or pre-existing psychological co-morbidities such as anxiety and depression.”
“I never imagined the federal government would embrace ideology over biology and mandate unethical, harmful, and experimental treatments promoted by activist organizations like the World Professional Association for Transgender Health,” Simons wrote. “But that’s exactly what’s happening. The Biden-Harris administration has unlawfully reinterpreted nondiscrimination on the basis of ‘sex’ in the Affordable Care Act to include so-called ‘gender identity.’”
Simons explained that the mandate:
… forces doctors to act against sound medical judgment and endanger patients. It coerces physicians to use pronouns that contradict biology and to enter inaccurate information in medical charts. It also censors doctors from informing patients about the dangers of experimental interventions and interferes with doctors’ ability to provide medically appropriate and sex-specific care consistent with the reality that humans are created as biologically male or female. The new mandate forces doctors to perform harmful, life-altering, and experimental procedures on susceptible children—even if their gender dysphoria is likely temporary.
Like Artigues, Simons said that, despite the fact that other nations have recognized the dangers of subjecting children and teens to experimental transgender treatments, the U.S. government has remained fixed in its embrace of gender ideology.
“When it comes to children’s health, ideology should never override evidence,” she wrote. “Children who are distressed about their biological sex need evidence-based care that facilitates their journey to adulthood, keeping them mentally and physically intact.”
