editorial urging the United States to catch up with recent developments in gender medicine.
Given how entrenched the gender-affirmating model has become, reversing course won’t be easy. If the medical profession turns away from the notion that transitioning young people is necessary and lifesaving, it could open itself up to malpractice suits. Consider that in Britain, a lawsuit by a gay girl named Keira Bell against Britain’s leading gender clinic instigated the investigation that led to the Cass Review.
“I’m already hearing from the boards of directors and trustees of some hospital systems who are starting to get nervous about what they’ve permitted,” Erica Anderson, a former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health and a transgender woman, told the British Medical Journal in May. In recent years, a number of detransitioners in the United States have brought suit charging malpractice or the failure to provide informed consent. If American doctors admit their approach was wrong, it’s going to be a costly and politically explosive practice to undo.
Yep.
It’s bound to be hard for many Americans to reconsider what they’ve heard for years as being settled science and a proven path of treatment, especially for a group that has faced considerable prejudice and political attack. Most people truly want to do what’s best for kids who are in any way suffering.
But there is no basis to rush putting kids on an irreversible path of medicalization. With children’s health and well-being at stake, effective, evidence-based and compassionate health care must be accepted. It’s one thing to pursue a medical path not knowing whether it’s effective; it’s quite another to persist on that path with no solid evidence to support it.
Despite the personal or professional costs to admitting its errors, it is time for people in the American medical and political establishments to open their minds and listen to those doctors who have fully examined the evidence.
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