On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is due to hear United States v. Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general. The case involves a challenge to Tennessee’s SB1, otherwise known as a ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors — medical interventions aimed at aligning one’s outward presentation with one’s internal “gender identity.” The question at hand is whether the ban violates the 14th Amendment’s provision demanding equal protection of the laws.
But already something important has been excavated by the Skrmetti case and other lawsuits against youth gender medicine bans: evidence of a medical scandal.
WPATH published SOC-8 in 2022, having removed a draft chapter on ethics but adding one on “eunuch gender identity.” What it hadn’t added were the systematic reviews.
Johns Hopkins had in fact successfully conducted systematic reviews, which found “little to no evidence about children and adolescents” — a conclusion shared with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Nothing supported the oft-repeated mantra of medical necessity.
WPATH prevented Hopkins from publishing most of the reviews, insisting they share only the data with the “benefit of advancing transgender health in a positive manner.” Anything negative was suppressed.
Dr. Rachel Levine, urged WPATH to remove age limits — not because of evidence but because of politics: She worried they would “result in devastating legislation for trans care.” Age limits would add fuel to the bans’ fire.
When WPATH initially resisted such top-down revisions, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) piled on, threatening “to oppose SOC-8 if WPATH did not remove the age minimums.”
WPATH leadership ultimately caved to please Levine and secure AAP’s approval, “without being presented any new science,” as one SOC-8 author noted. Documents surfaced in one lawsuit indicate that Dr. Marci Bowers, a trans woman and current president of WPATH, insisted they all keep mum, submitting to a “centralized authority” to appear united — as opposed to appearing politicized. Bowers wrote: “it is a balancing act between what i feel to be true and what we need to say.”
Bowers herself, a surgeon specializing in genital procedures, apparently makes over a million dollars a year. These supposedly scientific guidelines were created by those who stood to profit from them.
WPATH, AAP, and HHS twisted and concealed evidence, lied about research, protected and enriched themselves and their members, and politicized science. They indemnified practitioners instead of protecting patients.
Source: Challenges to youth gender care bans have illuminated a scandal