Another Bombshell Has Dropped in the U.S. Will it Matter?

This medical scandal officially goes all the way to the White House

Photo by Suzy Brooks on Unsplash

Over the past week, we have read posts from Jesse Singal, Lisa Selin Davis and even The New York Times about released documents that show how Admiral Rachel Levine (Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) pressured WPATH to remove the age minimums from WPATH’s Standards of Care (SOC) 8.

If you have been following this medical scandal for awhile, you may recall our episode, from November of 2022, discussing the bizarre changes that were made to SOC 8, including the dropping of age requirements. You can revisit that episode here:

Now, we are coming to learn that the pressure to do so, came from influences as high as the White House.

Jesse Singal reports:

When the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care Version 8 was released in September 2022, a very strange thing happened: WPATH removed references to minimum age requirements for various medical interventions, describing the change as a “correction” in a notice that now reads, weirdly: “This correction notice has been removed as it referred to a previous version of the article, which was published in error.” Whatever happened, exactly, it’s clear that until late in the game the document did have age minimums until, suddenly, it did not.

The SoC 8 was supposed to have been created via something called the Delphi process. As the document itself explains: “Consensus on the final recommendations was attained using the Delphi process that included all members of the guidelines committee and required that recommendation statements were approved by at least 75% of members.” Suffice it to say that making a sudden, major change so late in the game calls into question whether that process was fully adhered to.

Lisa Selin Davis adds in some additional nuance by including another recent “bombshell” about research from Johns Hopkins:

WPATH, the group that has appointed itself the creator of guidelines for trans people and youth with gender dysphoria, hired Johns Hopkins to conduct systematic reviews (SRs) for its revised standards of care (SOC8). When WPATH didn’t like the conclusions of the unbiased SRs, they forced Johns Hopkins to suppress them. The HHS knew this. Then WPATH published SOC8, claiming they couldn’t conduct evidence reviews, but asserting that studies supported these interventions. Every gender-distressed young person, every parent, was lied to—with the collusion of one of the most venerable academic institutions; the advocacy group that sets the standard; and the federal government. They were told these interventions were evidence-based and lifesaving, safe and effective, and none of it was true.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and Dr. Rachel Levine, Asst. Secretary of Health, then pressured WPATH to hurry the release of the not-evidence-based SOC8 and insisted that they remove all age limits for surgeries—not because the science held up, but because they wanted to protect against lawsuits and political backlash.

The New York Times, does not get nearly as in depth, but even they point out:

The proposed age limits were eliminated in the final guidelines outlining standards of care, spurring concerns within the international group and with outside experts as to why the age proposals had vanished.

The email excerpts released this week shed light on possible reasons for those guideline changes, and highlight Admiral Levine’s role as a top point person on transgender issues in the Biden administration. The excerpts are legal filings in a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care.

We encourage you to read all three articles, and feel free to share other coverage you have found, in the comments section.

Then be sure to tune in early next week for a special conversation between Sasha, Stella and Lisa Selin Davis, where we will work to unpack what all of this means, and ask the question we keep finding ourselves asking—will any of it even matter?