The N.Y. Sun: Lawsuits by Regretful ‘Detransitioners’ Take Aim at Medical Establishment’s Support for Gender-Transition Treatments for Minors
My reporting finds: "Two plaintiffs are suing two of the most prominent doctors in the pediatric gender-transition field, as well as the highly influential American Academy of Pediatrics."
Many of you know that I have spent the past year studying the controversial subject of gender-transition treatment for minors—meaning the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and sometimes the provision of surgeries, to treat gender dysphoria in adolescents.
I have just published my first article on the subject, in The New York Sun. I invite you to read it. It concerns a burgeoning legal campaign waged by “detransitioners,” meaning people who medically transitioned genders and who regretted doing so and reverted back to identifying and presenting as their birth sex. To date, 11 detransitioners have filed medical-malpractice suits against the health and mental health providers who oversaw their medical transitions.
My article concerns two suits that aim at the very heart of the sweeping support for pediatric gender-transition treatment among U.S. medical societies. These suits target two of the most prominent and influential physicians backing such treatment. One of the suits further accuses these doctors and their Rhode Island colleagues of engaging in a conspiracy with the American Academy of Pediatrics, as I reported, “to develop, promote and ultimately profit off of what has become the prevailing U.S. medical treatment model for pediatric gender care —a model that the suit alleges is based on a fraudulent and misleading representation of scientific research.”
The AAP’s support of what’s known as the gender-affirming care model has been central to all medical societies’ own support for medical gender-transition treatments. Some of my sources think that the suit against the medical society could damage the AAP’s reputation on this subject and cause the related support for such treatment among medical societies to fracture.
Here’s the article (there shouldn’t be a paywall, but if there is, if you lend them your email, you get two free article views and can bypass the paywall): https://www.nysun.com/article/lawsuits-by-regretful-detransitioners-take-aim-at-medical-establishments-support-for-gender-transition-treatments-for-minors?newsletter-access&utm_source=MG&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20Sun%20%202023-12-06
And here is a tweet thread about the piece if you would be so kind as to share it and provide comments there: https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1732159896747995168?s=20
Update, Dec 6:
I reported on Dec 5 in the Sun that despite scathing criticism about the AAP’s policy statement regarding pediatric gender-transition treatment, and despite the fact that the AAP has not released the independent systematic literature review of the relevant science that it announced it had commissioned in August, the organization was gearing up to publish a 320-page book on the practice. But the morning of Dec. 6, I got an email from the AAP announcing: “Due to an upcoming policy review on this topic, the publication of this book has been placed on hold and your preorder has been canceled.”
I can’t prove that the AAP pulled the book in response to my reporting. I can just say that my article was published at 5:15 pm ET on Dec 5 and the email from the AAP about the book being put on hold arrived at 9:48 am on Dec. 6.
Thank you for this article!
You note these suits "may pose a threat to the medical care of transgender adults as well." I don't think so. I think what currently passes as "medical care" for transgender people, and those with gender dysphoria, by not informing them accurately of risks, benefits, alternatives and doing nothing, and not informing them about how little is known, is not actually "care" at all. I think one of the biggest threats to transgender people in the US right now is what passes for "medical care".
Paragraph 2 above - check your spelling of detransitioners.
Food for thought - for a person who was misdiagnosed with a life-threatening condition and irreversibly medicalized as a result, "regret" is such an understatement as to be trivializing.
Would you characterize the victims of lobotomies as "regretful"? How about "profoundly traumatized and damaged for life".`
I understand why you use the word, you have bought into the rhetoric by the liable clinicians and trans activists who, when attempting to justify it to the public and the insurance companies, claim that it is medically necessary and life-saving, but then do a complete about-face and compare it to elective cosmetic surgery when the negative results are scrutinized.
They are attempting to get themselves off the hook; please don't help them with the title wording.
One other edit: the photo caption at the top of the Sun article doesn't say whether it's a picture of her before transition or after.