Parents, detransitioners, clinicians, whistleblowers, and legal professionals came together Wednesday for an all-day workshop hosted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in Washington, DC, to discuss the dangers of subjecting children to experimental drugs and surgeries in the name of treating gender dysphoria.
While the gathering did not meet the threshold of a congressional hearing, the FTC exists as an independent agency of the federal government whose job it is to protect American consumers from fraudulent and deceitful business practices.
As the FTC noted in its description of the event, Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act “gives the FTC broad authority to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
“This authority could be implicated if there is evidence that medical professionals or others omitted warnings about the risks or made false or unsupported claims about the benefits and effectiveness of gender-affirming care for minors,” the commission added.
In his address to the workshop attendees, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson acknowledged that some may challenge his commission’s role in evaluating so-called “gender-affirming care” being practiced on minors.
“Americans have a right to health claims substantiated by reliable scientific evidence,” he said, however. “They have a right to be informed about information that would be material to their decision to accept hormone therapies or sex-change surgeries. The FTC’s mandate is to protect those rights in this context as it does in every other healthcare context.”
Ferguson cited a report by the New York Times last year that the Biden administration had pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to remove recommended age minimums for gender hormone drugs and surgeries from its draft guidelines.
The report indicated, he said, that the move by Biden health officials was an effort to hedge against “devastating legislation for trans care.”
“The Biden Administration’s concern was not that age-minimum requirements were unscientific, unreasonable, or unhelpful to doctors, therapists, parents, and children experiencing gender dysphoria,” Ferguson explained. “Science was beside the point. Instead, their concern was political. They worried that age-minimum requirements gave too much ammunition to critics of ‘gender affirming care.’”
Ferguson contrasted the goals of the current workshop with those of the Biden administration.
“Today is not about politics. It is about the parents and kids the Biden administration chose to ignore,” he said. “It is about our nation’s children, who stand in most need of our love, protection, and support. It is about their parents, whose selfless and fruitful love is the foundation of our nation and every nation.”
Commissioner Melissa Holyoak noted in her prepared remarks that recent reports state about “1.6 million Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender.”
Holyoak observed as well that parents of children and teens seeking so-called “gender transitions” are often told that drugs and surgeries can reduce anxiety, depression, and risk of suicide.
“Yet,” she said, “just last week, an article in The Atlantic discussed how these benefits have been presented to parents, reporting that a physician with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles explained: ‘We often ask parents, Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?’”
“But as The Atlantic article reveals, the question medical providers have posed to parents did not present a truthful representation of the consequences of gender-affirming treatment,” the commissioner asserted. “When Justice Alito asked at oral argument in the Skrmetti case about suicide rates, the ACLU lawyer confirmed that there was no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent suicide rates.”
“Parents deserve—and the law demands—complete and truthful information regarding the grave health risks of transition treatments for minors, as well as complete and truthful information regarding health benefits that are actually substantiated,” Holyoak said.
The Trump administration has made the protection of young Americans from a predatory industry based on political gender ideology a hallmark of its agenda.
Soon after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that eliminated federal funding of so-called “gender-affirming care” interventions on minors and called for a review of the medical literature on such drugs and procedures.
The FTC workshop also came on the same day the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and medical clinics involved in conducting “gender transition” procedures on minors and potentially breaking federal law in the process.
“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
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Author: Susan Berry, Ph.D.
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