Primum non nocere (“First, do no harm.”)

“Just a reminder that if you have to self ID as a woman it’s because you’re not one.”

—-Sall Grover

I subscribe to a number of newsletters from organizations working to stop children from receiving gender deffirming procedures. Notice I’m calling these procedures rather than treatments or gender affirming care because these procedures are not treating or affirming anything. These procedures are enriching the medical-industrial complex at the cost of harming vulnerable patients and include chemical castration/sterilization (puberty blockers), wrong-sex hormones, and gruesome surgeries.

These organizations sometimes send out a call to action, which is typically a request to contact elected officials or other organizations on behalf of fighting the gender cultists and their insane ideology. One of these organizations is Do No Harm which asked people to write to the Endocrine Society and express opposition to its endorsement of harmful medical practices. Do No Harm is a group of concerned doctors and other healthcare providers.

Here’s the email I sent the Endocrine Society on July 27, 2023:

To: info@endocrine.org

Subject: Medicalization of children (minors under age 18) for gender dysphoria

Dear Endocrine Society:

I am contacting you in opposition to your organization’s support of medical procedures (drugs or surgery) for gender-confused children.  I’m familiar with the spurious claims of transactivist ideologues and their enablers who promote these procedures, as well as the aspersions (e.g., transphobe, bigot) they level against anyone who challenges their ideology.  This is fundamentally an issue of basic human decency and ethical medical care.  Protecting children is a nonpartisan issue and is of concern to people across the political spectrum, and this includes healthcare professionals and sensible transpeople, who oppose providing children puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, or mutilating surgeries. 

Puberty is not a disease and people are not “born in the wrong body.”  Children cannot consent to medical procedures that result in their chemical castration/sterilization or the medically unnecessary removal of healthy body parts.  Children are profoundly harmed by these drugs and surgeries instead of being given proper non-activist mental health therapy.  The ones victimized by the healthcare profession as children, and now coming forward to sue their former doctors and therapists, are fully justified in doing so.  I hope they win huge settlements, including against any of your members who are involved, because this may be the only thing that stops this madness.  

To those who seek to justify their complicity in this medical malpractice, which one person accurately described as a “gender lobotomy,” with the tired platitude that the absence of such medical intervention risks a child’s suicide, I suggest this: Stop gaslighting, and instead try harder with the mental health therapy!  That would be true compassion and caring.  Children suffering from emotional distress need a proper mental health evaluation and therapy provided by a neutral therapist, not indoctrination into a harmful cult. 

Transactivists make the despicable claim that proper mental health care in regard to these patients is “conversion therapy.”  It is certainly not conversion therapy to first see if it’s possible to get a gender-confused person to accept his or her gender.  The actual conversion therapy are these ghoulish medical treatments, as evident by the heartbreaking stories of detransitioners who’ve been irreparably harmed by drugs and surgeries.  Detransitioners exist and are growing in numbers despite the transactivist propaganda which falsely claims otherwise.  Even transpeople who express no regret regarding their medical transitioning share stories of the serious medical complications they’ve suffered as a result of drugs and surgeries–they should also sue.  An ethical, caring person realizes that medicalization for the rare instances of true gender dysphoria should be a last resort and then only for adults who are protected by appropriate safeguards (not the farcical WPATH standards).

I believe people in the future will look back on this era of barbaric gender lobotomization as reminiscent of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study; in other words, another example of profoundly unethical medical experimentation done on vulnerable people by medical professionals who should know better and violated the fundamental principle of “First, do no harm.”  I hope the Endocrine Society reconsiders its position of endorsing harm and joins the many groups and individuals who oppose these procedures for children.  This includes your foreign healthcare colleagues who recently published an open letter in the Wall Street Journal, “Youth Gender Transition is Pushed Without Evidence.” 

Revising your position to one of opposition will result in your members being called bigots and transphobes.  Don’t worry about such tiresome name-calling, as you’ll then find yourselves in the excellent company of decent people who sincerely want to protect children.    

Sincerely,