Trans Activists Now Have Veto Power over Medical Education Courses

W ho’s afraid of medical evidence? Unfortunately, the “experts” who oversee continuing medical education. They’re so terrified of transgender activists, they won’t even let physicians listen to skeptical conversations about invasive and irreversible sex-change treatments for children.

On October 29, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education pressured Washington State University to stop offering seven video courses that review a range of topics concerning pediatric transgender medicine. I spoke in one of the videos, and while I’m well aware of the medical establishment’s bias, I’m still shocked at how quickly the ACCME caved to activists.

The campaign against these continuing medical education courses — which any physician in the U.S. could take to maintain his or her license — went from zero to a hundred in less than a day. On the morning of the 29th, a transgender activist posted a blog article criticizing the courses. The blog attacked their creator, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, for being a “hate group”; it also attacked Washington State University for hosting the courses for nationwide use. The blog then provided a link for readers to complain to the ACCME, which has the ultimate authority to decide what constitutes legitimate continuing medical education for physicians.

The ACCME’s president, Dr. Graham McMahon, told the blog that his organization couldn’t comment “on an activity we have not (yet) reviewed.” Yet before the day was over, the ACCME had launched an investigation of the courses, and the university stopped offering them for credit. Physicians can no longer watch them through the school’s continuing medical education portal. As far as I can tell, the ACCME has never before launched an investigation immediately after receiving complaints. While there’s no telling how the ACCME will rule or when, its near-instantaneous decision to pressure Washington State University — the only university to offer the courses for continuing education — speaks volumes. There wasn’t even enough time for a single person to view all seven videos, which can still be viewed on the SEGM website but not for credit.

But what, exactly, is in these courses? Two things that ought to be utterly unobjectionable in the context of medicine. First, a focus on scientific evidence. Second, earnest discussion about what that evidence means for patient care.

The seven courses were all drawn from SEGM’s 2023 conference on “International Perspectives on Evidence-Based Treatment for Gender-Dysphoric Youth.” The conference featured medical experts and researchers from more than 30 countries, specializing in everything from psychology and psychiatry to endocrinology and bioethics. Many international presenters had played a pivotal role in systematic evidence reviews that led their respective countries to limit or prohibit children’s access to transgender treatments such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. In the U.S., meanwhile, professional medical organizations have uniformly suppressed discussion of this same research, as it doesn’t align with their advocacy of child sex changes.

The course that featured me focused on “the role of social and cultural context” in the rapid rise of child transgender identification in recent years. For just over 30 minutes, my fellow panelists and I discussed the data showing that a large percentage of children who identify as transgender struggle with other physiological and mental health issues, including autism or depression. We also discussed the evidence pointing to the role of social media in convincing children that they were “born in the wrong body.” All of us want to help these children, including through therapeutic approaches instead of rushing toward chemical interventions and genital surgeries. All the countries that have commissioned systematic reviews, including Finland, Sweden, and the U.K., now recommend therapy as the first line of treatment.

It is inconceivable that these courses violate the ACCME’s standards for continuing medical education. SEGM designed them with those standards in mind, and Washington State University spent nine months reviewing the courses before approving them. And while these courses are now unavailable for credit, physicians still have access to a slew of continuing medical education offerings that promote sex changes for children. I have viewed many of these presentations from the professional medical associations, and I can safely say that they place advocacy over science. Yet there’s little chance that the ACCME will launch an inquiry against them, much less pressure the professional medical associations to take down their courses.

Physicians depend on continuing medical education to provide the best care, and for the sake of their patients, they deserve to hear an honest discussion of the science. But the people who oversee this critical part of the medical profession are mainly concerned with appeasing activists and appearing virtuous within their academic and bureaucratic bubbles. I wonder if all of ACCME’s leadership — including a medical director at UnitedHealthcare and a deputy undersecretary of Veterans Affairs — know what this organization is really doing.

The message to physicians couldn’t be clearer: Doctors, you can’t handle the truth. But my fellow physicians — and the vulnerable, confused, and hurting children they treat — need the scientific truth more than ever.