Child Psychiatric Association Refuses to Hear Scientific Evidence Critical of ‘Gender Affirming Care’

Slowly, it is becoming clear that the scientific data behind what is called “gender-affirming care” is sorely lacking. Consequently, several countries in Europe have hit the brakes on immediate social affirmation, puberty blocking, and surgeries in children.

Yet much of the American medical establishment (and the Biden administration) continues to resist changing treatment guidelines. Why? Because medical science in this sensitive field has been polluted by a fervent gender ideology that it not only resists considering contrary data but even the expression of differing opinions.

Case in point: In the past the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) declared that any interference with gender affirmation was in violation of the scientific “evidence,” and hence, wrong. From its 2019 “AACAP Statement Responding to Efforts to ban Evidence-Based Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth” (my emphasis):

Research consistently demonstrates that gender diverse youth who are supported to live and/or explore the gender role that is consistent with their gender identity have better mental health outcomes than those who are not…

State-based legislation regarding the treatment of transgender youth that directly oppose the evidence-based care recognized by professional societies across multiple disciplines is a serious concern. Many reputable professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society, which represent tens of thousands of professionals across the United States, recognize natural variations in gender identity and expression and have published clinical guidance that promotes nondiscriminatory, supportive interventions for gender diverse youth based on the current evidence base. These interventions may include, and are not limited to, social gender transition, hormone blocking agents, hormone treatment, and affirmative psychotherapeutic modalities.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) supports the use of current evidence-based clinical care with minors. AACAP strongly opposes any efforts – legal, legislative, and otherwise – to block access to these recognized interventions.

So what matters is the “current evidence,” right? Only if the data support the AACAP leadership’s gender ideology. Recently scheduled panels of reputable mental health professionals from Europe that would have explained the scientific reasons for desisting immediate gender affirmation were canceled by the AACAP. From the Washington Free Beacon story:

A top pediatric psychiatry organization has nixed at least three panels with leading European psychologists about Europe’s move away from chemical interventions for children with gender dysphoria, raising questions about the politicization of American medicine and underscoring a clinical divide between the United States and much of the world.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), which sets practice guidelines for the field, rejected one panel in 2022 and two more this May on the advice of its “Gender Identity Committee,” whose co-chair, Aron Janssen, has described restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as an “effort to oppress.”…

The speakers planned to discuss the data that led Finland, Sweden, and England to abandon the more laissez-faire treatment model now dominant in the United States, according to emails and panel proposals reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Hypocrites! Cleary, the AACAP leadership knows what it doesn’t want its membership to know.

This isn’t science. It is the enforcement of bald-faced ideology. What a disgrace.