“When it comes to treating children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) has abandoned its commitment to sound medical judgement.”
So states a Sept. 24 letter from 20 attorneys general to the AAP.
The AAP is, rather, selling snake oil to “its 67,000 pediatrician members, the broader medical community, the public, and especially parents,” the letter indicates.
These 20 AGs flatly call the AAP’s 2018 “policy statement on gender affirming care” misleading and deceptive. Not only does the policy “endorse[] treating minors … with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions,” it makes the patently false claim “that puberty blockers used to treat adolescents with gender dysphoria are ‘reversible.’”
That just isn’t true, say the AGs.
The AAP itself admitted in 2018 that it had “no basis to assure parents that giving their children puberty blockers can be fully reversed,” the letter says. The opposite is true. “It is beyond medical debate that puberty blockers are not fully reversible but instead come with serious long-term consequences”—physical, mental, and emotional.
"Puberty blockers compromise bone density." Think teenage osteoporosis. Additionally, they "may interfere with neurocognitive development." Starving the brain of necessary hormones can cause permanent mental disability. Finally, puberty blockers “block normal pubertal experience and experimentation.” When you deprive a person of normal life-experiences, it permanently denies him or her the chance to grow.
“It is abusive to treat a child with biologically altering drugs that have an unknown physiological trajectory,” write the AGs. In addition, it is “inhumane to endorse such experimentation without a confident safety profile, especially if more times than not, it proves to be medically unnecessary.”
What makes the AAP’s lies even more egregious is that it colluded with the very source that it relies on most heavily—the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Imagine the chutzpah of helping someone write guidelines and then citing those very guidelines as though it were a source independent of yourself.
Worse, the WPATH has “been exposed as unreliable and influenced by improper pressures,” according to the letter. The AGs point to the explosive leaks from the WPATH last spring. Their own doctors can be heard questioning conclusions that were published as certainties.
Against the politically motivated pseudoscience of the WPATH stands the World Health Organization and its “refusal to endorse puberty blockers.”
Meanwhile, the Cass Report, commissioned by the National Health Service of England, thoroughly debunks the AAP claims. It does so by examining long-term patient outcomes.
Despite this overwhelming evidence, the AAP “continues to authoritatively declare that puberty blockers are ‘reversible,’” conclude the 20 AGs, adding, “That claim is scientifically unsupported and contradicts what is medically known.”
But why is this a concern for states’ attorneys general?
Because they are responsible for enforcing the laws of each respective state. And every state, including Wyoming, prohibits false, misleading or deceptive advertising toward consumers.
In this case, the primary consumers are medical doctors who buy membership in the AAP and receive snake oil. But it is not only practicing pediatricians who are harmed by false medical claims. The greatest harm comes to their patients. Monetary loss can be reversed. Puberty blockers cannot be reversed.
Attorneys general have resources to investigate matters of fraud and power to demand documentation. The letter sent to the AAP invokes that power. It asks the AAP to provide answers to 14 separate questions and requests for documentation—and to do so by October 8, 2024. That’s a power that citizens don’t have. Their AGs must exercise it on their behalf.
The letter came from the attorneys general of Idaho. It was undersigned by AGs from Montana, Utah, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, among others.
But it was not signed by Wyoming’s attorney general. Why not?
I contacted Idaho’s attorney general to see if he invited Wyoming’s AG to sign. He politely and discretely directed me to ask that question of my own AG. I had already done that and gotten no reply.
So, I contacted Michael Pearlman, Gov. Mark Gordon’s spokesman. Since Wyoming’s AG is his appointee, surely, he would know. Pearlman informed me that the governor “had no knowledge of this letter,” and that “a letter like this from a group of state attorneys general falls under the purview of the Wyoming Attorney General.”
That may be the case in states that have an elected Attorney General. But since ours is not, I think that the final decision should be made by one who must stand for election.
The reputation of every citizen is affected by Wyoming’s refusal to participate in a worthy cause. When we are asked why we declined to sign, we should have more to offer than crickets from an employee of the governor.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
