The Trump administration publishes a 409 -page report full of garbage science

The main health agency of the Trump administration published an extensive review of transgender medical care on Thursday, falsely Declare that the available scientific evidence does not support to provide care for trans young people.

The review of 409 pages commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services promoted psychotherapy as a “non -invasive” alternative, which LGBTQ+ defenders have denounced as “conversion therapy.”

The new report contradicts decades of research and also challenges the guidance of the main medical associations of the United States, including the World Association for Transgender Health (WPath) and the American Medical Association, on the protocols established to treat gender dysphoria among transgender youth.

Gender dysphoria is the severe anguish that one feels when one does not align with gender identity, and it is the reason why many trans people decide to undergo treatments that affirm gender such as hormonal therapy and surgery in the first place. However, the HHS review proposes conversation therapy to treat this condition in youth.

The review follows the January Executive Order of President Donald Trump that threatened to retain federal funds of hospitals and clinics that provide gender attention to people under 19.

Now, HHS has provided that the report, which insists, is not “a clinical practice guide”, but “for policies, doctors, therapists, medical organizations and … patients and their families.”

“The evidence of the benefit of the pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence of damage is less safe,” says the executive summary of the report. “When medical interventions raise unnecessary risks, disproportionate damage, medical care providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested or demanded by patients.”

The government did not reveal who compiled the investigation and cited the need to “maintain the integrity of the process.”

“Our duty is to protect the children of our nation, not to expose them to not proven and irreversible medical interventions,” said the director of the National Health Institutes, Jay Bhattacharya, in a statement that accompanies the launch of the report. “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”

George Walker IV through AP

The critics of the report say that their purpose is to intentionally characterize the existing evidence about the attention affirmed by gender, which shows exactly the opposite of the HHS theory: when trans young people have access to these medical treatments, they experience low or rates of repentance and high rates of better mental health and body image.

The agency itself admits in the report that damage research is “scarce” and that evidence on long -term health, psychological results, quality of life or repentance is “very low.” But still, the report promotes the benefits of psychotherapy, including “exploratory therapy”, which describes how to help “children and adolescents to accept their bodies.”

Several LGBTQ+ and reproductive health organizations have denounced the recommendation of the review for psychotherapy. They see this as the agency that tries to change conversion therapy, a dangerous and long discredited practice based on the belief that being gay or trans is a disease to heal, as an alternative to current medical treatments.

“The final objective of this report is to impose a political agenda instead of science and insert the federal government where it does not belong, between medical care providers and the families and patients they care for,” said Dr. Kellan Baker, executive director of the Institute for Research and Health Policy at Whitman-Walker Health, a LGBTQ+Community Health Center, in a statement.

Stephen Miller, deputy director of Trump Personnel for Policy, praised The report in the White House information room on Thursday, comparing the idea of ​​being transgender with a “communist cancer culture awakened” that is “destroying the country.”

The report is presented to a large extent on a non -scientific and discredited theory known as “fast starting gender dysphoria”, an affirmation that more and more adolescents assigned women at birth are identified as transgender due to the influence of colleagues and “social contagion.” The theory was initially proposed by the medical and researcher Lisa Littman in an article in 2018. In a survey, Littman asked the parents, largely recruited from the Anti-Trans websites, which describe “a process of immersion in social networks” and that will link that with the gender dysphoria of their children.

However, a 2021 study published in the Pediatrics Magazine He did not find such evidence to support the theory. That same year, the American Psychology Association and another 61 Organizations of Medical Care Suppliers signed A letter He denounces the theory of a “lack of rigorous empirical support for its existence.”

While Littman then issued a correction that updated his methodology and pointed out that fast -starting gender dysphoria was not a formal diagnosis, the concept has gone viral in certain internet conservative corners. Littman’s document was widely cited in policies to restrict the attention affirmed by gender in states as Florida and Texasand now for the White House to further legitimize their attempts to restrict the access of trans young people to medical care.

Trump asked Congress during his joint speech in March to approve a bill “prohibit and permanently criminalize sexual changes in children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”

The review published on Thursday also refers to the Cass reviewa similar report commissioned by the National Health Service of the United Kingdom, which found that there was no “reliable evidence” for medicine that affirms gender. The CASS review was published in April 2024, one month after the closing of the Gender Identity Development Service of the Tavistock Clinic, the only National Attention Service of the United Kingdom for Transgender Youth. Several health organizations and researchers said the review had significant deficiencies, questioning their scientific methodology and the appearance of discriminatory bias against trans people.

Cass review, such as the HHS report, advocates the use of psychotherapy on medical interventions. Both reports argue that practice is unjustly ruled out as conversion therapy and is the “less invasive intervention to address psychological anguish” among trans young people.

Throughout the review, HHS argues that with psychotherapy, the gender dysphoria of a child will generally “resolve without medical intervention”, and that many of these children end up identifying as gay later in life.

But the available science shows that being trans is not a phase or a group of group pressure. A 2022 study in Pediatrics magazine illustrated that the vast majority of trans young people He continued to identify As a transgender five years after leaving, and that stripping access to essential medical care did not help young people become adults. In fact, the face of trans young people Higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation that its cisgenery pairs. Research also shows that lack of support from family and schools, bullying and bullying, and discrimination They are the main factors for bad mental health results.

Other studies have shown that the increase in anti-trans legislation at the state level in the last five years could POSS A PUBLIC HEALTH RISK to transgender youth. Until now, 25 states have approved prohibitions on hormones and surgery that affirm the genre for trans young people, according to the movement’s progress project.

On the contrary, several studies suggest that medical interventions such as puberty blocks and hormonal replacement therapy can Huge improve the results of mental health For transgender youth. A 2023 study In the Lanceta he discovered that when trans young people could access hormonal therapy for two years, they reported a lower suicidal ideation rate than the general population of the United States.

Many defenders see the HHS report as an expression of politics, not scientific evidence, and as the last effort of the Trump administration to reduce access to the attention affirmed by gender for transgender young people.

“This report is clearly trying to build a case for conversion therapy,” Dr. Aisha Mays, a doctor from California and a member of the Board with doctors for reproductive health, said in a statement.

“Today’s report is propaganda with the objective of delegitimizing perfectly safe, effective and evidence based on which people transcend to be who they are. Being transgender, as well as being a cisgender, is not an option or can be reversed by any medical or social method.”