Trans Kids: The Medical Scandal

Rosa was a smart, happy fourteen-year-old when she met her first boyfriend.

“I found my forever”, she told everyone – until he suddenly ended it.

Rosa was devastated – and the Covid lockdowns made things worse. She was isolated in her room all day, surfing the net.

As the lockdowns dragged on, Rosa became sullen, irritable, and withdrawn. 

Her tank tops and shorts were replaced by oversize hoodies and baggy sweatpants

One day Rosa came home with a buzz cut. Shortly after, she declared she was a boy and demanded testosterone.

During my medical training, Rosa’s condition, now called gender dysphoria, was so rare, I never imagined I would see even one case in my lifetime. But over the past decade, the incidence of gender dysphoria has increased five thousand percent.

What changed?  

Why did Rosa believe she was in the wrong body, and that without pharmaceuticals and operations, she’d never be happy?

Why do the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and many other medical associations claim that Rosa’s delusion is normal? Why do they recommend treatment that will disfigure and possibly sterilize her healthy body?

Before I answer that, let me tell you what hasn’t changed:

Sex is established at the moment of conception. Sex is permanent. While Rosa’s body can be modified, she will never be a boy.

Never.

But my profession has been hijacked by a political crusade determined to erase the very notion of male and female. 

Medical associations have become mouthpieces for the gender zealots’ radical theories:

Individuals construct their own reality. If Rosa feels she’s a boy, she is one.

Hormones and surgery are the only solutions to gender dysphoria. If Rosa wants to grow a beard and to have her breasts removed, she has that fundamental right.

Those are the premises of so-called Gender Affirming Care.

Proponents claim the approach is evidence based, but the evidence is flimsy at best.

It rests on one small study done in Holland thirty years ago with only 55 subjects.

The primary entry requirement was severe gender distress from early childhood.

The subjects were given puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, and occasionally surgery.

After 18 months, some subjects reported modest improvement. 

The study had no control group and was never replicated, so for those and many other reasons, it’s considered seriously flawed and unreliable.

The “Dutch Protocol” was never intended to be the basis for helping all individuals distressed about their sex.

But that’s what’s happened. A tiny, defective study became the basis of gender medicine around the world.

This is a medical scandal, a man-made catastrophe, that has shattered many lives – not only of young people, but those who love them.

My colleagues, who should be protecting vulnerable kids like Rosa, are complicit in this atrocity.

Some by writing prescriptions, others with a scalpel, but the majority by witnessing the evil and remaining silent.

But there is reason for hope.

The most comprehensive review yet of Gender Affirming Care was recently commissioned by the National Health Service in Great Britain.

Dr. Hilary Cass, former president of Britain's Royal College of Pediatrics, analyzed data from England’s Tavistock Gender clinic, the largest in the world until it was shut down in 2024.

Her report is a scathing indictment of the clinic’s practices. She demonstrates there is no evidence medical interventions benefit gender-distressed young people.

What the kids need, Dr. Cass concludes, is counseling.

Great Britain, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark have essentially stopped medical treatment of teens whose bodies are one hundred percent healthy, and are focusing on their minds and hearts.

The Netherlands, France, and Belgium are not far behind. In March of 2024, a report in France described sex reassignment in minors as potentially “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine.”

But in the US and Canada, I’m sorry to say, it’s full steam ahead.

How do we stop this runaway train?

As a doctor, I’m going to put the responsibility on my colleagues. Do your research. You’re not hearing the other side of the debate. Read the Cass Report. Your medical associations have lost their way. Understand this is not about compassion or rights, it’s about tyranny. 

Stand up to the activist bullies. Speak out against the sacrifice of children on the altar of a perverse political agenda.

Let me end where I began: with Rosa. Her story has a happy ending: her parents and I pulled her back from the brink. Tragically, many other Rosas have been lost, and many others are still out there. We must save them. 

I’m Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness and Senior Fellow at DoNoHarm Medicine, for Prager University.