Urgent Request to the US Surgeon General: Protect Young People from Irreversible Medical Harm

No medical or mental health history is being taken into consideration before prescribing hormones or surgical interventions.

Stop the medical child abuse. Save the kids!

To use life-altering permanent surgical and hormonal treatments on children based solely on how they are feeling at that moment in their lives is beyond frightening. They prefrontal cortexes are not finished developing until the age of 25 and yet adults are simply taking their word that this is who they want to be forever? Please don’t let a generation go down this path, which is sure to lead to regret and remorse for many.

I beg the medical community to WAKE UP and end the harm being done to so very many young vulnerable people today! We look to you as "EXPERTS" please protect them from unnecessary harm!

These treatments are not only being performed on gender-nonconforming kids and young adults, but any young adult who simply requests them, even with no evidence of being gender-nonconforming. And since when does someone have to be gender-conforming anyway!? People can dress and act as they wish. This is 2019, not 1850! There is no body alteration required!!

This needs to stop!

Because I care!

I am in fear that when my daughter goes to college she will be given hormones that will cause irreversible damage to her body.

As a healthcare economist, I have to weigh in with some additional facts. Currently, over 1 million US adolescents and young adults, whose brains have not reached neurological maturity, are claiming a transgender identification (according to CDC's 1.8% estimate). Most of these youths have no documented history of gender dysphoria in childhood--the time when gender incongruence typically shows up. Unlike typical transgender patients, who are mostly biological males, these youth are disproportionately female. And they tend to announce their trans identification in groups--pre-existing groups of friends, and usually after heavy online exposure to transgender topics. Prominent sex researchers who have treated transgender adults for decades are baffled by this atypical presentation. A recent study by Kaiser Permanente (funded by PCORI) showed that transgender-identifying youths have up to 20 times the rates of ADHD, ASD, and other comorbid mental health disorders. The vast majority of these children are not transgender: they are adolescents having a hard time coping with the stress of growing up and attributing their distress to the increasingly-trendy & transgender status. Their untreated mental health illness contributes to the distress and disassociation from their body. Using the most conservative estimates, over $1B per year is being spent on transgender treatments. It's become a profitable industry with more and more clinicians entering it. Most are well-meaning but ill-informed about the key facts: over 80% of youths desist from transgender identification if left unmedicated; and the vast majority of youths being medicalized today are getting the interventions that were never studied in, and never meant for, this novel and poorly understood patient segment. They were meant for adults who have had well-documented, persistent and consistent gender dysphoria for decades, and who underwent through psychological testing and treatments for years prior to

My daughter decided she was my son after several other girls at her small school came out as transgender. Her 14 year old mind found no issue with immediately starting treatments and she found nothing but eager support from local therapists and endocrinologists. Only my wife took the time to understand her motivations for changing and suggested she delay life-changing decisions. Why isn't this a standard of professional care? Do we routinely prescribe diet pills for body dysphoria? Do we encourage "being your true self" when a child starts cutting? The medical profession has been convinced that there is "science" to support medicalization when there is actually nothing but a series of self-referential talking points and circular reporting initiated by activists and the Human Rights Campaign. There is no real data to analyse because no one has ever collected it. Please stop the medicalization of our children for profit and political agendas.

As a physician it is obvious to me that this is both medical malpractice and child abuse.

Stop the Child abuse

Hormones and puberty blockers are not candy and should not be treated as such. Gatekeeping and safeguarding of children and young adults is absolutely essential.

Stop the abuse!

Children need to experience puberty and the natural process of becoming an adult! It is being told they are completely harmless and reversible, which is false! Nearly 100% of children who go on blockers continue onto hormone replacement. This is experimental and our children are being used as guinea pigs!

This is child abuse and experimentation on human children due to a social media fad. The NIH should not be supporting this research on children who are under the age of consent. They must be 21. Planned PArenthood and Pritzker billionaires are making this a worldwide fad. Please stop this abuse of childre,

When our teen daughter suddenly began to believe she was transgender, we took her to a gender clinic. We thought they were the experts who would tell us that our child could not possibly be transgender, but would help us figure out what to do. Instead, they told us that she needed puberty blockers so she would have more time to figure this out. They said these drugs were totally reversible. They would just give her more time. We did our own research and found out they were wrong and that this has become a dangerous trend among young people. We also discovered that the American Academy of Pediatrics is also promoting the use of these dangerous puberty blockers in young children. We have lost all faith in the medical profession. We urge the Surgeon General to investigate why this is happening. We have met many more parents like us who are in the same situation. We are not right wing bigots, we are just concerned parents who know that our children are confused and caught up in a phase and certainly don't need drugs and hormones. But they do need help. And we can't even find a therapist who will help our daughter without telling her that she is actually transgender.

My son is permanently damaged (pituitary gland tumor and gynomastia) after taking cross hormones for 3 months. These hormones are medically contraindicated but two Dr.’s prescribed them anyway. My son was going through great stress and was on 2 anti-anxiety meds. This should have been addressed before prescribing hormones. I filed a complaint with the CA Board. My son has detransitioned and is now getting proper care, but this has scarred him forever. Informed consent is harming thousands of teens and young adults and more and more are detransitioning every day. Many are furious with the medical community for handing out hormones like candy and removing healthy body parts. This is partially happening due to social media and social contagion. Therapists are not allowed to question trans and required to affirm only. Endos are doing the same. First do no harm is history. Thank you.

My son is also being treated for stage 4 colon cancer. has a P53 gene mutation and any transgender drugs would likely hasten his demise.

This is an urgent call to action. More and more children, teens and young adults are being damaged daily by high dose cross sex hormones and surgeries. The long term physical and psychological side effects of these medications are being minimized in order to promote an unscientific, ideological agenda. -MKL