Chest reconstruction surgeries performed on minors across the United States increased by approximately 400% during a three-year span, according to a new report.
The Journal of the American Medical Association, an international peer-reviewed general medical journal, published that researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, reported that 1130 chest mutilating surgeries were performed on children younger than 18 years old from 2016 to 2019.
Of those encounters, 1114 were mastectomies, while 16 were augmentation mammaplasties — bringing the annual number of child mutilations during the reported years to a 389% increase.
“To our knowledge, this study is the largest investigation to date of gender-affirming chest reconstruction in a pediatric population,” the study noted. “The results demonstrate substantial increases in gender-affirming chest reconstruction for adolescents.”
The report noted, “reconstructive genital surgery is typically not performed in adolescents, but masculinizing chest reconstruction (e.g., mastectomy) and feminizing chest reconstruction (e.g., augmentation mammaplasty) may be performed in outpatient and ambulatory surgery settings.”
According to the report, some of the children who underwent the surgeries during the study had psychiatric conditions, such as anxiety and depression. And about 20% of the children were using so-called gender-affirming hormone therapies.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh recently obtained footage showing a Vanderbilt doctor emphasizing the money such surgeries can bring in. “Chest reconstruction” surgeries — which can be performed on minors — can generate $40,000, and “female-to-male bottom surgeries” can produce $100,000. Another Vanderbilt doctor called religious objections “problematic” and said that medical professionals who refuse to perform such surgeries should face “consequences.”
Video and archived webpages from the medical center detail a doctor’s promotion of the “big money maker” transgender therapies and surgeries and apparent threats against medical professionals who dare object for religious reasons.
“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, the video reveals. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”
The Vanderbilt Pediatric Gender Clinic has since agreed to pause all gender transition surgeries on minors, but insiders with the clinic told The Daily Wire they fear transgender surgeries on minors would eventually resume unless laws were established banning such operations.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) recently sent a letter to the Federal Drug Administration calling for an investigation of the pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials using puberty blockers on children.
Blackburn has joined other Tennessee officials in calling for an investigation into Vanderbilt University Medical in the wake of Walsh’s reporting.
“It is just very sad that we would hear from medical professionals as they were putting profit in front of children,” Blackburn told The Daily Wire.
A recent report from Grand View Research said the industry surrounding transgender surgeries saw a $1.9 billion valuation last year and is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 11%, bringing the industry to $5 billion by the end of the decade.
Studies indicate that as many as 90% of young people who claim a transgender identity but are not encouraged to socially or medically transition will no longer call themselves transgender in adulthood.
According to the JAMA Pediatrics study, at least 35 state legislatures have introduced more than 100 bills that limit or prohibit access to “medically necessary gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse youth, resulting in poor mental and physical health outcomes,” adding approximately 300,000 adolescents between 13 and 17 years of age identify as transgender.
Ben Zeisloft and Amanda Prestigiacomo contributed to this report.