WASHINGTON — Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week issued a final warning to top medical groups that have promoted sex rejecting procedures for minors, letters obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire show.
Kennedy in December wrote to a number of groups, including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the American Medical Association, asking for “timely and substantive” responses regarding their promotion of transgender medical procedures for kids. All but three of the groups ignored the notes.
“To date,” Kennedy wrote to the unresponsive organizations this week, “the Department has received nothing. For an organization that rarely wants for words on this subject, the silence is telling — and deeply disappointing.”
The groups have 10 business days to answer whether they plan to revise their guidance in light of evidence and findings by HHS that so-called transgender “medicine” hurts children. Kennedy is demanding a “clear, current statement” of each organization’s position on so-called “gender-affirming care” for children, as well as clarification of updates, revisions, and corrections to each organization’s guidance or educational content, and concrete timelines on any forthcoming changes.
“Continued silence,” Kennedy wrote, “will speak for itself as a choice to place commitments to radical ideology ahead of evidence-based medicine and the children” the organizations “claim to protect.”
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If HHS finds that the organizations have not made any changes to their policies, the department will “evaluate responses and determine appropriate next steps consistent with its statutory and regulatory authorities,” an HHS official told The Daily Wire.
Kennedy demanded updates from the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Association. Only the WPATH, the Endocrine Society, and the American Psychological Association acknowledged receipt of his December letters.
The HHS released a report, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” which documented “substantial evidence of harm for minors from sex-rejecting procedures.” Kennedy repeatedly cited that report in his letters, noting that his team has since worked hard to end these procedures for children, including by ending Medicaid and CHIP funding of transgender procedures on minors.
“One would expect that an organization holding itself out as a steward of national medical standards and claiming to place the health and safety of children above all else might have something to say when the evidence calls its guidance into question,” Kennedy wrote. “Surely an association so confident in its position would welcome the chance to defend it.”
Kennedy says that the organizations’ refusals to engage on the matter are “difficult to square” with the principles that they profess. He notes that in February, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons “followed the science by updating their position on sex-rejecting procedures on minors” after finding that “there is insufficient evidence” showing that these surgeries and hormones benefit children.
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