A review of 60 studies of the mental health of transgender-identifying youth found that “there is no long-term evidence that current &#8216;gender affirming&#8217; medication and surgical protocols benefit their mental well-being,” according to a group representing pediatricians.
The American College of Pediatricians issued a position statement on Wednesday <a href="https://acpeds.org/position-statements/mental-health-in-adolescents-with-incongruence-of-gender-identity-and-biological-sex">opposing the gender transitioning of youth</a> based on the literature review. It comes just after a watchdog group filed a scientific integrity complaint against Department of Health and Human Services official Rachel Levine for claiming that “there is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hhs-says-it-has-only-two-pages-of-scientific-evidence-backing-its-support-for-gender-affirming-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no argument</a> among medical professionals regarding &#8220;the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”
HHS provided only two pages to support the idea that the gender transitioning of children was “necessary.” Levine, a man who believes he is a woman, has often dodged the question by saying that “accredited medical professional groups agree that gender-affirming care is medically necessary.”
The American College of Pediatricians is a small group of pediatricians, many of them conservative, that formed in part due to dismay over the way that the much larger pediatrics group, the American Association of Pediatrics, passes activist statements that are then used as if they represent the views of all pediatricians, even though <a href="https://acpeds.org/about/faq" target="_blank" rel="noopener">only a handful were involved</a>.
Given the well-documented problems that often go hand-in-hand with being transgender, the sharp and sudden increase in the number of youth who question their gender should be something that raises alarm bells for physicians, the group said.
Its <a href="https://acpeds.org/position-statements/mental-health-in-adolescents-with-incongruence-of-gender-identity-and-biological-sex" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paper</a> said that intake surveys by a gender-affirming clinic in Europe found that “gender dysphoric adolescents are significantly more likely to show psychopathological abnormalities than their cisgender peers.” Such research is often portrayed as showing that society makes life too hard for transgender people. 
But children may be transgender as a result of other mental issues, rather than having mental issues because society is not accepting of their transition, the pediatricians’ paper said. For example, the paper states that autistic children are more likely to be transgender than non-autistic children. While one wouldn’t claim that transgenderism caused the children to become autistic, activists more readily cast depression, self-harm, and other ailments as the effect of not being able to transition, rather than being associated with underlying conditions that may lead children to be confused about their gender in the first place.
A study of 120,617 adolescents found that the majority of female-to-male transgenders made a suicide attempt, the highest rate of any group. Activists often tell parents that their choice is between supporting a gender transition or having a dead child, arguing that so-called &#8220;gender affirming care&#8221; is life-saving.
But what they do not say is that things don’t get better because a gender transition is affirmed, according to the data. Multiple studies found that transgender-identifying youth had social problems whether or not they transitioned, with one finding that “there was little evidence that psychosocial well-being varied in relation to gender transition status.”
Studies also found that many youth who question their gender eventually change their minds, whereas those who are affirmed are more likely to be relegated to a life of transgenderism, with its attendant mental problems. When a University of Toronto gender dysphoria clinic followed up on its patients years later, they found that 88% were “desisters,” or had changed their mind about being transgender — suggesting that if the clinic had performed gender surgery, the patients would have had severe regret.
When activists cite studies that state that affirmed transgenders do better than non-affirmed ones, a look at the actual available data show that the slight difference in suicidality between the two groups is far less notable than how unacceptably high the figure is for both groups. For example, in one study billed as promoting how essential it was to give puberty blockers to youth, 42% of those who received care still tried to kill themselves.
A study using Denmark’s national database, reviewing 6.6 million individuals over four decades, found that transgender people were 3.5 times more likely to kill themselves compared to normal people. If accommodating and supporting transgender people was a sufficient treatment, then that disparity shouldn’t exist since Denmark is “recognized by the European chapter of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans &amp; Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe) as the third best country in Europe for its protection of sexual and gender minority rights.”
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare concluded that “the risk of hormonal interventions for gender dysphoric youth outweigh the potential benefits,” stating that there is insufficient evidence supporting that the treatments work, especially considering that the population of purportedly transgender youth has exploded in recent years and experts cannot explain why. (One reason, the pediatrics group suggests, is that in a developing brain, a “desire for excitement via novel behavior may entice adolescents to experiment with alternative gender roles.”)
The American College of Pediatricians concluded that the group &#8220;cannot condone the social affirmation, medical intervention, or surgical mutilation of children and adolescents identifying as transgender or gender nonconforming.  Rather, intensive psychotherapy for the individual and family to determine and hopefully treat the underlying etiology of their gender incongruence should be pursued.&#8221;
&#8220;More attention and support should be afforded to individuals seeking help in detransitioning after having made a decision during their formative adolescent years with life-long consequences, including possible sterility and loss of sexual function,&#8221; it said.

Doctor nurse followup data with medical examination document for patient health check in hospital or clinic.

Pediatricians Group Says Research Doesn’t Support ‘Gender Affirming’ Treatments

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Medical Association

Transgender

The American Medical Association (AMA) is discouraging doctors from using only Body Mass Index (BMI) to measure whether a person is a healthy body weight because the system is &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/racism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">racist</a>.&#8221;
BMI has been widely used because it is easily measured, is inexpensive, and has specific cutoff points for the overweight and obese classifications, the AMA <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/ama-use-bmi-alone-imperfect-clinical-measure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a post on its website Wednesday.
However, BMI has been used for &#8220;racist exclusion&#8221; and has caused &#8220;historical harm,&#8221; the medical organization said.
The AMA&#8217;s House of Delegates adopted a <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-adopts-new-policy-clarifying-role-bmi-measure-medicine" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new policy</a> this month recognizing the issues with using BMI.
&#8220;Under the newly adopted policy, the AMA recognizes issues with using BMI as a measurement due to its historical harm, its use for racist exclusion, and because BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations,&#8221; the AMA said in a press release.
The new policy comes after the AMA Council on Science and Public Health presented a report addressing the BMI issues at the 2023 AMA Annual Meeting, which was held June 9 to 14 in Chicago.
There are other issues with the BMI system, too, the AMA said.
BMI is an &#8220;imperfect measure&#8221; because it does not directly assess body fat and is &#8220;misleading about the effects of body fat mass on mortality rates,&#8221; the AMA&#8217;s post said.
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The BMI system also does not account for differences across the sexes, genders, and age-span, the new policy says.
“Further, the use of BMI is problematic when used to diagnose and treat individuals with eating disorders because it does not capture the full range of abnormal eating disorders,” the report said.
BMI should be used along with other measures like body composition, waist circumference, and genetic and metabolic factors, the new AMA policy <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4054274-american-medical-association-says-use-of-bmi-metric-on-its-own-has-done-historical-harm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a>.
“There are numerous concerns with the way BMI has been used to measure body fat and diagnose obesity, yet some physicians find it to be a helpful measure in certain scenarios,” <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-adopts-new-policy-clarifying-role-bmi-measure-medicine" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> AMA Immediate Past President Jack Resneck, Jr. M.D. “It is important for physicians to understand the benefits and limitations of using BMI in clinical settings to determine the best care for their patients.”
The AMA said it will support efforts to educate physicians on the issues with BMI and alternative measures for diagnosing obesity.
The AMA is the largest organization of doctors in the nation with more than 271,000 members.
In recent years, the body positivity and fat positivity movements have picked up steam in the U.S., arguing that obese people can be healthy.
Fat activists have rebelled against &#8220;diet culture&#8221; and made specific demands like free extra seats on airplanes to accommodate their size.
In December, Time Magazine <a href="https://time.com/6242949/exercise-industry-white-supremacy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> an article titled, &#8220;The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise,&#8221; while Cosmopolitan&#8217;s February 2021 issue featured plus-sized models with the headline, &#8220;This is Healthy!&#8221;
Meanwhile, doctors have <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/exercise-to-gain-weight" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointed out</a> that weight gain doesn&#8217;t always correlate to fat gain. For example, some people who exercise will end up gaining muscle weight, which will add to their overall weight.

Gastric Band Treatment

American Medical Association Says BMI Is Racist

Fat Acceptance

Health

Health Care

Progressivism

U.S.

The American medical establishment markets itself as a champion for all patients’ dignity and pretends to be an ally of marginalized women. But in its passionate support of abortion, in the very arguments it uses to justify that support, the medical establishment is actually upholding a destructive, defeatist, and racist philosophy.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision that removed federal abortion protections and returned power to the states to make their own abortion laws, the president of the American Medical Association published a statement <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/dobbs-ruling-assault-reproductive-health-safe-medical-practice">condemning</a> the Supreme Court decision as an immoral intrusion of government into the private affairs of patients and their physicians. In July of 2022, a few weeks after the Dobbs decision, the AMA published a follow-up <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/access-abortion-and-women-s-health-what-research-shows">article</a> on their website, arguing that abortion bans would have dire effects on women’s overall health. In October of that same year, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article calling abortion access a <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2209737">racial justice issue</a>. These publications from medical elites reveal a racist mentality and insidiously devalue human life, especially the lives of those facing genuine hardship.
In his statement, AMA President Jack Resneck called the Dobbs decision an “assault on reproductive health” and “safe medical practice.”
In one noteworthy section of his statement, the president asserted: “Access to legal reproductive care will be limited to those with the sufficient resources, circumstances, and financial means to do so—exacerbating health inequities by placing the heaviest burden on patients from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, rural and other historically disadvantaged communities that already face numerous structural and systemic barriers to accessing health care.”
In the AMA’s follow up article posted a couple weeks after Dr. Resneck gave his statement, AMA contributing news writer Tanya Albert Henry pointed to research conducted by University of California San Francisco faculty that suggests that women seeking abortions who are denied those abortions face worse health and economic outcomes than women not denied abortions. The San Francisco researchers conducted a five-year study of 956 women who wanted abortions, 231 of whom were prevented from getting abortions by state laws. While the study looked at multiple areas of life, including physical and mental health, Henry’s article placed much emphasis on the women’s economic situations. According to Henry, the study found that women who did not receive abortions were more likely to raise their children alone, “live in households that drop below the poverty level,” and “lack enough money to pay for food, housing and transportation.” Diana Greene Foster, the director of the research, said that “Access to abortion enables women to have children at a time when they have more resources – financial and emotional — to devote to their children.”
The heads of the AMA think they are promoting human rights and protecting their patients from injustice. But there’s just one problem. Ending a pregnancy ends a human life. Even if you reject the scientific fact that human life <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/first-trimester-babies-complex/?gad=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwgqejBhBAEiwAuWHioGNykDgEAOmIjrEViBsMinTWEapZVxIK2uPKBgcYeqjKEMd7ddWY-BoC0lkQAvD_BwE">begins</a> at fertilization, when an embryo with unique DNA is created, there is no denying that the pregnancy, without interference, will result in the birth of a new human being. With that indisputable fact in mind, the AMA’s pro-abortion arguments take on a morally ghoulish character.
President Resneck thinks it a travesty that “black, Latinx” and “low income”women cannot access abortion as easily with Roe reversed. Resneck believes the world would be a better place if fewer black, Latino, and poor children were born. For him, being black and living in poverty is such a hard, miserable existence with so much suffering involved that it would be better to be killed in the womb than to endure that horrible fate.
Diana Foster and the other University of California San Francisco researchers share President Resneck’s mindset when it comes to poverty. They think that if mothers struggle financially while trying to raise their children, resulting in those children not always having their needs met, it would be better for those children not to have a chance at life at all.
These medical experts believe so strongly that systematic oppression is embedded in this country and cannot be overcome. For them, racism is ubiquitous and unavoidable. Poverty is inescapable. Children who come from hard backgrounds can never rise above their past. Giving birth to them is dooming them to misery. The kind, humane thing to do is to cut their lives short. This thinking is hideous. Medical experts, who know abortion ends a life, should not be advocating for the termination of any woman’s pregnancy, no matter her race, no matter her situation. Every human being, from the moment of conception, deserves the same respect. Every human life, once created, has a right to exist. No matter how many studies they conduct, medical experts have no right to assert that black or brown children or children from poor families are any less capable of making a better future for themselves than any other children.
The authors who wrote the New England Journal of Medicine article linking abortion and racial justice make a different point, but it’s a point just as defeatist as the AMA’s arguments. They point out the high maternal mortality rate among black women and argue that abortion is safer for these women than carrying their babies to term. In other words, because there are parts of the country where certain black women do not have access to the potentially life-saving care they need during pregnancy, we need to ensure that they can abort their babies. Why is that the solution? Why not invest resources into researching and addressing the causes of pregnancy complications and maternal mortality among black women so that their lives and their babies’ lives can be saved?
The AMA and the New England Journal of Medicine are not wrong to point out the real hardships that many pregnant women face in this country. But their insistence that impoverished and marginalized women will be better off if they can abort their babies is racist and classist. These leading medical institutions should not be focusing an ounce of their energy on fighting the Dobbs decision. Instead, they should be working to improve maternal medicine so that pregnant women have better health outcomes. 
Emmie Lo is a writer and Latin teacher currently living in Jacksonville, Florida. You can read her personal blog at <a href="https://blindgirldreaming.blogspot.com/">blindgirldreaming.blogspot.com</a> and follow her on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/Teabooksgirl">@teabooksgirl</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Female doctor holding hands of her patient at hospital room

The Medical Establishment’s Racist, Classist Argument For Abortion 

The Medical Establishment’s Racist, Classist Argument for Abortion 

Abortion

Dobbs

New England Journal of medicine

Poverty

Readers Pass

Social Issues

Medical organizations in the U.S. that endorse the &#8220;gender affirming&#8221; model of care lack evidence to substantiate the medical treatment of trans-identified minors.
Activists often point to the authority of medical institutions that support &#8220;gender-affirming&#8221; care for minors to dismiss any and all criticism. A close inspection in the form of a new <a href="https://www.manhattan-institute.org/how-to-respond-to-medical-authorities-claiming-gender-affirming-care-is-safe?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social#notes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resource guide</a> by Manhattan Institute fellow <a href="https://twitter.com/LeorSapir" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Leor Sapir</a> found that the most prominent organizations in favor of &#8220;gender-affirming&#8221; care lack evidence to back up their position and depart from a growing international consensus.
&#8220;While it is understandable that doctors and their patients should want to follow guidelines issued by professional medical groups, it is important to recognize that these groups don’t always get the science right,&#8221; said Sapir.
“Gender-affirming” care discourages medical professionals from questioning a minor’s self-reported transgender identity or exploring possible underlying factors that may be causing their dysphoria. The standard protocol for gender affirmation is administering puberty blockers, followed by cross-sex hormones, and then surgery, if desired. Proponents generally argue that parental approval should not be a requirement and reject medical “gatekeeping.”
The three most influential medical organizations to have released guidelines recommending “gender-affirming&#8221; care for minors are the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Endocrine Society (ES), and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The American Medical Association, as well as other organizations, have made public statements supporting the “affirming” model without citing evidence, or have deferred to one or more of these three, Sapir noted.
&#8220;On the issue of medical treatment for youth gender dysphoria in particular, American medical organizations have demonstrated a preference for ideologically driven conclusions over cautious review of the available research,&#8221; Sapir said.
According to Sapir, the AAP&#8217;s central conclusion is negated by its citations and flawed logic. The AAP’s position is based on a 2018 <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20182162/37381/Ensuring-Comprehensive-Care-and-Support-for?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policy statement</a>, authored by Dr. Jason Rafferty and published in Pediatrics.
&#8220;Rafferty’s central claim in that article is that &#8216;watchful waiting,&#8217; a therapeutic approach in which clinicians delay social and medical transition as long as possible in order to exhaust all efforts to help youth in distress feel comfortable in their bodies, is a form of &#8216;conversion therapy,’” said Sapir. The citations used to defend this claim had nothing to do with gender self-identification and were all based on the discredited practice of trying to get gay and lesbian adults to &#8220;convert&#8221; to heterosexuality.
Rafferty argued that clinicians should always “affirm” the gender self-declarations of their pediatric patients. In 2020, Dr. James Cantor of the Toronto Sexuality Centre published a thorough <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31838960/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fact-check</a> of Rafferty’s article in another journal. The fact-check revealed that the AAP policy contained &#8220;egregious omissions and misrepresentations of the available research on youth gender dysphoria,&#8221; said Sapir.
In 2017, the Endocrine Society published <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/102/11/3869/4157558" target="_blank" rel="noopener">guidelines</a> that invalidate their own strength of evidence by rating the guidelines as being &#8220;weak recommendations&#8221; and citing the quality of evidence for hormonal interventions for minors as being “low” or “very low.”
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) recently published the 8th edition of their <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644?scroll=top&amp;needAccess=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Standards of Care</a>, notably removing their <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/leading-transgender-health-association-releases-new-guidelines" target="_blank" rel="noopener">minimum age recommendations</a> for minors to receive medical interventions, their guidance on ethics, and adding a chapter on &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/leading-transgender-health-association-seeks-to-include-eunuch-as-gender-identity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">eunuchs</a>&#8221; that has alarmed medical professionals.
&#8220;WPATH is an explicitly ideological organization that now includes &#8216;eunuch&#8217; as a valid &#8216;gender identity&#8217; that children can supposedly know they have at a very early age,&#8221; Sapir said.
Their guidance for adolescents seeking hormones are based largely on a single study from the Netherlands, often referred to as the “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515336171" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dutch study</a>,” and related, the Dutch protocol. Aside from its &#8220;biased methodology&#8221; and &#8220;unimpressive results,” which have been the subject of widespread <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2046221?tab=permissions&amp;scroll=top" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticism</a>, it does not apply to the vast majority of teenagers in the West seeking hormonal interventions today.
The Dutch study and its &#8220;protocol&#8221; selects candidates who must fulfill certain criteria to be eligible. Data shows the majority of youth seeking hormonal interventions in recent years are adolescent girls with no prior history of dysphoria and <a href="https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">very high rates</a> of mental health comorbidities, that would automatically disqualify them from the Dutch protocol, rendering the WPATH&#8217;s application of it practically worthless.
Additional <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/researcher-debunks-claim-trans-youths-mental-health-improves-with-gender-affirming-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">studies</a> cited by the WPATH &#8220;all suffer from methodological shortcomings, most commonly lack of adequate controls for confounding factors like psychotherapy and very short follow-up times,&#8221; said Sapir.
None of these U.S.-based organizations have done systematic reviews of the evidence, while arguably more progressive European countries like <a href="https://segm.org/segm-summary-sweden-prioritizes-therapy-curbs-hormones-for-gender-dysphoric-youth" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sweden</a>, <a href="https://genderreport.ca/finland-strict-guidelines-for-treating-gender-dysphoria/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Finland</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/englands-national-health-service-abandons-gender-affirming-model-of-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">England</a> have. After reviewing the evidence for the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in treating pediatric gender dysphoria, health authorities in all three countries have decided to abandon the &#8220;gender-affirming&#8221; model, finding the costs outweigh the benefits.
&#8220;The main purpose of systematic reviews is to prevent cherry-picking of studies to produce desirable conclusions,&#8221; said Sapir. &#8220;Neither the AAP, nor the ES, nor WPATH have conducted systematic reviews of the research. Indeed, in its latest Standards of Care WPATH asserts that such a review is &#8216;not possible.’”
The U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) proposed <a href="https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/specialised-commissioning/gender-dysphoria-services/user_uploads/b1937-ii-specialist-service-for-children-and-young-people-with-gender-dysphoria-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new guidelines</a> last week <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/englands-national-health-service-abandons-gender-affirming-model-of-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recognizing</a> that children and adolescents identifying as transgender may be experiencing a “transient phase” and warning that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns, as “social transition” is not a “<a href="https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/specialised-commissioning/gender-dysphoria-services/user_uploads/b1937-ii-interim-service-specification-for-specialist-gender-dysphoria-services-for-children-and-young-people-22.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">neutral act</a>” and could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning.” Additionally, they have banned the use of puberty blockers in patients under 18, making exceptions only in certain cases for strict clinical trials.
Spain&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/spains-medical-societies-revolt-against-proposed-transgender-law" target="_blank" rel="noopener">medical societies</a> have also recently vocalized their concerns and objections to a proposed Trans Law that would allow minors to self-declare as transgender and be granted access to medical interventions.
&#8220;With so many contemporary &#8216;affirming care&#8217; methods and practices resting on poorly conducted or inapplicable studies, medical authorities like the AAP and the ES, and ideological organizations like WPATH, are gambling not only with their credibility, but the mental and physical health of children,&#8221; said Sapir.
Recently a popular article in Psychology Today by activist researcher Dr. Jack Turban claiming to show mental health benefits from “gender-affirming” care was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/leading-gender-affirming-psychiatrists-popular-article-updated-after-fact-check-reveals-misleading-claims" target="_blank" rel="noopener">updated</a> by the publisher after a thorough <a href="https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-distortions-in-jack-turbans-psychology" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fact-check</a> found that it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/researcher-debunks-claim-trans-youths-mental-health-improves-with-gender-affirming-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contained</a> distortions and misleading information. Turban&#8217;s article is still <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/matt-walsh/death-threats-proud-boys-and-homophobic-bigots-matt-walshs-anti-trans-rally-drew-crowd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cited</a> widely among trans activists to support medically transitioning gender dysphoric minors, even though the evidence is lacking.
&#8220;Parents, scientists and researchers, attorneys general and lawmakers are justified in their hesitance to lean into the surge in transgender identification,&#8221; said Sapir. &#8220;They must not be reluctant to call for a pause in transitioning, and demand better research and more debate.&#8221;

Investigate and analyze.

U.S. Medical Groups Get The Science Wrong On Pediatric ‘Gender Affirming’ Care

Puberty blockers

transgender surgery

Children’s health professionals are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/american-medical-association-pushes-doj-to-investigate-and-prosecute-those-who-call-out-gender-surgeries-online" target="_blank" rel="noopener">complaining</a> that the mutilation of minors, dishonestly packaged by mainstream media outlets as “gender affirming care,” is under attack.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the Children’s Hospital Association, sent a <a href="https://downloads.aap.org/DOFA/DOJ%20Letter%20Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to Attorney General Merrick Garland on October 3, asking him to investigate threats against hospitals that encourage children to change their gender.
“From Boston to Akron to Nashville to Seattle, children&#8217;s hospitals, academic health systems, and physicians are being targeted and threatened for providing evidence-based health care,” their letter warns.
Never mind that the bomb threat to Boston Children’s Hospital, which made the news last month, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/09/15/fbi-makes-arrest-boston-childrens-hospital-hoax-bomb-threat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was apparently a hoax</a>. That likely won’t matter to Garland, who has long fought back the facts threatening the Left’s victim narrative.
You can expect Garland to take this letter seriously, as his partisan record includes announcing that clinics should be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-says-will-protect-texas-abortion-clinics-that-come-under-attack-2021-09-06/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protected</a> in their efforts to perform nonstop abortions, but becoming suddenly immobilized when it comes to responding to actual <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/republican-lawmakers-urge-doj-to-investigate-attacks-on-pro-life-centers-as-domestic-terrorism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fire bombings and threats</a> to crisis pregnancy centers. 
What’s truly concerning about this letter, though, is not that the Justice Department might expend more resources on bomb threats that may or may not exist. It’s that these health professionals are trying to get the federal government to shut down not just crime, but free speech.
The medical associations, which together represent “more than 270,000 physicians and more than 220 children’s hospitals across the country,” place blame for these allegedly numerous threats of violence on everyday social media users who object to their so-called “evidence-based health care.”
“The attacks are rooted in an intentional campaign of disinformation, where a few high-profile users on social media share false and misleading information targeting individual physicians and hospitals, resulting in a rapid escalation of threats, harassment, and disruption of care across multiple jurisdictions,” the letter reads. “Our organizations have called on technology companies to do more to prevent this practice on digital platforms, and we now urge your office to take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible.”
One such high-profile user is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/libs-of-tiktok-locked-out-of-twitter-again" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Libs of TikTok</a>, a conservative account with 1.4 million followers on Twitter. It frequently shares clips of leftist craziness, from babies at drag shows to children’s hospitals bragging about their “gender-affirming care,” a nice code for feeding children’s gender dysphoria.
In August, the account posted a video from the Boston Children’s Hospital, <a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1557775959217950725" target="_blank" rel="noopener">with a caption saying</a> that the hospital “is now offering ‘gender affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls.” The media immediately went to work defending the hospital, <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/tweets/no-boston-childrens-hospital-doesnt-provide-hyster" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rating</a> the specific claim that the hospital provides “hysterectomies for children” as false.
According to the Boston Children’s Hospital website today, it does not offer genital surgery until the age of 18, but it does <a href="https://www.childrenshospital.org/programs/center-gender-surgery-program/eligibility-surgery" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offer</a> chest surgery starting at 15 years old. And, worse, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220409020642/https://www.childrenshospital.org/programs/center-gender-surgery-program/eligibility-surgery" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to the website</a> before the viral Libs of TikTok video, patients as young as 17 years old qualified for vaginoplasty, “a procedure in which surgeons create a vagina from your existing genital tissue.” Less than a week after the tweet was posted, though, the hospital website was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220817164233/https://www.childrenshospital.org/programs/center-gender-surgery-program/eligibility-surgery" target="_blank" rel="noopener">updated</a> to say that patients must be 18 for phalloplasty, metoidioplasty, and vaginoplasty.
If it all sounds a little confusing, that’s because it is. Intentionally so. Boston Children’s Hospital, the medical establishment, and their friends in the media are quibbling with phrasing to hide the fact that minors in the U.S. are still eligible for surgery to permanently alter their bodies. And, apparently, the villain here isn’t the host of doctors willing to perform these experiments on children — it’s the people online with enough commonsense to stand up to them. 
The AMA letter’s appeal to social media sites and the DOJ is chilling. As the Libs of TikTok saga tells us, what qualifies as “disinformation” is highly subjective, especially when you can stealthily edit your website to move the narrative in your favor.
When health professionals call <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/revealed-pediatricians-privately-slam-american-academy-of-pediatrics-for-pushing-puberty-blockers-to-teens" target="_blank" rel="noopener">puberty blockers</a> and invasive, unnecessary surgery “evidence-based health care” with a straight face, then even questioning the prevailing gender dogma is sure to put your head on the chopping block.
On top of that, sharing information does not make someone responsible for other people’s actions. If a social media user were to suggest that bomb threats against a children’s hospital were a good idea, that would be one thing. But to chastise someone for sharing public information with her followers, and then blame her for any ensuing threats of violence, is ridiculous.
Note that the AMA letter complains not just of “threats” and “harassment,” but “disruption of care.” The health establishment is calling for federal intervention not because it’s afraid for the children in its charge, but because it’s worried that a dose of common sense will threaten a growing source of cash.
Madeline Fry Schultz (<a href="https://twitter.com/madelineefry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@madelineefry</a>) is the assistant contributors editor at the Washington Examiner.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Hospital sign SURGERY

The Chilling Truth Behind The AMA’s Push To Punish Transgender ‘Disinformation’

Gender Identity

Merrick Garland

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/republican-party">Republican</a> lawmakers across seven states signaled in a Wednesday letter reviewed by the <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/05/state-freedom-caucus-fbi-ama-aap-transgender-children/">Daily Caller News Foundation</a> that they would inflict repercussions on medical facilities that perform so-called &#8216;gender-affirming care&#8217; on children.
Lawmakers from the State Freedom Caucus Network, a group composed of conservative members aiming to decentralize government power in federal agencies, penned the letter rebuking the American Medical Association (A.M.A.) and American Academy of Pediatrics (A.A.P.) for urging Biden Administration officials and federal agents to investigate journalists exposing radical gender surgeries that medical facilities are allegedly offering and performing on minors nationwide.
Signatures from the group&#8217;s lawmakers represent Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Nevada, South Dakota, Illinois, and Arizona.
&#8220;With your advocacy of childhood genital mutilation, your call to investigate those who disagree with you, and your request for Big Tech to suppress constitutionally protected free speech that challenges your leftist ideology, you have lost whatever credibility you had left,&#8221; the letter read.
The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children&#8217;s Hospital Association all signed the letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging the administration to &#8220;investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities&#8221; that it claimed were &#8220;coordinating&#8221; and &#8220;provoking&#8221; outrage online directed at those providing the controversial services.
According to the letter, lawmakers condemned the medical institutions for pushing and making decisions for young children to take action, resulting in &#8220;irrevocable and irreparable harm.&#8221;
&#8220;This so-called &#8216;gender-affirming care&#8217; is both morally and ethically repugnant,&#8221; the letter read. &#8220;We will fulfill our duty to stand in the gap and stop harm to any child by unnatural and irreversible procedures.&#8221;
State legislators wrote they would ensure such taxpayer-funded institutions should take &#8220;no part in furthering ethically and morally repugnant agendas&#8221; contrary to their state&#8217;s values.
&#8220;Collectively, and across the country, we will be pursuing a path to ensure no minors can receive these barbaric procedures,&#8221; the lawmakers wrote. &#8220;This includes calling on our governors to denounce this practice and using all available tools to end it.&#8221;
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hospitals-clinics-are-promoting-services-to-gender-nonconforming-kids-here-are-47-of-them">reported</a> at least 47 pediatric gender clinics, many at prominent children&#8217;s hospitals, have broadened the scope of their patient criteria to include not only transgender-identified children but those they describe as &#8220;gender creative,&#8221; &#8220;gender diverse,&#8221; or &#8220;gender nonconforming.&#8221;
Some of these programs see patients as young as two and three years old. However, while most clinics will not offer medical interventions until a child has reached puberty, many will help facilitate a &#8220;social transition.&#8221;
Such social transitions have forced the State Freedom Caucus Network to push back on the facilities that could face repercussions if the programs are proven non-compliant.
&#8220;This mutilation cannot and will not be tolerated in any form,&#8221; the letter reads.
Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo, who originally obtained the letter signed by the three major American medical institutions, said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1577029634042253313">tweet</a> that the &#8220;American Medical Association is attempting to censor, de-platform, investigate, and prosecute journalists questioning the orthodoxy of radical gender surgeries for minors, arguing that public criticism is &#8216;disinformation.'&#8221;
&#8220;This is now the Left&#8217;s playbook: last year, the National School Board Association, Department of Justice, and F.B.I. worked together to label parents who opposed critical race theory ‘domestic terrorists,'&#8221; Rufo <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1577029635380228096">said</a>. &#8220;They want to stifle dissent, suppress speech, and criminalize opposition. If ‘gender-affirming care’ is so good, the activists and doctors who promote it—and profit from it—should defend their practices in the realm of public opinion.”
&#8220;In a democracy, everyone gets to weigh in on important issues, not just regime-approved apparatchiks,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1577032889308708865">added</a>.
Ryan Saavedra and Christina Buttons contributed to this report.

Supporting sexual issues and human rights

Republican Lawmakers Warn Medical Facilities Performing Child Sex Changes Face ‘Repercussions’

Christopher Rufo

Republicans

On a healthy, seed oil-free diet there is no “bad” cholesterol. But when your diet is full of seed oils, LDL becomes a problem.
<h4>The Heart Healthy Oil That’s Anything But</h4>
You may have noticed a pretty, red, heart-healthy label on certain vegetable oils. What you may not have noticed is an asterisk under the claim that says words to the effect of there’s only preliminary and limited evidence to support this statement. That snippet of legalese has quite a history behind it.
In the 1950s, margarine and cooking oil advertisers promoted their products as healthy due to the known cholesterol-lowering effect of polyunsaturates — the main fatty acid in seed oils. A string of prominent doctors objected to these tactics, since there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claim. Decades of wrangling finally resulted in a law prohibiting the promotion of margarine “or any other food, fat, or food oil” as a way of preventing disease unless it was grounded in science. A happy example of the Federal Trade Commission protecting the public that was over and done with back in 1974.
Which leads to my next point: we are here, nearly 50 years later, with no further evidence to support the heart-healthy claim than with what we had back then. Yet, the idea that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease is still planted into our minds and remains the foundation upon which all of preventative cardiology rests. If your LDL cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, is “too high,” your doctor will put the fear of death into you until you lower it.
To be clear, the polyunsaturates in seed oils do successfully lower total and LDL cholesterol. This is supported by a great deal of evidence, and nobody debates this. What’s more, as the dairy and other saturated-fat, rich animal fats in our food supply have been increasingly replaced by seed oils, our cholesterol levels as a country have dropped across the board. The average American’s total cholesterol is about 20 points lower today than in the mid-1960s, when we first started tracking. This drop is attributable to diet change, not drugs. So it’s absolutely true that swapping saturated fat for polyunsaturated fat lowers cholesterol levels. Now, here’s a question for you: so what?
The end goal of these dietary recommendations is not to lower cholesterol — it’s to help you live longer. Dying with lower cholesterol levels, what one of my patients termed “a Harvard death,” is not the goal.
<h4>Keep Your Eye On The Ball</h4>
Although seed oils do lower cholesterol, they do not keep you alive. At least we don’t have any evidence yet to support that idea — after 70 years of looking for it. We do, however, have evidence that foods fried in these oils contain “extremely high levels” of toxins known to cause cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Rather shockingly, a <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246">2016 NIH study</a> showed that for every 30 points these oils cut cholesterol, “there was a 22% higher risk of death.” It’s difficult to know, however, what exactly the people in the study died from, as 146 of the original 295 autopsy files were lost.
What’s clouding the issue is the fact that we are dying less often from heart attacks today than we were back in 1961, when heart attack deaths peaked. But it would be incorrect to assume that the drop in heart attacks means these cholesterol-lowering oils are heart healthy — or, for that matter, that the decline had anything to do with our lower cholesterol. The biggest factor behind the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jan/26/heart-attack-deaths-fall-50-percent">50% drop</a> in heart attack death rates is the fact that we’re smoking less.— much less. In 1961, both heart attack deaths and smoking peaked at their all-time highest levels. The average American (including children, smokers, and nonsmokers) <a href="https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08/m08_2.pdf">smoked 4,000 cigarettes</a> that year. By 2010, the per capita rate of smoking had fallen to 1,000, and heart attacks reached their lowest point. Since then, smoking rates continue to fall, while heart attack deaths are leveling out and <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234">appear to be climbing again</a>.
I’d like to share a striking, though narrowly appreciated, secret: Harvard — the primary advocate for seed oils — has yet to nail down exactly how the polyunsaturated fats in these oils lower cholesterol. They don’t seem to care. Reviewing the medical literature reveals that, over the past 60 years, only two articles, found in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/91/2/398/2843254">The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology &amp; Metabolism</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/42/3/560/4691820?redirectedFrom=PDF">The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition</a>, discuss the subject — both hypothetical.
Why should you care what Harvard’s nutrition leadership knows about seed oils?
Harvard is the biggest advocate of the cholesterol theory of heart disease, and thanks to the university, all of preventative cardiology rests on the idea that lowering cholesterol is beneficial. Harvard works with the American Heart Association (AHA) to shape the U.S. government dietary policy regarding fat. Our K-12 state-funded college education systems, nursing homes, prisons, hospitals, and all other government-funded organizations are required by law to feed us more polyunsaturates than saturates — all because they lower cholesterol. Yet, if you ask the average cardiologist how polyunsaturates lower cholesterol, or how they know this effect is beneficial, I doubt you’ll receive a good answer.
<h4>The Cholesterol Hypothesis Needs To Go</h4>
It’s high time cardiologists clue in, though. Because after decades of reductions in deadly heart attacks, since 2010, they’ve started to creep upwards again. The combined effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs, further cuts in smoking rates, and advanced emergency care and cardiac surgeries are collectively failing to stem the tide of deadly heart attacks. It’s not just due to the population aging, since the mortality rates for people 65 and older actually <a href="https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/health/longevity/mortality-rate/">went down</a> between 2010-2019. There’s something very powerful driving this newly apparent trend.
Don’t look to the AHA for answers. It’s in its best interest that our notice in this recent increase in heart disease deaths is diminished. For 70 years, the cholesterol theory of heart disease has buttered its bread, so to speak. It literally can’t afford to change. For now, it’s much easier for it to cover up its mistakes by, for example, re-allocating deaths from the heart attack column to a different column, like hypertension, kidney disease, and more recently COVID. These and other efforts have prevented many doctors from noticing that eating seed oils and lowering cholesterol is failing to prevent <a href="https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000757">heart</a> <a href="https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-021-11072-5/figures/2">attacks</a>. But, mark my words: as long as we keep eating polyunsaturated-rich seed oils, death rates in younger generations will continue to rise. Sooner or later this egregious trend will garner the attention it is due.
Thankfully, the cholesterol theory is not the only theory in town. There’s another theory to explain the genesis of heart attacks that’s quietly gaining momentum — in spite of being mostly relegated to technical journals that doctors don’t read. This theory connects all the dots, explaining how cigarette smoking causes heart disease — something the cholesterol theory cannot do — while also explaining why drugs that drop your LDL number down to the lowest possible level only work to prevent a second heart attack about 30% of the time. That 70% failure rate is pretty grim, given the many side effects you expose yourself to when you’re taking these drugs and the fact that you will be taking them for the rest of your life.
<h4>Oxidation: What Cigarettes And Seed Oil Both Have In Common</h4>
Seed oils and cigarette smoking cause heart attacks for similar reasons. Whether you smoke, or you eat foods cooked in seed oils, the same set of toxins may enter your arteries. These toxins cause oxidation. So this theory is called, logically enough, The Oxidation Theory of Atherosclerosis. The oxidation takes place inside tiny fat-transport vehicles called lipoproteins. According to the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291521-3773%2820000204%2939%3A3%3C585%3A%3AAID-ANIE585%3E3.0.CO%3B2-G">theory</a>, oxidation turns your lipoproteins from agents of nutrient delivery to agents of inflammation and disease.
What is oxidation, exactly? Technically, it’s the chemical reaction between oxygen and a fuel. The more familiar term is simply burning.
The oxidation theory explains that toxins from smoking and from cooking with polyunsaturated fats burn (oxidize) the interior of these tiny-fat transport vehicles. Seed oils play a dual role in the burning process, serving as both spark and fuel. That’s why the more polyunsaturated fat the vehicles carry, the faster the burning progresses. The transport vehicles include low density lipoprotein, or LDL (the so-called bad cholesterol), and high density lipoprotein, or HDL (the so-called good cholesterol), and a few others. These particles have slightly different functions in the body and normally they all do good stuff.
The oxidation theory tells us that lowering LDL may not be important at all, certainly not as important as preventing oxidation of LDL. So what do you do if you are one of the 40% of American adults with high cholesterol? Should you just take a statin?
That’s the topic of next week’s article.
<a href="https://drcate.com/">Dr. Cate Shanahan</a> is a board-certified Family Physician whose revolutionary approach to nutrition targets the underlying problems causing metabolic damage and inflammation. She is the NY Times bestselling author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fatburn-Fix-Great-Weight-Using/dp/1250114497/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1660575621&amp;refinements=p_27%3ACatherine+Shanahan+M.D.&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-2&amp;text=Catherine+Shanahan+M.D.">The FatBurn Fix</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Nutrition-Your-Genes-Traditional/dp/1250113822/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1660575496&amp;sr=1-1">Deep Nutrition</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Food-Rules-Doctors-Healthy-Eating/dp/1452861382/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=eItP2&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.91202c6f-1c11-4e3d-b51a-3af958cedd30&amp;pf_rd_p=91202c6f-1c11-4e3d-b51a-3af958cedd30&amp;pf_rd_r=3P0BZ5Q1YDTBVK6JSXWV&amp;pd_rd_wg=Q8Vux&amp;pd_rd_r=1e132346-179e-45ce-981a-e36967ecc481&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk">Food Rules</a>. Her  work has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Men&#8217;s Journal, and Prevention Magazine among others and she’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher and The Megyn Kelly Show. Follow her at @DrCateShanahan
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Cholesterol Has Been Framed For Crimes Commited By Seed Oils

Cholesterol Has Been Framed For Crimes Committed By Seed Oils

Cigarettes

Heart Attack

Ahead of the expected Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health Organization, the American Medical Association (AMA) declared abortion bans a &#8220;violation of human rights&#8221; and said it would seek &#8220;expanded legal protections&#8221; for abortion patients and providers.
The association adopted a policy resolution declaring that abortion bans passed by state governments are a &#8220;violation of human rights.&#8221; According to a <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-bolsters-opposition-wider-criminalization-reproductive-health?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social_ama&amp;utm_term=7112385584&amp;utm_campaign=Annual">press release</a> Tuesday accompanying the new policy, the AMA said it would seek to expand legal protections for abortion patients and doctors against those bans, including patients who cross state lines to procure an abortion.
&#8220;Responding to the growing threat of over-policing and surveillance of reproductive health services, the nation’s physicians and medical students at the AMA Annual Meeting adopted policy recognizing that it is a violation of human rights when government intrudes into medicine and impedes access to safe, evidence-based reproductive health services, including abortion and contraception,&#8221; the organization said in its press release. &#8220;In accordance with the new policy, the AMA will seek expanded legal protections for patients and physicians against government systems of control and punishment that criminalize reproductive health services.&#8221;
“A growing number of current and pending laws insert government into the patient-physician relationship by dictating limits or bans on reproductive health services and criminally punish or penalize patients for their health decisions,” incoming AMA president Jack Resneck, Jr. added. “The new policy also calls for AMA to seek legal protections for patients who cross state lines to receive reproductive health services, as well as legal protections for physicians and others who support or provide reproductive health services or referrals to patients who cross state lines.”
In addition to providing legal protection to abortion patients and providers, the AMA said it would continue to &#8220;challenge&#8221; criminal or civil penalties on other physicians, health professionals, health systems, and patient advocates who support or assist in providing abortion referrals or services to patients, &#8220;[in] alignment with the AMA’s longtime opposition to the criminalization of medical practice,&#8221; the organization added.
“The new policy strengthens the AMA’s long-held position opposing political intrusions into the practice of medicine that infringe on the patient-physician relationship and compromise patient access to safe, evidence-based medical care,&#8221; it said in its press release.
The AMA&#8217;s statement comes as the nation hold its breath in anticipation of the expected Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health Organization. The Court did not release the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/roe-reversal-today-expectations-high-supreme-court-will-end-abortion-era-on-monday">opinion</a> Wednesday, which means it will have to release its opinion, as well as rulings on nearly 30 other cases, before the Court breaks for the end of term in July, as The Daily Wire reported.
A draft of the opinion was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-supreme-court-strikes-down-roe-v-wade-decision-in-draft-of-majority-opinion-report-says">leaked</a> to Politico in early May. The draft indicated that the majority of the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and return abortion law to the states. In its press release, the AMA noted that it was one of a number of medical organizations that filed an amicus brief in Dobbs, stating that &#8220;abortion is safe medical care that is a decision to be made between the patient and the physician, subject to the physician&#8217;s clinical judgment, and the patient&#8217;s informed consent.&#8221;

70FE7BF6-7229-47DA-A97A-2B0A0884DF48_1_201_a

American Medical Association Calls Abortion Bans ‘Violation Of Human Rights’ Ahead Of SCOTUS Abortion Decision

American Medical Association Says Abortion Bans Violate Human Rights

Medical

Roe v. Wade's Long And Brutal Legacy

Supreme Court

Doctors and medical professionals are warning that new guidance issued by two medical school accrediting bodies could have “disastrous” effects on the field of medicine.
Practicing doctors and medical professors are warning that guidelines and recommendations issued by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in October would lower healthcare quality by making social justice, not merit, central in determining success in medicine, according to <a href="https://freebeacon.com/campus/doctors-warn-new-medical-school-guidance-would-lead-to-unqualified-physicians-and-unscientific-medicine/">The Washington Free Beacon</a>.
“Narratives that uncritically center meritocracy and individualism render invisible the very real constraints generated and reinforced by poverty, discrimination and ultimately exclusion. Yet a rich tradition of work in health equity and related fields, including critical race theory … , gender studies, disability studies, as well as scholarship from social medicine, gives us a foundation for an alternative narrative, one that challenges the status quo, one that moves health care towards justice,” the <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf">guidance</a> says.
The AMA and AAMC are cosponsors of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits all medical schools in North America. The AMA and AAMC document, titled “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide To Language, Narrative And Concepts,” also downplays how certain illnesses occur more frequently in certain populations.
One doctor, speaking to the Free Beacon, described the guidance as “disastrous” while another said, “this can kill people.”
“Some vulnerability isn’t about economic or social marginalization,” Jeff Singer, a general surgeon in Arizona, told the Free Beacon. “A lot of conditions vary based on genetics.&#8221;
He continued, &#8220;We’re talking about matters of life and death here.”
“They’re trying to superimpose social science onto medical science,” he added. “But as a consumer of health care, I’d just like to know that whoever is treating me is qualified. Because my life is on the line.”
Doctors expressed alarm over what the guidance may do to the quality of medical school students and applicants for residencies if characteristics like race and economic background become important credentials like experience and test scores.
“I’ve certainly seen residents&#8217; intellectual capability dropping over time,” one professor, who spoke on background over fears he would be fired if he went on record, said. “Residents are just not as capable of caring for patients as they were 20 years ago.”
An Ivy League medical school professor said that he has noticed education standards lowering over time as administrators attempt to keep students with certain backgrounds from failing out of med school. “In order to get them through, the standards for everyone have been lowered,” the professor told the Free Beacon.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) language and commitments are increasingly spreading through higher education, including medical schools. The University of North Carolina School of Medicine in May overhauled its guidelines for faculty seeking promotions to include a pledge to DEI initiatives. One sample pledge reads, according to <a href="https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2021/11/unc-school-of-medicines-quiet-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-revolution/">Martin Center</a>:
<blockquote>As I move forward in my career, I intend to continue to include issues of equity and inclusion in my bedside teaching. I commit to annually attending a seminar offered by the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion to learn more about the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexual orientation in clinical care and medical education, and to confront my own biases and the biases of our medical culture to improve inclusivity in my environment.</blockquote>

University of North Carolina School of Medicine

‘This Can Kill People’: Doctors, Experts Hammer Woke Medical School Guidance

Social Justice

The American Medical Association (AMA) faced intense backlash late last week and over the weekend after calling for sex to be removed as a legal definition on the public part of birth certificates.
The backlash came in response to a tweet from WebMD that highlighted the call from the AMA.
WebMD&#8217;s <a href="https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20210616/remove-sex-from-public-birth-certificates-ama-says?ecd=soc_tw_210731_cons_news_genderbirthcertificate">report</a> claimed:
<blockquote>Requiring it can lead to discrimination and unnecessary burden on individuals whose current gender identity does not align with their designation at birth, namely when they register for school or sports, adopt, get married, or request personal records.
A person&#8217;s sex designation at birth would still be submitted to the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth for medical, public health, and statistical use only, report authors note.</blockquote>
Some of the most notable responses to the far-left call from the AMA included:
Jonathan Kay, editor at Quillette: &#8220;Thanks for making it more difficult to argue down vaccine skeptics. Every time I say &#8216;trust medical science,&#8217; they can just point to this clown show.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Thanks for making it more difficult to argue down vaccine skeptics. Every time I say &quot;trust medical science,&quot; they can just point to this clown show <a href="https://t.co/sgAB8mLyJZ">https://t.co/sgAB8mLyJZ</a>
&mdash; Jonathan Kay (@jonkay) <a href="https://twitter.com/jonkay/status/1421981856497537030?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Christina Sommers, author: &#8220;Another once-trusted institution has lost its mind.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Another once-trusted institution has lost its mind. <a href="https://t.co/p3wMqosnjq">https://t.co/p3wMqosnjq</a>
&mdash; Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) <a href="https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/1421630709245095940?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Rita Panahi, political commentator: &#8220;Nothing will undermine public trust in health advice more than activist medics.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Nothing will undermine public trust in health advice more than activist medics. <a href="https://t.co/HVwGdZEmYI">https://t.co/HVwGdZEmYI</a>
&mdash; Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) <a href="https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1421579266970382338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.: &#8220;This is literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Stop the madness!&#8221;
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This is literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Stop the madness! <a href="https://t.co/tgTpwicKCy">https://t.co/tgTpwicKCy</a>
&mdash; Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1421577269794021376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Julie Gunlock, political commentator: &#8220;It’s important to know that medical associations shifted to activist organizations years ago. This is very dangerous.&#8221;
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It’s important to know that medical associations shifted to activist organizations years ago. This is very dangerous. <a href="https://t.co/hgVjgXD62Y">https://t.co/hgVjgXD62Y</a>
&mdash; Julie Gunlock (@JGunlock) <a href="https://twitter.com/JGunlock/status/1421561261683351558?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA officer: &#8220;Good news for men under 25: Call your auto insurance company and demand a lower premium because you’re no longer male.&#8221;
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Good news for men under 25:
Call your auto insurance company and demand a lower premium because you’re no longer male. <a href="https://t.co/8ggPM3QIoA">https://t.co/8ggPM3QIoA</a>
&mdash; BDW (@BryanDeanWright) <a href="https://twitter.com/BryanDeanWright/status/1421615255931691014?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Tim Pool, podcaster: &#8220;Certain medications affect men and women differently.&#8221;
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Certain medications affect men and women differently <a href="https://t.co/s7TyaN3nRe">https://t.co/s7TyaN3nRe</a>
&mdash; Tim Pool (@Timcast) <a href="https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1421542392264634368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee: &#8220;The lunatics are running the asylum.&#8221;
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The lunatics are running the asylum. <a href="https://t.co/7MdOaNMIbT">https://t.co/7MdOaNMIbT</a>
&mdash; Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1421537763489468419?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Allie Beth Stuckey, political commentator: &#8220;Literal nonsense. Gender identity is a made-up concept with no scientific or medical substance.&#8221;
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&quot;Assigning sex using binary variables in the public portion of the birth certificate fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity.” Literal nonsense. Gender identity is a made-up concept with no scientific or medical substance. <a href="https://t.co/NyjlEqeOZ0">https://t.co/NyjlEqeOZ0</a>
&mdash; Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) <a href="https://twitter.com/conservmillen/status/1421533806671040513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Vivek Ramaswamy, author: &#8220;This sounds crazy to me. There’s a difference between stopping transgender discrimination and wantonly promoting transgenderism. Now we’re doing the latter under the guise of the former.&#8221;
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This sounds crazy to me. There’s a difference between stopping transgender discrimination and wantonly promoting transgenderism.
Now we’re doing the latter under the guise of the former. <a href="https://t.co/TaP82DmgQM">https://t.co/TaP82DmgQM</a>
&mdash; Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) <a href="https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1421820529535815685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Kurt Schlichter, author and columnist: &#8220;Remember this when they tell you to trust experts.&#8221;
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Remember this when they tell you to trust experts <a href="https://t.co/vn5LzXQEqH">https://t.co/vn5LzXQEqH</a>
&mdash; Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) <a href="https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/1421520611445202944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Nate Fischer, investor: &#8220;We are still in the early stages of a total collapse in trust in our credentialing institutions. It remains to be seen whether this results in epistemological chaos or a broad renaissance. I suspect we will see both.&#8221;
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We are still in the early stages of a total collapse in trust in our credentialing institutions.
It remains to be seen whether this results in epistemological chaos or a broad renaissance. I suspect we will see both. <a href="https://t.co/yfetPbFo4b">https://t.co/yfetPbFo4b</a>
&mdash; Nate Fischer (@NateAFischer) <a href="https://twitter.com/NateAFischer/status/1421501540997738506?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Omri Ceren, national security adviser for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): &#8220;The near-total politicization of science on behalf of fringe progressive fantasticism happened really fast, all things considered.&#8221;
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The near-total politicization of science on behalf of fringe progressive fantasticism happened really fast, all things considered. <a href="https://t.co/7iqexM28bw">https://t.co/7iqexM28bw</a>
&mdash; Omri Ceren (@omriceren) <a href="https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/1421485835971710980?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Geoffrey Miller, psychology professor: “How to say ‘We prioritize woke ideology over science and health’ without saying ‘We prioritize woke ideology over science and health.’”
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How to say &#39;We prioritize woke ideology over science and health&#39; without saying &#39;We prioritize woke ideology over science and health&#39; <a href="https://t.co/jJNMFrATET">https://t.co/jJNMFrATET</a>
&mdash; Geoffrey Miller (@primalpoly) <a href="https://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1421500718347739137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Sohrab Ahmari, editor at The New York Post: &#8220;This isn&#8217;t enough. The AMA should create an entire research division devoted to debunking the socially constructed myth of chromosomes. Call it the Lysenko Department.&#8221;
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This isn&#39;t enough. The AMA should create an entire research division devoted to debunking the socially constructed myth of chromosomes.
Call it the Lysenko Department. <a href="https://t.co/GfbRn6auES">https://t.co/GfbRn6auES</a>
&mdash; Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) <a href="https://twitter.com/SohrabAhmari/status/1421519736496660481?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Rachel Moran, feminist: &#8220;To benefit who? And in the service of what? Who gains if biological reality is erased from birth certificates, &amp; who loses? And what is gained &amp; lost? This is the most serious assault on women’s dignity &amp; autonomy I have ever seen in my life.&#8221;
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To benefit who? And in the service of what? Who gains if biological reality is erased from birth certificates, &amp; who loses? And what is gained &amp; lost? This is the most serious assault on women’s dignity &amp; autonomy I have ever seen in my life. <a href="https://twitter.com/AmerMedicalAssn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AmerMedicalAssn</a> <a href="https://t.co/F5lRn3zQfM">https://t.co/F5lRn3zQfM</a>
&mdash; Rachel Moran (@RachelRMoran) <a href="https://twitter.com/RachelRMoran/status/1421518699429773316?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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T.J. Moe, former University of Missouri football player: &#8220;The reason we have to continue to deal with the woke scold losers at every turn is because when they say things like this, we don’t absolutely laugh them into oblivion like they deserve. These people are insane and should be treated as such.&#8221;
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The reason we have to continue to deal with the woke scold losers at every turn is because when they say things like this, we don’t absolutely laugh them into oblivion like they deserve. These people are insane and should be treated as such. <a href="https://t.co/yu0NtdGWb5">https://t.co/yu0NtdGWb5</a>
&mdash; T.J. Moe (@TJMoe28) <a href="https://twitter.com/TJMoe28/status/1421531706004234242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Reclaim Pride Protest Tells Boris Johnson To Stop Stalling on LGBT Rights

American Medical Association Blasted After Calling For Removing Sex From Birth Certificates

Gender

The American Medical Association (AMA) released a lengthy &#8220;anti-racist&#8221; plan last week detailing the organization&#8217;s ambitious new initiatives to &#8220;embed racial justice&#8221; in the medical profession.
The AMA, the nation&#8217;s largest professional association of physicians, <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/ama-s-strategic-plan-embed-racial-justice-and-advance-health-equity">published</a> its &#8220;Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity&#8221; last week. The 86-page document <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2021-05/ama-equity-strategic-plan.pdf">outlines</a> a three-year plan to implement &#8220;anti-racist&#8221; initiatives, including pushing &#8220;critical race theory&#8221; specifically in the medical community.
The plan announces a five-pronged approach to embracing equity. The AMA makes a commitment to &#8220;embed racial and social justice throughout&#8221; the organization&#8217;s policies and practices, and promises to &#8220;build alliances and share power with historically marginalized minoritized physicians.&#8221;
The organization also promises to &#8220;ensure equitable structures and opportunities in innovation&#8221; for marginalized communities and minorities, to &#8220;push upstream to address all determinants of health and the root causes of health inequities,&#8221; and to &#8220;foster truth, racial healing, reconciliation and transformation&#8221; regarding the AMA’s own past.
One of the plan&#8217;s specific goals is to expand medical school and physician education to include &#8220;equity, anti-racism, structural competency, public health and social sciences, critical race theory and historical basis of disease.&#8221; The plan pushes mandatory &#8220;anti-racism&#8221; and &#8220;equity-explicit&#8221; training for all medical trainees and staff.
The plan also includes elements that appear to have little to do with medicine or the medical community, including a declaration dubbed the &#8220;Land and Labor Acknowledgement.&#8221;
&#8220;We acknowledge that we are all living off the taken ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years,&#8221; the AMA&#8217;s declaration reads.
&#8220;We acknowledge the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon people of African descent for more than 400 years. We celebrate the resilience and strength that all Indigenous people and descendants of Africa have shown in this country and worldwide. We carry our ancestors in us, and we are continually called to be better as we lead this work.&#8221;
The equity plan slams the &#8220;myth of meritocracy,&#8221; saying the differences in outcomes among historically marginalized populations and minorities have been &#8220;explained away&#8221; as the results of a meritocracy.
&#8220;It is a narrative that attributes success or failure to individual abilities and merits. It does not address the centuries of unequal treatment that have intentionally robbed entire communities of the vital resources needed to thrive,&#8221; the AMA says.
Medical schools have adopted dramatic affirmative action policies in order to matriculate a “critical mass” of black applicants, who tend to score lower on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) than their white and Asian counterparts.
Lowering standards for those providing life-saving care could have dangerous consequences.
In 2015-2016, an MCAT score of 24-26 and a GPA of 3.20 to 3.39 was only good enough to gain admission to medical school for 8% of white people, but more than 56% of black people with those scores got in, according to an <a href="https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/acceptance-rates-at-us-medical-schools-in-2015-reveal-ongoing-discrimination-against-asian-americans-and-whites/">American Enterprise Institute</a> review of AMA data.
Seventy percent of the time, administrators said a white person with an MCAT score of 27-29 and a GPA of 3.40-3.59 would not make a suitable doctor. But more than 80% of black people with those scores were admitted. The AMA lists events that it says perpetrated &#8220;structural racism&#8221; against minorities.
One is what it calls &#8220;Johnson v. DeGandy&#8221; of 1992, apparently referring to Johnson v. DeGrandy of 1994, a court case about how congressional districts are drawn.
Another is the 1996 Supreme Court decision it calls Roman v. Evans. The Colorado governor&#8217;s name in that case was Roy Romer, not Roman. The court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/">decided</a> in the case that Colorado was violating the Constitution by preventing protected status based upon homosexuality.
The document positions the Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/275/">decision</a> in Alexander v. Sandoval in a graphic purporting to illustrate the progress and setbacks against racism against Hispanics. But it positions it at 1992, when it occurred in 2001. That decision said that the Civil Rights Act only allows private lawsuits over intentional discrimination, not disparate impact on minorities.
The AMA claims that racism and discrimination ensure that &#8220;historically marginalized communities remain disproportionately plagued by early disease and abbreviated life.&#8221; According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, Hispanics in the U.S. have a life expectancy about <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/WN/us-hispanics-longer-life-expectancy-white-black-americans/story?id=11883156">three years</a> longer than whites.
In February, the AMA found itself embroiled in controversy over a since-removed podcast that was posted on the Journal of the AMA’s (JAMA) website, titled &#8220;Structural Racism for Doctors—What Is It?” The podcast featured two Jewish doctors, Ed Livingston, JAMA’s deputy editor for clinical content, and Mitchell Katz, an editor at JAMA Internal Medicine and CEO of NYC Health and Hospitals.
Livingston <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/medical-journal-forces-out-doctor-for-questioning-structural-racism">asked</a> on the podcast, &#8220;Given that racism is illegal, how can it be so embedded in society that it&#8217;s considered structural?&#8221;
“People do have this response which we’ve said repeatedly, ‘I’m not a racist, so why are you calling me a racist.’ And because they respond that way, they are turned off by the whole structural racism phenomenon. Are there better terms we can use?” he said.
Livingston was asked to resign, and Katz apologized but was put on administrative leave.
The AMA apologized in its equity plan for its &#8220;egregious, harmful error and failure in posting a podcast denying structural racism; keeping old wounds open while new ones form.&#8221;
The American Heart Association (AHA) <a href="https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000936">adopted</a> a similar anti-racist ideology, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/medical-professor-warned-colleagues-that-schools-racial-preferences-were-illegal-and-he-was-removed-from-directorship-now-hes-suing">prompting</a> a lawsuit last year over disciplinary action taken against an Asian American doctor who questioned whether using race in admissions decisions is legal.
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine professor Norman Wang published a white paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) arguing that affirmative action has not actually helped black and Hispanic students. Wang was removed as director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) fellowship program in clinical cardiac electrophysiology, and JAHA retracted the article.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine ran the fellowship program in clinical cardiac electrophysiology from which Norman Wang was removed as director. The program is run by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which is a separate entity from the school.

Doctors BLM

American Medical Association Releases Plan To ‘Embed Racial Justice’ In Medical Profession

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