The Sudden and Highly Overdue Implosion of Gender Medicine in U.S. Youths
By Norbert Gleicher, MD, Medical Director and Chief Scientist at The Center for Human Reproduction in New York City. He can be contacted through the CHRVOICE or directly at ngleicher@thechr.com.
Two major developments in recent weeks have quite suddenly changed how the U.S. appears to be thinking about treating children and young adults with transgender euphoria. First, the American Medical Association (AMA), until recently a strong supporter of these treatments, suddenly “discovered” that there was not enough evidence in support of such treatments. Since information about an established treatment usually increases with growing use of the treatment, one must wonder what the AMA’s prior support for these treatments was based on—but ideology? In parallel, a large surgical society in the U.S. came to similar conclusions, leaving one, once more, wondering what the basis had been years earlier for our surgeon-colleagues to initiate life-changing surgeries on gender-euphoric children.
The second important event in recent weeks may, indeed, have even more impact than the two societal policy statements because it involves money: a court—for the first time (but most certainly not for the last time)—awarded the young victim of such surgical treatment a significant financial malpractice award of US$2m (we believe even higher rewards can be expected in the future once the enormity of malfeasance and malpractice in this area of medical practice is better understood by the public). After a psychologist strongly supported the surgery (like the surgeon, a defendant in the case), the surgeon removed the teen’s breasts at age 16. Absurd treatments of gender-euphoric children and teens like this have been addressed in these pages over and over again in recent years. A very recent posting in The Reproductive Times on December 11 (see below), indeed, quite emphatically covered this subject in detail. But, considering the recent events noted here, we simply couldn’t help ourselves in commenting once more, as it looks like what initially was only a very small number of opponents of these practices finally see results after seemingly overwhelming opposition from very powerful opponents. We, indeed, may be winning this fight!
What Recently Happened
It occurred suddenly, was explosive, and long overdue—but it did finally happen: among several other organizations, two major professional medical societies in the U.S.—after having been outspoken leaders in aggressively supporting gender-affirming treatments in children and teens for several years—offered revised public policy statements, now recommending delays in so-called gender-affirming treatments that often have lifelong consequences. Though this reflects progress for common sense, the wording—or, more correctly, what was not said—is still astonishing but not surprising (and was not noted by the media), considering the society’s prior public stance in fully supporting such treatments.
Here is how The New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR), for example, quoted the announcement of the newly revised recommendation of the American Medical Association (AMA):¹
The American Medical Association (AMA) strongly supports evidence-based, gender-affirming care for youth and opposes government interference in these medical decisions. The AMA emphasizes individualized care, typically deferring surgical procedures for minors to adulthood, while supporting access to care that improves mental health and well-being.
How shameful!
In the first sentence, the AMA basically fully reaffirmed its longstanding position of opposing all government interventions into medical practice (an opinion we—in principle—fully share, though, of course, with exceptions: doesn’t government, through, for example, the FDA, already control some aspects of medical practice, like which medications we can use? Or doesn’t the FDA already mandate certain IVF and organ transplantation practices?).
But in the second sentence, the AMA basically pretended—no big deal here—not even noting that in the past the society had, indeed, aggressively supported surgical procedures and other life-changing treatments in minors suffering from gender euphoria if considered “indicated” by health care providers. The AMA, other professional organizations, and many major academic medical institutions, on many occasions, indeed, defended such highly consequential medical treatments and surgeries exactly under the pretext of the first sentence—that the AMA opposes government interference in medical practice.
But what should government do when relevant medical societies, like the AMA, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), etc., go rogue or remain silent in the face of unethical medical practice and, indeed, often support such obviously unethical and insanely illogical medical practices in their realms of alleged expertise?
Alleged Motivations
As recently already noted in the above posting in The Reproductive Times, the behavior of organized medicine regarding gender-reaffirming medical care of minors in the U.S. has brought shame on all of the practice of medicine. That—even as of this point—the AMA is only willing to offer the above-noted shamefully “lame” statement is, indeed, quite astonishing. Where is the loud and clear “mea culpa—we are sorry it took so long,” only further reemphasizing the level of moral bankruptcy organized medicine has been increasingly demonstrating over recent decades?
According to Reuters,² the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in its statement—like the AMA—now suddenly also concluded that surgeons should, in gender-euphoric youths, delay gender-related breast or chest, genital, and facial surgeries until a patient is at least 19 years old, citing as reason for this new guideline a “lack of evidence supporting the procedure’s benefits.” But if there is a lack of evidence now, there was a lack of evidence from the beginning. And, once again, the obvious question that arises from this statement is: where has this society of surgeons been over so many years during which thousands of children were irreversibly scarred by so many of the society’s members?
And once again, of course, no “mea culpa,” no regret, and, therefore, nothing has very likely been learned from this ethical as well as clinical disaster, which just resulted in a first million-dollar legal judgment against a psychologist and a plastic surgeon for driving a 16-year-old girl toward a bilateral mastectomy while undergoing gender transition and—as The Free Press reported—“leaving her disfigured for life.”³
Many more such trials are on the way, and even much bigger payouts can be expected, likely also including major medical institutions (often affiliated with famous medical schools and/or universities) that often not only tolerated such practices but even encouraged them. Besides offering political correctness, these treatments, of course, generated significant revenue for involved psychological and medical providers—but even more cash flow for the institutions where these medical treatments and surgeries were performed. In a posting on January 31, 2026, on X, Elon Musk—in our opinion correctly—predicted that “there will be thousands of court cases of children who were mutilated by evil doctors, modern-day Mengeles…”
There are—we assume—two principal reasons why organized medicine (and we here at the CHR) do not want government interventions into medical practice:
(i) as the COVID-19 pandemic (among many other valid examples) so well demonstrated, government isn’t very good at it;
and (ii) the main reason why government isn’t very good at it is because, in government, everything becomes political (and, therefore, often also financial).
The Increasing Impact of Ideology and Politics on Medicine
Here is the paradox: though everybody in organized medicine claims to oppose government intervention into medicine, political ideology has never before been as influential in medicine as it is now, and that impact—if anything—is still growing. Moreover, since—following a very radical so-called progressive administration—we now operate under a conservative administration determined to counteract perceived ideologically and politically motivated interventions into the U.S. health care system by the receding administration, medicine now—aggressively—is invaded from the left and right of the political spectrum.
Though by no means the only politically and/or ideologically driven medical treatment, gender-bending medical care of children has, nevertheless, likely become one of the most obvious examples of the dangers of ideology and politics becoming the basis for medical decision-making. In this context, it must be clearly spelled out that—in the absence of an underlying political ideology—it is almost impossible to imagine that a completely nonsensical treatment concept like life-changing and irreversible treatments for gender-euphoric children would ever be considered acceptable by medical practice, professional societies, hospitals, and academic institutions in the first place. One, indeed, does not even have to be an educated medical service provider to understand how illogical—and purely stupid—it is to ask children for informed consent to receive puberty blockers and have mastectomies and/or other major irreversible surgeries or to force parents to give consent under made-up arguments that their children otherwise would kill themselves.
Yet what organized medicine so far has completely failed to acknowledge is the fact that medicine in general over the last 40 years has transitioned from a politically very conservative field into a politically highly progressive profession and, in the process, has lost much of its ability to objectively judge the influence ideology and politics now occupy in the practice of medicine and have on medical societies (many medical societies—in the reproductive arena ACOG is probably the most radical example—for example still openly and aggressively pursue DEI practices, with ASRM and ESHRE not far behind).
Organized medicine, thus, these days does not want a conservative government to insert itself into medical decision-making but, with open arms, welcomes so-called progressive ideas into medical practice, gender-bending medical care of juveniles, of course, being a prime example. As a consequence, a radically progressive social ideology has, in most aspects, driven gender transition practices, lacking, however, even minimal scientific evidence.
There Is, However, Still Some Way to Go
As widely publicized as the above-noted societal statements from the two medical societies were in old and new media, all media, however, missed an important point in reporting on these announcements. They missed what both statements avoided addressing: non-surgical gender transition treatments like puberty-delaying/suppressing drugs, which, of course, also can have devastating lifelong effects on children, including significant psychological effects.
And if we are already talking about mental complications from such treatments, this subject was recently extensively discussed in an excellent review article from Sweden.⁴ Why, for example, has there been almost no discussion in the U.S. about differentiating between children with true gender euphoria and only TikTok-socially infected children? Where have been the professional societies of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists whose members, as part of “transgender medicine teams,” often offered highly biased psychological and psychiatric counseling to children as well as their parents?
Calling themselves mental health professionals, so many among them shamefully reaffirmed children in often TikTok-derived euphories rather than warning them about premature conclusions regarding their often only momentary artificial social euphoria. These professionals (or should we call them pseudo-professionals?), therefore, ended up driving many of these gender-euphoric youngsters toward life-changing treatments they later ended up regretting.
And how about pseudo-mental health providers who indoctrinated totally unprepared parents facing these, in earlier generations, completely unimaginable challenges affecting their children, to consent to aggressive treatments under the threat that their children otherwise, with considerable likelihood, might commit suicide?
One can easily imagine the impact on parents hearing this from alleged “experts,” often “famous professors!” at major medical schools, even though the literature suggests that suicides in such youth are rare. A relatively recent Finnish study reported that clinical gender dysphoria does not appear to be predictive of either all-cause death or suicide mortality when psychiatric treatment history is accounted for.⁶
On a relevant side note—isn’t it interesting that most relevant papers on the subject of treating gender-euphoric youths have come from Europe, including the so-called Cass Review in the UK,⁵ frequently before discussed in these pages as mostly responsible for the counterrevolution against gender-determining treatments in juveniles?
And How Can We in This Context Not Talk About the Media?
And then there are the media, supposedly looking out for society’s well-being and, of course, in almost unanimous agreement that government should not intervene here in medical practice—that is, at least for as long as this practice ends up being “politically correct.” Consequently, the media—whether traditional or social media—for the longest time in most cases have always been in full agreement with teachers facilitating gender transition of pupils in schools behind their parents’ backs and in, of course, huge majorities supporting unrestricted treatments of transitioning youngsters at all ages.
Originally led by, who else but The New York Times, the newspaper’s management in 2020—after the George Floyd events—formally announced a major change in its longstanding reporting and publication traditions by moving from offering “objectivity” (or “neutrality”) in information in the news section of the newspaper to “independence,” “fairness,” and “truth.” A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the newspaper, has been quoted as saying that “independence” is a better descriptor of the newspaper’s goal than “objectivity,” which The Times now argues can be misunderstood as “both-sidesism.”
While on first impression all of this may seem like just unimportant word salad, the consequence of this announcement had major consequences not only for The Times but for all of media. After all, if the world-famous Times (“everything that’s fit to print”) acknowledges that objectivity/neutrality no longer matters, why should it continue to matter at other media outlets?
The media world before this announcement by The Times was, of course, already anything but perfect and severely contaminated by ideological and political biases as well as interests, but there were at least still attempts made to hide them. The New York Times announcement now, however, freed all media from these shackles. There simply was no longer any reason not to introduce personal biases into the reporting of news. To the contrary, journalists started to see this as an obligation, and many, indeed, do so to this day.
In short, media in recent years underwent similar changes to what we described above in medical societies—a significant majority of media staff concluding that political biases in reporting were not only allowed but were morally and ethically “the right thing to do.” Personal opinions of right and wrong, reflecting what individuals considered independence, fairness, and truth, therefore entered the business of news reporting, which, of course, as a consequence, became increasingly subjective, with CNN and FOX News often presenting outright opposing realities of the world.
As absolutely ludicrous an idea as unrestricted transgender medical care for minors would likely be in an “objective” or “balanced” evaluation, because of ideology and politics it instantly garnered a substantial following, including among media professionals who, of course, trend politically more to the left than right and therefore, in this struggle of different opinions, saw an ideologically very important societal point of conflict.
The one media outlet that—as almost every time reported in The Reproductive Times—broke many news stories on the subject and reported on several important whistleblowers at hospitals around the country was The Free Press, which recently, on February 1, 2026, also reported directly from the courtroom where Varian Fox, at the time of mastectomies a 16-year-old, was in the above-noted lawsuit awarded US$2m in damages. The title of the article said it all: “A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine.”
The Invisible Professional Societies
And where are all the other professional societies, including ACOG, ASRM, and ESHRE? Probably still too timid and ideologically as well as politically influenced by progressive ideology.
Politics have become more antagonistic and aggressive between both major political parties than ever. Relative quiet may, therefore, be a politically appropriate strategy for many societies. But one wonders whether that is an appropriate strategy for the long run. After all, the first rule of medical practice is to do no harm to patients, and this rule also applies to medical societies. That so many relevant societies have remained silent on the subject is, therefore, disappointing.
The Now More Visible Hands of the Political System
We reported in these pages before that when the Trump administration published a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order to disallow gender-affirming treatments in children and young adults in hospitals under the threat of cutting Medicare reimbursement for non-compliance, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, JD, threatened the hospitals with lawsuits if they complied. More recently, Glenna Goldis, JD, reported in The Free Press her own story of how she—as a progressive lesbian and specialist prosecutor in consumer fraud in the New York State Attorney’s office—was fired by James because she had called out in a public demonstration gender affirming care.
And how do things look internationally?
Following the Cass Review,⁵ most European countries—interestingly and disproportionately, especially liberal Scandinavian countries—prohibited gender transition treatments in juveniles. Six European Union countries have outlawed “unnecessary” surgeries, including Malta, Germany, Iceland, Greece, Spain, and Portugal.⁸ But look which organizations, according to Reuters’ previously noted report,² formally opposed such restrictions and have not yet changed their minds: the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)—imagine, the professional society of pediatricians.
Anybody who wants to read a very well-written summary on the rise and fall of youth gender medicine worldwide, including, of course, the U.S., is referred to another recent article in The Free Press by Emily Yoffe, a senior editor at this publication, under exactly that title.⁹
And also related and very timely, Amanda Lock Swarr in Science reviewed a book by Iain Morland, who she calls arguably the foremost theorist of critical intersex studies.⁸ The title of the book is Intersex, and Morland’s key criticism of current clinical practice is that “…regardless of outcome, intersex is never erased by surgery.” Why then would anybody expect surgery to work in transgender situations?
References
The New York Times. Doctors’ Group Endorses Restrictions on Gender-Related Surgery for Minors. Published February 4, 2026. Accessed February 9, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/health/gender-surgery-minors-ama.html
Sathosh C. US plastic surgeons group advises delaying gender surgery until age 19. Reuters. Published February 3, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-plastic-surgeons-group-advises-delaying-gender-surgery-until-age-19-due-2026-02-03/
Ryan B. A legal first that could change gender. The Free Press. Published February 1, 2026.
Linander I, Lauri J. Between Suicide and Regret: Media Representations of Gender‐Affirming Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth. Soc Sci Med. 2026;48(2):e70141.
Cass H. The Cass Review: Final Report. UK National Health Service; 2022. https://cass.independent-review.uk/about-the-review/
Ruuska T, et al. All-cause and suicide mortalities among adolescents and young adults who contacted specialised gender identity services in Finland in 1996-2019: a register study. BMJ Ment Health. 2024;7(1):e300940.
Campanile C, Crane E. NY AG Letitia James accused of firing lawyer who opposes gender affirming care for kids: ‘Cowing me into silence’. New York Post. Published January 24, 2026.
Swarr, A. L. (2026). Rethinking intersex interventions. Science, 391(6780), 31. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aeb5814
Yoffe E. The rise and fall of youth gender. The Free Press. Published February 5, 2026.