Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. With the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a follow-up report on the medical dangers posed by transgender so-called therapy on children. This report, which supplements an original that was released in May, comes in at an additional 240 pages.
According to the Child and Parents' Rights Campaign, it is, and I quote, the most comprehensive review in the world to date of the evidence and systematic reviews regarding the benefits and harms of treatment for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, end quote. As the press release put it, and I quote again, the report released through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health finds that harms from sex-rejecting procedures, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations, are significant long-term and too often ignored or inadequately tracked. Quoting Dr. Brian Christine, the press release continued, what are we going to tell young people who can't have children because the medical profession stole that from them? Our report is an urgent wake-up call to doctors and parents about the clear dangers of trying to turn girls into boys and vice versa, end quote.
The report described how too often medical consultations have been a, and I quote, child-led process in which comprehensive mental health assessments are often minimized or omitted.
Some of these assessments were as abrupt as a single two-hour session. With no other procedure, especially any with consequences as extreme as castration or amputation, would such a brief consultation ever be tolerated. And yet, so many in the medical field went along with this whole illusion, betraying their oaths and suppressing dissent. I quote again, the voices of whistleblowers and detransitioners have played a critical role in drawing public attention to the risks and harms associated with pediatric medical transition. Their concerns have been discounted, dismissed, or ignored by prominent advocates and practitioners of pediatric medical transition.
There's evidence that some medical and mental health associations have suppressed dissent and stifled debate about this issue among their members. members. As the HHS Secretary RFK put it, that is not medicine, it's malpractice. And it was not isolated to just a few groups or people.
Well-respected academics and institutions embraced this trendy ideology that victimized children. Hannah Barnes' groundbreaking book, A Time to Think, documented how a mix of activists and medical professionals badgered the entire British National Health Service into going along with what became the Tavistock tragedy. Similarly, in the U.S., medical consensus was fabricated, with groups like WPATH purporting that doctors, not gender ideologues, were leading this movement. In reality, the movement ran on two claims. First, Anyone who refused to go along with transgender ideology had blood on their hands.
Countless parents were asked whether they'd prefer a dead son or a live daughter or vice versa.
Some states even removed kids from parents who would not conform. The HHS report reveals that in fact, it was the states, not the parents, who were abusive. Second, transgender ideology was sold to us as a science, a lie that has now fully collapsed. Last year, the CAS report out of the UK declared that medical treatment for gender therapy was built on shaky foundations.
Well, this HHS study not only builds on the British report, it goes much further. And its authors include esteemed scientists and scholars like Alex Byrne of MIT, Kathleen McDevitt of the Baylor College of Medicine, and Farr Curlin of Duke University. Dr. Curlin joined us on a Colson Center breakpoint forum on this issue and was a featured speaker at the Colson Center National Conference in 2025. A few weeks ago, when ADF's Kristen Wagner posted on social media that her kids could not get an Advil at school without permission, but could be transitioned, a bunch of critics called her a liar.
So Wagner responded by, as the kids say these days, bringing the receipts. Likewise, back in May, critics attempted to discredit the initial HHS report. But last week's follow-up report brings the medical receipts. As writer Wesley Yang put it, transgender ideology progressed by a no-debate policy, relying on, and I quote, censorship and punishment. Of dissent as a first resort in its bid to deploy state and administrative power to mandate compliance with their false dogmas.
But as it turns out, truly following the science has led us back to the truth, and it's essential that we keep telling the truth. This report affirms not only that the truth is on our side, but more importantly, it's on the side of children. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Paget.
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