The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose purpose is to protect American consumers, will host a workshop July 9 in Washington, DC to explore “unfair or deceptive trade practices” in the use of drugs and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
The workshop will include “presentations from doctors, specialists, medical ethicists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, and parents,” said a press announcement released Monday.
According to the announcement, the basis for the workshop is President Donald Trump’s January executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
“Across the country today,” the order states, “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end,” the order continues, emphasizing that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
The FTC also cited its own commission to explain its plan to tackle the issue. “Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC broad authority to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” the FTC stated. “This authority could be implicated if there is evidence that medical professionals or others omitted warnings about the risks or made false or unsupported claims about the benefits and effectiveness of gender-affirming care for minors.”
The announcement adds that the workshop, which will also be streamed online, “will help the FTC to understand whether consumers are being or have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about ‘gender-affirming care’ and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing.”
Dr. Michael Artigues, president of the American College of Pediatricians, told CatholicVote in October that by promoting so-called “gender-affirming care,” the Biden-Harris administration “chose to ignore” the already-revealed “evidence against gender-affirming therapy – the dangers of hormone treatments, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and certainly surgery.”
Top Biden-Harris health official Dr. Rachel [born Richard] Levine – a man who claims to be a woman – had addressed members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) at their annual conference, claiming that states that had passed legislation to protect children from experimental drugs and surgeries were promoting “hatred” and “discrimination.”
Levine had also insisted that “gender-affirming” care is “evidence-based.”
“Gender-affirming care is medical care,” he said in 2022 at the Out for Health Conference. “It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health [WPATH] published evidence-based standards of care more than a decade ago, in 2011, and is planning to release a full update this year.”
Artigues told CatholicVote, however, that basing “any treatment on WPATH recommendations at this point – which have been revealed to be so weak an organization that is so much in disarray – says that you’re willing to sacrifice the health of children for an apparent agenda.”
In June 2024, it was revealed that the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) pressured WPATH to remove recommended age minimums for gender hormone drugs and surgeries from its draft guidelines in order to make it easier to subject children to such interventions.
Court documents showed that Levine “pressed WPATH to eliminate the age minimums to foster the Biden administration’s pro-‘transgender’ political agenda.”
“This isn’t about hate. This is about medicine,” Artigues argued. “They’re just on the wrong side of this argument. It’s one thing to make claims and stick with it, but when the evidence keeps mounting up against what they’re promoting, I can’t imagine it’s anything more than a personal agenda, rather than looking out for what’s in the best interest of children.”
Since Trump’s victory in November, HHS produced a sweeping report that warns of the serious long-term risks linked to enticing children – with the lure of being able to change their sex – into the use of experimental drugs and surgeries.
HHS press secretary Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano told The Daily Signal in May: “Despite growing pressure to promote harmful medical interventions for minors, this review makes one thing clear: There is extremely weak evidence that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries have any benefits in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria.”
Those interested in watching the FTC workshop webcast can use the link that will be posted to FTC.gov on the morning of July 9.
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