2 weeks Ago By Dr. Stanley Goldfarb
What’s more important: Playing politics or protecting kids? New York Attorney General Letitia James just gave her answer — and it’s the wrong one. She’s perfectly fine endangering kids for the sake of her own political gain. That’s the grim reality now that AG James has demanded that NYU Langone — one of New York’s most important hospitals — restart transgender treatments for minors.
The hospital stopped providing these treatments after President Trump signed an executive order to limit their use for patients aged 18 and younger. If NYU Langone kept offering these treatments, it would risk billions of dollars in federal funding that’s essential for caring for many more patients. In other words, the hospital would be effectively destroying itself if it caved to AG James’s demands.
But even if that weren’t the case, NYU Langone should hold firm. The hospital was right to follow Trump’s order — because it is grounded in the best medical science and basic medical ethics. Here are the facts that AG James either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about: To start, transgender treatments are a direct assault on a child’s mental and physical health.
An overwhelming percentage of kids who are confused about their gender suffer from mental health or behavioral health issues. Think depression, attention deficit disorder, and autism. These kids need medical help, all right — usually psychiatric care.
What they don’t need are experimental, invasive, and irreversible treatments that fundamentally change their developing minds and bodies. Transgender treatments are incredibly dangerous for kids. We’re talking about puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries.
The first two treatments involve drugs that change their physiology and prevent them from hitting normal milestones. The last treatment — surgeries — involves removing a teenage girl’s breasts or a teenage boy’s penis. Activists claim that kids who get these treatments are happier.
But it’s increasingly clear that’s not the case. More and more people who transitioned as kids are trying to “de-transition.” I work with a young woman named Chloe Cole, a girl who tried to become a boy starting at age 12.
By age 16, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. But her body has been permanently altered. She needs ongoing physical and mental health care.
Chloe is far from alone. Evidence increasingly shows that kids who experience this abuse have harder lives. Many even commit suicide — the very thing activists say transgender treatments are supposed to prevent.
But what did the activists think would happen? They’re telling confused children to become something they’re not. The only place that leads is to disaster. Kids can’t give informed consent to such life-changing decisions.
At the very least, they shouldn’t be allowed to go down this road until they’re adults. Don’t take my word for it. More and more European countries are looking at the evidence and concluding that for kids, the real-world risks outweigh any supposed benefits of transgender treatments.
The United Kingdom is the most famous, restricting children’s access to these treatments after a bombshell report last year. Think about that. These countries are far more liberal than the United States, yet they’re taking proactive steps to protect kids.
Donald Trump is now doing the same, and more than half the states have enacted laws protecting kids, too. Then there’s New York — and now, Letitia James. Despite the facts, and despite the terrible damage that’s already been done to so many people, AG James is demanding that even more kids be put at risk.
If she gets her way, more children will have their bodies and minds ruined. More children will come to regret their decisions. And more children will find they can never go back — because politicians like AG James put selfish political gain ahead of vulnerable young patients.
NYU Langone should stand strong. This isn’t just about following new federal policy and protecting federal funds. This is about following the evidence and protecting children.
It’s clear that Letitia James doesn’t care about these kids. Thankfully, while she’s playing politics to keep activists happy, President Trump and NYU Langone’s leaders are trying to save these kids’ lives. Stanley Goldfarb, MD, a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, is chairman of Do No Harm.
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