The rampaging mistreatment of children perpetrated by medical professionals using the pseudoscience of puberty blockers and radical surgical procedures may finally be coming up against the swelling tide of common sense, scientific rigor, and dignity.
On April 08, 2024, the Catholic Church published its “Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity.” The Vatican’s obsecration for human dignity included sections on Gender Theory and Sex Change, referring to gender theory as one of a number of instances of “ideological colonization.” As for sex change, the declaration stated that Pope Francis affirmed that “creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”
On April 10, Lisa Selin Davis, reporting for The Free Press, detailed a review commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The review, written by Dr. Hillary Cass, a British pediatrician, was propagated by ten plus years of whistleblowing by doctors and other clinicians from England’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS).
The 388-page review concludes what many are finally beginning to stop fearing to admit, that clinicians “are unable to reliably predict which children/young people will transition successfully and which might regret or detransition at a later date.” They are too young to understand. Their pre-frontal cortices, where these decisions are made, are still developing. Their parents are torn as to how best to support their child’s inclinations, which are often accompanied by other burgeoning psychological issues.
The WPATH Files, which were published in March, noted that in most instances, the doctors who prescribed the gender transition drugs and performed theses surgeries on minors did not have truly informed consent, which is ethically critical to have before the intervention is undertaken. The WPATH files showed that doctors involved in these mistreatments wrestled with the realization that neither the children nor their parents fully understood the implications of the life-altering decisions they were making, the consequences of which included sterilization, loss of sexual function, and a loss of their fundamental right to experience puberty and naturally develop into adults.
In a recent article, the Clinical Advisory Network for Sex and Gender (CAN-SG), stated that WPATH, “is an organisation of self-appointed “experts” and non-medical activists who have for decades promoted medical hormonal and surgical intervention to minors and adults to change their bodies secondary sex markers.”
In 2021, the British Medical Journal published a review called, “International Clinical Practice Guidelines for Gender Minority/Trans People.” The review specifically noted that WPATH’s Standard of Care, Version Seven, WPATH SOCv7, could not be considered a gold standard because of “incoherence” and an inability to link recommendations to evidence. “Although WPATH SOCv7’s stated overall goal is ‘to provide clinical guidance for health professionals’ it contains no list of key recommendations nor auditable quality standards, yet is widely used to compare procedures covered by US providers.”
The review stated in part, “No statements were highlighted by the WPATH SOCv7 authors as key recommendations, and it proved impossible for all six reviewers independently performing data extraction to identify them. The total number of extracted recommendations ranged between 0 and 168 with little consistency or agreement on what passages were selected. Some extracted statements might have been intended as recommendations or standards, but many were flexible, disconnected from evidence (emphasis mine) and could not be used by individuals or services to benchmark practice.”
In short, as has been reported by Michael Shellenberger since the release of the WPATH Files, “the practice of transgender medicine is neither scientific nor medicine.” And further, “What we’re dealing with here is one of the worst medical mistreatment scandals in human history…. And maybe the worst.”
The Kids
To be clear, as I’ve previously written, this growing resentment in western Europe and other places is cracking open the resistance to and long-term study of these interventions on children as young as ten years old. In most cases, it is not intended to intercede in the decision by an adult to transition.
Dr. Cass states in her forward, “This Review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves, or rolling back on people’s rights to healthcare. It is about what the healthcare approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the NHS in relation to their gender identity.”
In Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier wrote, “For those with gender dysphoria, the unpleasantness must be excruciating, and we should expect mental health professionals, to be respectful of it, sympathetic to those who bear it, and understanding of their pain – even perhaps by supporting medical transition.”
However, she added, “But the new “affirmative-care” standard of mental health professionals is a different matter entirely. It surpasses sympathy and leaps straight to demanding that mental health professionals adopt their patients’ beliefs of being in the “wrong body.” Affirmative therapy compels therapists to endorse a falsehood: not that a teenage girl feels more comfortable presenting as a boy – but that she actually is a boy.”
Judging from the clear language of the Vatican’s declaration, there is no such concept as being in the wrong body. Although the declaration reminds the faithful that all persons in all circumstances must be treated with dignity, the dignity of the individual comes from accepting one’s life and body as a gift from god. God has determined your biology. Therefore, “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God…”
“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
No Back-Pedaling on the Precipice, Please
I wouldn’t count on protests, boycotts or X rants to change any of this in the coming years, or decades, in the case of the Vatican.
Both the Cass Review and the Dignitas Infinita were years in the making and won’t be undone in a news cycle. Four years of research, interviews and scientific examination went into the Cass Review. The Vatican took five years and numerous drafts, and reviews of the document by the Dicastery, the Consulta Ristretta, and a special Congresso, along with specific requests from the Pope, to arrive at the published version. The Pope wished for the document to “highlight topics closely connected to the theme of dignity, such as poverty, the situation of migrants, violence against women, human trafficking, war, and other themes.” The other themes presumably included gender theory and sex change, along with comments on the practice of surrogacy.
As a cultural observation, I’ve noticed, likely due to the influence of Dave Chapelle, that comedians are slowly slipping trans jokes into their sets. That’s not to say that I condone public or personal ridicule of an individual’s deeply held convictions, but it should be noted that the taboo is lifting. Comedy has always been reflective of cultural changes and has often effected change going back to Lenny Bruce and later, Richard Pryor. People are beginning to be less afraid of being canceled or losing their jobs. It’s a welcome change. If nothing else, we should return to science and evidence-based, civil discussions about this subject and set our feelings aside.
I’m a Hitchens-level atheist. My inclusion of the Vatican’s declaration was not borne of faith but a recognition of the incredible power the church still wields around the world. It seems fitting therefore, to close this with a comment from Hitch, a man our public discourse desperately misses. “Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
The marvelous Emmy Jewel created the graphite image of Christopher Hitchens below, which hangs in my office. Follow her on X @EmmyJewel to see her drawings in progress. Feel free to support her work.
Great writing with a focus on a path to healing the whole self. Exposes greed and misrepresentation of meaningful concern.