Leor Sapir on The Broken Chain of Trust in Pediatric Gender Medicine:
The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest and most powerful doctors’ organization in the United States. It has also consistently supported pediatric medical transition, or “gender-affirming care,” which includes puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries administered to minors. The AMA has passed a resolution promising to protect these procedures, joined an amicus brief in a lawsuit challenging a state age-restriction law, and written a letter urging state governors to veto similar legislation.
The AMA has done all this despite the findings from systematic reviews—the gold standard of evidence-based medicine (EBM)—of weak evidence for these treatments’ mental health benefits, and despite the corresponding health risks. In 2021, AMA board member Michael Suk publicly called pediatric transition “medically-necessary, evidence-based care.” He did so after health authorities in several European countries, including progressive Sweden and Finland, had already begun to change course and prioritize psychotherapy for pediatric gender dysphoria cases.
Skeptics of the AMA’s position have wondered how a professional medical organization could have ignored systematic reviews. New videos, one of which was published by the Daily Wire, provide a possible answer. The videos reveal the AMA’s president, the Michigan-based otolaryngologist Bobby Mukkamala, making false claims about pediatric gender medicine and demonstrating ignorance of basic concepts in EBM. Mukkamala appears to believe that only doctors involved in medical practice can be trusted to evaluate the evidence for the treatments they perform. Where EBM sees a potential conflict of interest, the president of the AMA sees a credible source of expertise….
Rotting from the top down.
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