America’s Medical Establishment Is Finally Admitting the Truth — Too Late for Many Children
After years of denial, leading US medical organizations reverse course on pediatric gender surgery.
Editor’s Note:
This essay examines a significant shift now underway in US medicine. Two of the country’s most influential medical organizations have reversed course on pediatric gender surgery, conceding that irreversible interventions on minors are not supported by solid evidence and should generally be delayed until adulthood.
I addressed this development in a New York Post column published yesterday. Here, on Just the Facts, I take another look at why this reversal occurred, what it leaves unresolved, and why institutional accountability can no longer be deferred.
For nearly a decade, U.S. professional medical organizations insisted that pediatric gender surgery rested on a solid scientific foundation and represented established best practice.
Last week, two of the most powerful medical organizations in the United States—the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association—abandoned that position.
They now concede that irreversible gender surgeries on minors are not supported by solid evidence and should generally be delayed until adulthood.
That is not a clarification. It is the collapse of a medical consensus that justified amputations, sterilization, and lifelong medical dependency in children.
What matters now is not simply that the reversal occurred, but why it took so long — and why so many institutions remain silent even now.
Pediatric gender medicine had expanded under the protection of professional authority rather than scientific rigor. Physicians were assured these interventions were necessary and life-saving. Parents who hesitated were warned they were putting their children at risk. Clinicians who raised concerns were marginalized or pushed aside.
The patients, meanwhile, were overwhelmingly minors who could not possibly understand the permanent consequences of what was being done to them.
Girls had healthy breasts surgically removed before completing puberty. Boys and girls alike were rendered infertile. Many were placed on a path of lifelong medicalization involving hormones, follow-up surgeries, and chronic complications. All of this proceeded under the banner of “gender affirming care” despite an alarmingly weak evidentiary foundation.
Critics warned early that this amounted to an uncontrolled experiment on children. They were right.
What ultimately forced this reversal was not new science. It was pressure.
European health authorities conducted systematic evidence reviews years ago and reached sobering conclusions. Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom sharply curtailed medical transition for minors after determining that potential harms outweighed uncertain benefits. The United States dismissed those findings.
Only now have American medical organizations begun to retreat.
A recent $2 million malpractice verdict in New York to a detransitioner harmed as a minor made clear that professional associations can no longer shield practitioners simply by declaring consensus.
And still, the reckoning remains incomplete.
The same institutions that now acknowledge the lack of evidence for surgery have largely avoided addressing the drugs that typically precede it. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not neutral pauses. They can permanently alter sexual development, fertility, bone density, and neurological maturation. Administered sequentially, they often lock children into a medical pathway with no easy exit.
The evidentiary failures that undermined surgical recommendations apply with equal force to these pharmaceutical interventions — often on a greater scale.
Yet some of the most influential medical bodies in the country continue to rely on guidelines developed by activist-aligned clinicians rather than conducting independent, rigorous evidence reviews. In doing so, they substituted ideological alignment for evidence-based medicine.
That substitution represents one of the most consequential institutional failures in modern pediatric care.
Medicine depends on public trust. That trust is earned through transparency, humility, and a willingness to admit error. For years, American medical institutions did the opposite. In this matter of minors and gender they overstated certainty, silenced dissent, and treated vulnerable children as instruments of ideology.
The cost is not theoretical. It is borne by young people now living with irreversible physical changes, chronic health problems, and profound regret. For them, this admission comes far too late.
Still, it matters — because it marks the beginning of accountability.
American medicine now faces a choice. It can continue defending a collapsing consensus, exposing itself to escalating legal and ethical consequences. Or it can confront the evidence honestly, acknowledge past errors, and rebuild pediatric care around caution, informed consent, and long-term outcomes.
Children deserve better than slogans. Parents deserve honesty. And the public deserves a medical establishment willing to follow evidence rather than ideology.
This reversal is not the end of the story. It is the opening chapter of a reckoning long deferred.
For readers who want the original reporting that prompted this essay, my New York Post column is available here: https://nypost.com/2026/02/09/opinion/us-medicine-must-choose-between-a-collapsing-consensus-on-pediatric-trans-surgery-and-kids-well-being/
I look forward to a long series of lawsuits against the practitioners who performed these so-called "life-saving" interventions.
Anyone who removes healthy body parts in order to "cure" a psychiatric condition is deluded and dangerous. They should have their medical licenses revoked.
I hope that this is truly the beginning of the end for this medical nightmare. Just a note to observe that the medical scandal doesn’t end with minors; there is no evidence that gender affirming care helps young adults either. Yes, legally they can ‘do what they want’ with their bodies, but it shouldn’t be called medicine.