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Originally published at Connecticut Centinal.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a “final demand” to the nation’s leading medical organizations regarding whether they will continue to support interventions that acknowledge the rejection of a child’s biological sex.
HHS announced Wednesday that letters have been sent to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society, and other groups.
The letters demand the organizations clearly declare whether they will continue to support the delivery to minors of such sex-rejecting procedures as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, when strong evidence – including reports from HHS – have shown these procedures to be harmful to children and teens.
“When medical organizations set standards that shape the care of children, they have a responsibility to explain the evidence behind those standards,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “HHS has asked these organizations for clear answers about their current positions, the evidence supporting their guidance, and whether they intend to change it. Parents and clinicians deserve transparency, and we expect these organizations to provide it.”
HHS’ demands for transparency and safety for minors come two years after Rachel (born Richard) Levine served as the face of the Biden administration’s HHS.
In June 2022, Levine said that so-called sex reassignment surgery is “life-saving” and “medically necessary” for children and teens.
Following an earlier request for a response from the medical organizations, the Trump HHS said the department is now “requesting a clear statement of the current position of these organizations on sex-rejecting procedures for minors, identification of any planned revisions to their respective guidance, and a timeline for those changes,” within ten business days.
In one letter, to the president of the American Psychological Association (APA), Kennedy wrote to Wendi Williams, Ph.D. that he had previously “requested a timely and substantive response” from her organization “regarding its position on sex-rejecting procedures for children and any planned updates to its guidance materials or position statements,” but had not received one.
“For an organization that rarely wants for words on this subject, the silence is telling—and deeply disappointing,” the secretary stated.
“One would expect that an organization holding itself out as a steward of national medical standards and claiming to place the health and safety of children above all else might have something to say when the evidence calls its guidance into question,” Kennedy added. “Surely an association so confident in its position would welcome the chance to defend it. APA’s refusal to engage is difficult to square with the principles it so frequently professes.”
HHS asserted that all health organizations that declare standards of care and guidelines for children “have a responsibility to answer for the consequences of their guidance. The Trump Administration will make sure they do.”
Previously, the Trump HHS moved to prohibit hospitals receiving funding through Medicare and Medicaid from performing sex-rejecting procedures on children and barred federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for them.
As Lumen-News reported in May 2025, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a longtime supporter of so-called “gender-affirming care” for children, condemned HHS’ report pointing to the harms that could come to children and teens via medical interventions that promote the view that biological sex is an option that can be rejected.
The AAP “is deeply alarmed by the report” on “medical care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals and the process that informed its development,” said then-AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., claiming the HHS analysis relied on “select perspectives and a narrow set of data.”
“This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,” Kressly justified, claiming as well that “[a]s we have seen with immunizations, bypassing medical expertise and scientific evidence has real consequences for the health of America’s children.”
AAP – with the pharmaceutical giants among its largest corporate donors – and its partner organizations that include the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Physicians, the American Osteopathic Association, and the American Psychiatric Association – have all claimed that so-called “gender-affirming care” is “evidence-based.”
“We reiterate that all patients must have access to evidence-based, comprehensive medical care, and that physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their education, training, and experience without threat of criminalization,” the groups said. “Politics should not get in the way of evidence-based care and a strong patient-physician relationship.”
“We support our members and will continue to advocate for access to the full spectrum of evidence-based health care and medical education,” argued the organizations.
But National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Fox News after the condemnation by establishment medical groups that they have all surrendered to “group think.”
“The scientific establishment has closed ranks around itself and prohibited dissent, and didn’t allow people to say, ‘Are you sure the evidence is good?’” Bhattacharya explained, noting that the situation in the Trump administration is “the exact opposite.”
