Lauren Dempsey, MS in Biomedicine and Law, RN, FISM News 

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Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist known for his work with transgender individuals and sexual dysfunction, recently testified before a governmental body that the “gender-affirming care” model is based on more than a dozen “scientifically false” assumptions and that it does not have positive outcomes.

Levine was recently an expert witness at a Florida House Health & Human Services Committee hearing. Levine and other experts were invited by Rep. Randy Fine, who is planning to draft legislation that would ban medical interventions for minors. This legislation could go into effect in the next few weeks, which would prevent minors with gender dysphoria from receiving hormones, puberty blockers, or surgery as treatment.

Levine asked those assembled at the committee meeting to consider if the medical and surgical transition of children is a medical mistake. He pointed out that it would be far from the medical establishment’s first miscue.

“We have a history of medical misadventures, most recently and most damaging is the opioid epidemic, where we began prescribing opioids liberally without scientific demonstration as to its use and its utility and its harms,” Levine said.

Levine outlined 13 scientifically false assumptions which act as the foundation of gender-affirming therapy for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents. Among them, Levine told the committee that it is false to suggest that a transgender identity is unchanging once established, adding that it is untrue to claim that a transgender identity is a result of biological factors or that sexual orientation is separate from gender identity.

Levine also pointed out that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition that only requires treatment or intervention when the patient wants it, saying “there is some inherent paradox in that idea.” However, patient autonomy allows people to choose or decline medical treatment and is a core component of medical ethics, regardless of the seriousness of the disease.

However, patients cannot make a decision without true informed consent on all of the risks associated with treatment. Gender-affirming care comes with social, psychological, and physical risks that are often dismissed or ignored by providers. Medical experts and advocates are guilty of maleficence when they tell patients that transitioning is risk-free.

Current research shows that gender-affirming care is not reversible and it can cause sexual dysfunction, sterility, neoplasm, heart disease, osteoporosis, and psychosis.

CONSENT FROM CHILDREN

Levine argues that children are not capable of making these life-altering, long-term decisions and that gender-affirming care does not improve mental health or social function and medical and surgical transitions do not have positive outcomes.

He also believes that the “associated emotional problems” experienced by children and adolescents with gender dysphoria do not come from discrimination and that many children diagnosed with gender dysphoria have prior mental health diagnoses.

Levine also told the committee that he does not believe that medical or surgical treatment is the only option for treating gender dysphoria. He added that detransition and regret are far more common than is reported in legacy media.

“When people assert that regret is rare, it’s because they’re defining regret as telling their original therapist that they wish they didn’t undergo this, or asking to have their body changed back to their original form, which is a very limited concept of what regret is,” Levine said.

According to an online survey conducted by Dr. Lisa Littman that included individuals that were detransitioning, 38% said their gender dysphoria was caused by a mental health condition, abuse, or trauma. Sixty percent became more comfortable identifying as their biological sex and 62% felt medical professionals did not investigate whether trauma was a factor in their transition decisions.

The survey also found that 55% felt that they did not receive an adequate evaluation from a doctor or mental health professional and only 4% of respondents informed their clinicians that they had detransitioned.

Dr. Levine said that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) deserves credit because “they have convinced the American mental health professionals, including their organizations, that science has already delivered the verdict that this is the best treatment and young mental health professionals are coming out of graduate schools being taught that the only thing to do for these kids is to transition them and to affirm.”

“They just don’t understand our psychiatric professions have been brainwashed,” he said.