“They betrayed their oath to first do no harm,” wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the medical establishment, as part of the agency’s release of a peer-reviewed report confirming the obvious: the “gender affirming” model of care is dangerous. 

“[T]heir so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. That is not medicine — it’s malpractice,” Kennedy continued.

Unfortunately, I know this all too well, having been a victim of this medical scandal myself. When I was still a teenager, my doctors told me that testosterone injections and a double mastectomy would cure the mental illness I struggled with. I was trying to escape womanhood, but, of course, having my body chemically and surgically altered did nothing to heal me from the sexual assault I had experienced, cure me of the eating disorder I had developed, or treat my depression and anxiety diagnoses. 

All it did was leave me with vaginal and pelvic atrophy and a devastated endocrine system, my body never having completed puberty and rendered incapable of breastfeeding my son.

The HHS report was actually released in draft form earlier this year, but today’s version contains the final form, which has been officially peer-reviewed. It also includes the names of the authors, which were previously withheld so that they would not be threatened or intimidated, as researchers in this field often are if they don’t kowtow to the activist party line. 

Unlike these brave researchers, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Endocrine Society, both of which were invited by HHS to participate in the peer review process, declined any involvement. Both organizations have pushed the mutilation of minors like myself and have, alongside the rest of the medical establishment, a lot to lose if their malpractice is called out for what it is. 

Instead of reading and reviewing the contents of the report, the medical establishment denies, denies, denies. A child and adolescent psychiatrist who is associated with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)—one of the organizations most responsible for the gender-affirming model—had the gall to claim to MedPageToday that the authors of the HHS report were not experts, despite the fact that their ranks include doctors and scientists. As the HHS report says, “systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions,” but no amount of evidence will convince those who have a vested interest in remaining unconvinced. 

But that sad fact does not make this report any less monumental. Indeed, it is a major victory that the U.S. government is reclaiming biological reality and protecting children from sex-rejecting surgical procedures and chemical mutilation. 

Moreover, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, stated in a press release for the report, “At the NIH, we are committed to ensuring that science, not ideology, guides America’s medical research.” This means we can be optimistic about future research being based on evidence instead of bolstering a failed status quo. 

The report also recognizes that detransitioner stories like mine have been stifled by the mainstream press and medical establishment, offering us actual (and sorely needed) affirmation instead of the false “affirmation” we got from our doctors who told us we could change sexes if we simply paid them and the pharmaceutical companies enough.

And the government response is not just coming from HHS. Alongside other detransitioners, I recently shared my story to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has been investigating the gender medicine industrial complex for deceptive advertising. In response to the FTC’s request for comment, over 12,000 Americans shared their comments rejecting radical gender ideology—with 2,000 comments having been mobilized by Independent Women’s “Say NO to Mutilation” campaign.

We finally have advocates in government who are ensuring evidence-based medicine, not ideology-based medicine, guides public health and public policy. I’ll never gain back the years my doctors and gender ideology stole from me, but I have hope that these actions will right the path of medicine once again. Patients should be able to trust their doctors, and doctors should hold their oaths to “do no harm.”