Sanity returns as feds condemn transgender treatments for kids

The United States has finally acknowledged the truth: Sex-change treatments endanger children.On Thursday, the federal Department of Health and Human Services issued the world’s most comprehensive report on the topic to date — a definitive 400-page evidentiary and ethical takedown.Transgender activists have long relied on the support of the US government — or at least its silence — to protect their claimed medical and moral legitimacy and continue treatment on children as young as age 8.Now they have nowhere to turn but the fringe, which is where their ideology arose and ought to return.The most remarkable thing about this report is that it took so long.Other nations, especially in Europe, have conducted their own reviews of the evidence in recent years.They have broadly concluded that treatments like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries have more documented risks than potential benefits for children.Last summer, for example, Great Britain all but banned the use of puberty blockers — the first and foundational treatment in child sex-change procedures — after the publication of a National Health Service report by Dr.Hilary Cass.Yet the US government has refused to grapple with the evidence, much less admit it, until now.In the meantime, at least 14,000 American children have been subjected to these interventions, as our organization has documented.The HHS report notes from the start that medical practitioners have a “professional and ethical obligation to protect and promote their patients’ health.”That obligation strongly counsels against hormones and surgeries for children, since, as the report notes, there’s little evidence of benefits of sex-change treatments — but plenty of proof of their harm.The evidence shows that sex changes for children can lead to infertility, sterility, cognitive problems, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, mental-health disorders and more.And, as the report also notes, additio...