Doctors have cruelly denied help for detransitioners until now

Medical history is filled with stories of patients whose needs were ignored and conditions untreated by the doctors they trusted. The Tuskegee study infamously left black men to suffer and die with syphilis.For decades, people with serious mental health issues were treated like criminals and locked away. But the heartbreaking plight of today’s “detransitioners” may be among history’s worst examples of deliberate medical neglect. These uniquely vulnerable patients tried to change their sex, usually as children or as teens, and now they want to go back.But the medical establishment acts like they’re not real.That’s finally starting to change. Last week, the Cleveland Clinic reached a groundbreaking settlement with the Justice Department.The well-regarded hospital has agreed to a 20-year ban on sex-change treatments for minors — and even more important, agreed to provide detransition care to patients who want to reclaim their real identity and heal the horrible damage doctors have done to them.That follows last month’s news that Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston will open the nation’s first “detransition clinic,” after state Attorney General Ken Paxton investigated it for breaking a state ban on sex-change treatments for minors. But it shouldn’t take settlements and investigations for hospitals to recognize the existence of detransitioners — much less provide the care they need. Do No Harm, where I’m a senior fellow, has analyzed insurance claims to document nearly 14,000 US child sex-change patients between 2019 and 2023. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — nicknamed CHOP — gave sex-change treatments including surgeries to over 120 kids; Boston Children’s Hospital subjected more than 300 minors to sex changes.Nationwide, dozens of children’s hospitals have hurt the vulnerable young people under their care.These hospitals have pumped children’s bodies full of experimental chemicals with potentially serious ...