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 side effects; they’ve cut off children’s breasts and other sexual organs.

Yet if these children grow up and regret what was done to them — as many do — those same hospitals seem to have little interest in helping them regain mental and physical health. 

Some of these medical professionals don’t believe “detransitioning” is possible or legitimate, even after meeting a detransitioner in person.

Others are afraid that activists will come after them if they do the right thing.

As a doctor, I can attest that my colleagues are terrified of activists, and no wonder: They don’t want a vicious online mob to target their hospital and jeopardize their career.

But it’s unethical for any doctor to ignore a patient’s suffering — and detransitioners are in desperate pain. 

They must manage the open wounds that persist long after sex-change surgeries, and must grapple with serious physiological effects from the chemicals that changed their bodies. 

Mental health is a major challenge, too: Imagine looking in the mirror and never recognizing who you see, or looking at pictures of who you were five years ago and realizing that’s not you anymore. 

Imagine realizing you actually do want to have children, but may never be able to do so.

Bottom line, every detransitioner has serious, ongoing, lifelong medical needs.

They shouldn’t have to go to Texas or Ohio to get the care they deserve.

They should be able to get treatment and find healing at the hospital that hurt them in the first place.

Hospitals and doctors have an absolute responsibility to help these patients — and an obligation, too. 

Ideally hospitals, especially those that already have gender clinics, should set up detransition clinics voluntarily. 

But if they refuse, as seems likely, state and federal leaders should be ready to compel them to do what’s right, as Texas has done.

Medical societies also have an obligation to issue treatment guidelines for detransitioners. 

The Endocrine Society, of which I’m a member, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have loudly touted their guidelines and policy statements regarding child sex changes — but they’re utterly silent on how to help patients who want to go back. 

And after unsuccessfully petitioning the Endocrine Society on this matter for three years running, I suspect outside pressure is the only way forward.

The detransition clinic that’s about to open in Houston will be the first of its kind.

The Cleveland Clinic has made a monetary commitment to detransition care.

But they can’t serve these patients’ pressing needs on their own. 

Detransitioners across the country need doctors who will help them.

It was wrong to subject children to sex-change treatments in the first place; it’s doubly wrong to ignore them when they want to reclaim their real identity. 

Throughout history, doctors who turned a blind eye to their patients’ suffering have earned society’s scorn.

It will not end well for the medical professionals who insist on pretending that detransitioners don’t exist.

Roy Eappen, MD, is a practicing endocrinologist and senior fellow at Do No Harm.