‘We’re supposed to be healers, not harmers’: Doctor says politics has taken over medical groups’ stance on gender care for minors

With Initiative 638 on the November ballot, KIRO host John Curley said he went looking for a better understanding of the medical side of the transgender debate. He found testimony from a U.S. Senate hearing that he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Chloe Cole testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in June. Cole began medically transitioning at 12, had a double mastectomy at 15 and later detransitioned.

“These treatments are absolutely irreversible,” Cole told senators. “I have pain every single day in my hips, in my knees, throughout my limbs.”

Cole also asked why protecting children has become a partisan fight. Curley asked that question to Dr. Kurt Miceli, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer of the advocacy group Do No Harm, who testified at the same hearing.

“It’s truly unfortunate that it’s become so political,” Miceli told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “Common, ordinary sense people recognize that these puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries should not be given to minors.”

Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, spoke at the hearing to defend gender-affirming care as medically supported treatment.

“The government is baselessly attacking safe and effective medical care,” Minter testified.

‘No credible evidence of benefit’

Miceli argued that kids struggling with their gender should get psychological support first, not medical intervention. He pointed to reviews in the United Kingdom, Finland, and Sweden, along with a federal Department of Health and Human Services report released last year.

“If you look at the evidence, there is no credible evidence of benefit from these interventions,” Miceli said. “In fact, the harms are significant.”

He listed risks including infertility, effects on bone growth and height, cardiovascular problems, surgical complications, and regret.

The lobotomy lesson

Curley noted that Miceli had said the word “evidence” four times and asked why the evidence hadn’t changed how doctors practice. He quizzed Miceli on medical history: what won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1949?

“That might be the lobotomy,” Miceli answered.

Curley said the Soviet Union got rid of the procedure the next year. The U.S. never banned it, he added, but doctors stopped doing it once better treatments came along.

“The evidence followed. The protocol changed,” Curley said. “In this case, the evidence seems to get blocked.”

He pointed to critical coverage from The Economist and The Atlantic, which he said were “no friend to conservatives.” Miceli said those critiques were about the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which writes widely used treatment guidelines.

Miceli called WPATH’s latest standards “extraordinarily radical.” He said the group commissioned systematic reviews from Johns Hopkins, but only one was published.

“It looks like WPATH was scared of what they found,” Miceli said.

Hints of change

Curley asked why professional groups would keep backing these treatments if the evidence wasn’t there. Miceli said an activist group has taken over the leadership of many medical organizations while ordinary doctors stayed quiet or left.

“There’s been a political capture of these institutions,” Miceli said.

He said that at the Pennsylvania Medical Society’s meeting the weekend before, he pushed delegates to at least stop surgeries on minors. The vote went against him.

He added the American Society of Plastic Surgeons broke from other medical groups this year and recommended its members not perform these surgeries on patients under 19.

Hitting it from the money side

Curley asked how you break what he called “a stranglehold on real science.” Miceli pointed to a new federal rule blocking Medicaid dollars for these treatments for minors and to the Justice Department’s investigations into billing.

He cited Texas Children’s Hospital, which agreed in May to stop providing gender-transition treatments for minors and to pay $10 million to settle allegations it improperly billed for them, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The settlement also required the hospital to create a clinic for detransitioners, which opened this week.

Curley argued malpractice lawsuits could do more than anything from Washington, D.C.

He pointed to Fox Varian. A New York jury awarded her $2 million in January after finding her psychologist and surgeon committed malpractice, according to The New York Times. It was the first verdict of its kind in the U.S.

“If all of a sudden the insurance companies are getting whacked for $2 million, $3 million or higher, then they’re going to say, ‘Well, we’re not going to pay for this anymore,’” Curley said.

Curley said he’d welcome an honest debate over the science but argued it can quickly turn into ideology.

“How do you convince somebody of feelings rather than facts?” Curley said. “Young women like Miss Cole and others are forced to live a life of disability from bad information.”

Miceli agreed and said doctors need to listen to detransitioners.

“We’re supposed to be healers, not harmers,” Miceli said.

Curley wrapped up by acknowledging that Miceli’s group isn’t popular in many medical circles.

“You guys must be the skunk at the garden party,” Curley said. “I hope eventually people ask for some sanity to come back in, or they are just giving themselves a frontal lobotomy, which I thought we got rid of a while ago.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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