I was having a conversation about trust in the medical industry with my doctor, and he told me that his patients were just being tricked by “social media”, whereas doctors like him are “evidence-based”. First of all, the people I follow on social media are now running the NIH, FDA and CSC. So now I am the science. Second of all, the public’s distrust of doctors is based on evidence.
Let’s take a look at an article from the Manhattan Institute‘s City Journal by Leon Sapir about the American Medical Association:
The American Medical Association (AMA) is the largest and most powerful doctors’ organization in the United States. It has also consistently supported pediatric medical transition, or “gender-affirming care,” which includes puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries administered to minors. The AMA has passed a resolution promising to protect these procedures, joined an amicus brief in a lawsuit challenging a state age-restriction law, and written a letter urging state governors to veto similar legislation.
So, I think what consumers of medical services are seeing what the professional body of doctors says about transing kids, and they are thinking “gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and you cannot treat it with hormone replacement, and sex mutilation surgeries”. We are not just thinking about long-term consequences like infertility and continuous expensive treatments. Many of these doctors aren’t citing the studies at all, just asking parents “would you rather have a dead girl or a live boy?” That not evidence-based.
More:
The AMA has done all this despite the findings from systematic reviews—the gold standard of evidence-based medicine (EBM)—of weak evidence for these treatments’ mental health benefits, and despite the corresponding health risks.
[…]Skeptics of the AMA’s position have wondered how a professional medical organization could have ignored systematic reviews. New videos published by the Daily Wire provide a possible answer. The videos reveal the AMA’s president, the Michigan-based otolaryngologist Bobby Mukkamala, making false claims about pediatric gender medicine and demonstrating ignorance of basic concepts in EBM.
[…]In accordance with his belief about expertise, Mukkamala recommended that a legislator consult with one gender doctor in particular, fellow Michigander Jesse Krikorian. The Daily Wire videos also reveal that Krikorian, like Mukkamala, is unfamiliar with basic principles of EBM and with existing research on pediatric gender medicine.
Now, my doctor would probably have a very negative view of parents ability to form opinions about health care policy. But actually, ordinary people like me are following the studies closely, and ordinary people like you are reading about the studies, too.
The AMA’s stance contradicts years of research I’ve covered, including:
The UK’s Cass Review, which I discussed in my May 2025 post linked above, is a gold-standard analysis. It found no consistent mental health benefits from puberty blockers or hormones, yet the AMA pushes these treatments regardless. I’m blogging about the gold standard studies, but AMA people think that ordinary people are not following the science. We are. Christians and conservatives bound our worldviews off of what science tells us. We are not being swayed by Big Medicine and Big LGBT to suppress the science. The AMA argues gender-affirming care reduces distress, but the Cass Review and other studies show no consistent mental health benefits.
The rest of that City Journal article talks about some of the myths that are believed by senior people at the AMA. (Either they are deliberately lying because transing kids is “a big money-maker“, or they are just ignorant of the research)
Here’s one example:
The AMA president… asserted that the suicide rate— not suicidal ideation or attempts, but deaths by suicide—among people who identify as transgender is between “50 and 70 percent.” He was clearly implying that gender-transition procedures for minors are necessary to prevent these tragic outcomes.
This claim is baseless. Indeed, even the most outspoken advocates of pediatric transition refrain from saying that suicide—as opposed to suicidal ideation or attempts—is this high among trans-identifying youth… Last December, ACLU lawyer and LGBTQ & HIV Project co-director Chase Strangio admitted in a Supreme Court hearing that “suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare” among trans-identifying youth.
[…]No credible evidence shows that medical transition resolves or lowers the rate of suicidal behavior, and some evidence suggests that suicide risk remains significantly elevated—though still nowhere near the figures cited by Mukkamala—following medical transition.
I think my doctor is probably thinking that rank-and-file Americans are not following these issues closely. We interviewed Dr. Jay Richards on our podcast, who is one of the experts on this issue at the Heritage Foundation think tank. I follow Jay Richards on Twitter, and he tweets out all the studies that he expects ordinary Americans to read them – at least the abstracts!
Heritage is a think tank that influences legislation and policy in the federal government. I read everything that Jay tweets, and that’s how I find all these studies. So, maybe social media is not such a bad thing, if it leads to the studies. It’s certainly a lot better than listening to NPR and reading the New York Times and the Washington Post and expecting to have accurate views about these topics.
