(The Center Square) – Medical professionals and officials attending a Federal Trade Commission workshop that concerns the dangers and deceptive practices of gender-affirming care for minors say that such practices are misleading to consumers and are “one of the greatest frauds” committed against the American people.
The July 9 workshop was focused “on unfair or deceptive trade practices in ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors,” according to an event schedule on the FTC’s website.
The workshop was intended to “help the FTC to understand whether consumers are being or have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about ‘gender-affirming care’ and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing,” the FTC said.
According to the FTC, “section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act gives the FTC broad authority to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”
“This authority could be implicated if there is evidence that medical professionals or others omitted warnings about the risks or made false or unsupported claims about the benefits and effectiveness of gender-affirming care for minors,” the FTC said.
FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said at the workshop that “if a medical claim is false or misleading, it is the commission’s sworn duty to protect American citizens from that claim, no differently than it would for any other false or misleading claim.”
“Refusing to investigate these health claims and the potential consumer harm to parents and children merely because one political party supports those claims as a matter of its ideology would be the politicized choice,” Ferguson said.
Those sharing their “perspectives grounded in research, expertise, and personal experience” at the FTC workshop include doctors, medical ethicists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, and parents of detransitioners, according to FTC.
Department of Justice Chief of Staff Chad Mizzelle attended the workshop and remarked that there is not a doubt in his mind “that the industry that has formed around providing ‘gender-affirming care’ and transitioning services for children has perpetuated one of the greatest frauds on the American public.”
Mizzelle said that the DOJ has “issued nearly 20 subpoenas against clinics who are engaged in transition-related investigations.”
“We’re investigating violations such as healthcare fraud and false statements, all of which could result in either civil or criminal liability for these clinics,” Mizzelle said.
Mizzelle said that “there’s a basic principle of law: You cannot deceive consumers. You cannot lie to them to get them to buy your products or use your services.”
Psychiatrist and Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Miriam Grossman was in attendance at the workshop. She said that “there is no objective evidence of being born in the wrong body and saying so misleads and takes advantage of consumers and it impacts their medical decisions.”
Do No Harm is an organization of “physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice,” according to its website.
Grossman said: “I know from my patients, and many others, when young people hear that their feelings are more consequential than their bodies and when they hear this idea endorsed with great certainty by therapists and doctors, echoed by professional organizations and government agencies, they believe it.”
“They believe that this is bona fide science and that they have a medical condition whose only cure is pharmaceuticals and surgeries,” Grossman said.
Another psychiatrist and Do No Harm Senior Fellow Dr. Laura Schwartz said in her remarks that providing “harmful hormones at doses we’ve never prescribed before in children and young adults that leads them down a path to surgeries” is not medicine. “It’s not acceptable.”
“We have to do better,” Schwartz said. “I do hope that with the help of the FTC, we can do that.”
The FTC has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment asking how it will move forward from the workshop.
Executive director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild said in a statement obtained by The Center Square that “Consumers’ Research applauds the FTC for protecting kids from deceptive health claims surrounding children’s medical care.”
Consumers’ Research is an independent educational nonprofit as stated on its website.
“When nonprofit hospitals use federal funding to prioritize political agendas and perform harmful, irreversible sex-change procedures on kids, their federal funding and tax-exempt status should absolutely be called into question and investigated,” Hild said.
“Nonprofit health systems should be focused on their core mission of high-quality patient care at low costs,” Hild said.
