(Daily Wire) The Department of Health and Human Services said it has only two pages of literature supporting Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine’s assessment that “gender-affirming care” is “necessary” for transgender youth, prompting allegations that the transgender-identifying Biden administration official has violated the Department’s scientific integrity policies by baselessly claiming it’s settled science.
Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), a nonprofit watchdog, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for “records of scientific evidence, studies, and/or data to support the Assistant Secretary’s claim that ‘gender-affirming care is medically necessary, safe, and effective for trans and non-binary youth,’” as well as for “records of surveys of medical professionals regarding the value and importance of ‘gender-affirming care’ for minor children.”
In response, HHS produced only a single document—a two-page PDF called “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People.” The document is also on HHS’ website and is not a scientific study, but rather a brochure that declares that “research demonstrates that gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender-diverse children.”
It supports the statement with a footnote to a single study that showed that transgender-identifying young people were slightly less suicidal when receiving treatment — 51% who were receiving such care were suicidal, slightly lower than the 62% who weren’t receiving hormones but wanted them. The HHS document also states that puberty blockers are reversible and hormone therapy is partially reversible.
HHS claimed that Levine — a man who believes he is a woman — made no other mentions of “gender-affirming care” in his emails, PPT said.
PPT on Tuesday wrote to the HHS Inspector General requesting that the office open an investigation, saying that Levine is violating the Department’s scientific integrity policies by making politically-motivated declarations and misrepresenting scientific evidence.
“This suggests that Assistant Secretary Levine has constantly, continually, ‘everywhere I go,’ made unequivocal statements regarding the medical necessity, safety, and effectiveness of gender-affirming care based entirely upon a single two-page document,” the letter said.
The complaint, obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire, says that government officials using their stature as science officials to make politically motivated statements and casting them as irrefutable science risks a further “loss of trust” in scientific institutions that would be “cataclysmic.”
“When asked for ‘records of scientific evidence, studies, and/or data’ and for ‘records of surveys of medical professionals’ to support these claims, HHS was able to provide only a single information sheet – essentially a piece of marketing material with cherry-picked data and agenda-driven assertions,” the complaint said. “This is the opposite of science and evidence-based policymaking and flies in the face of the agency’s pledge of ‘adherence to professional practices, ethical behavior, and the principles of honesty and objectivity when conducting, managing, using the results of, and communicating about science and scientific activities.’”
Michael Chamberlain, the group’s director, said the agency’s failure to provide evidence for its claims explains “why trust in government health officials has evaporated.”
“When we asked HHS to provide this data, all they offered was a single two-page information sheet with links to cherry-picked, often activist-generated research to justify irreversible and possibly dangerous measures,” Chamberlain told The Daily Wire. “Meanwhile, European health services are actively withdrawing their support for these therapies. Even in the face of this, the Assistant Secretary accuses skeptics of ideological motives.”
