FTC targets gender “medicine”

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 17th of July.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

First up on The World and Everything in It…can so-called “gender-affirming care” be considered consumer fraud?

BROWN: Families who’ve been told by doctors that cross sex hormones and surgeries would help their children’s mental distress may have been misled. Now, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission says the agency wants to know if it should be considered a deceptive or unfair trade practice. WORLD’s Juliana Chan Erikson has the story.

SCHWEPPE: Please welcome to the stage the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson.

JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON: Last week, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission Andrew Ferguson addressed an audience he doesn’t normally interact with: parents and children who say they were harmed by the effects of youth gender medicine.

ANDREW FERGUSON: As chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Congress has entrusted me with protecting citizens from deceptive acts and practices.

The Federal Trade Commission is the government agency responsible for protecting American consumers from scams, fraud, and bad business practices. They’re the ones who warn you about those phony texts about unpaid highway tolls, and hidden fees on your credit card.

Ferguson said he believes pediatric gender medicine could be added to their list of scams, and announced the agency will soon issue a 60 day public comment period to hear from Americans about their experiences.

FERGUSON: And one of the reasons we are here today is [to] examine whether some of the practices in gender-affirming care are deceptive and require greater scrutiny by the FTC.

This is the first time the Commission is looking into the issue. It’s also the third federal agency to use its government authority to challenge the practice of pediatric gender interventions. And Ferguson made clear where he stood on the issue.

FERGUSON: It is about caring for the most vulnerable among us and protecting them from manipulation, deception, and abuse. It is about healing the wounds that proponents of gender-affirming care may have inflicted on our nation's children and parents, and preventing the potential for future harm.

Former pediatric patients Claire Abernathy and Soren Aldaco told the FTC doctors didn’t warn them about the long-term side effects of cross-sex hormones and puberty blocking drugs like Lupron.

ABERNATHY: They didn't tell me that taking cross-sex hormones and undergoing major surgery at 14 years old could leave me with pelvic floor dysfunction and urinary incontinence, problems I have to manage now as a young adult. I'm only 20 years old.

ALDACO: Testosterone also damaged my liver. I've had fatty liver disease since about 14. The Lupron essentially put my body in menopause. I gained weight. My psychiatric issues flared up. I experienced intense hot flashes, which made it really difficult to focus on my seventh grade homework.

Another parent said her daughter committed suicide at age 18. Ilene Syed adopted a male gender identity but also struggled with anxiety, depression, and self-harm. A therapist prescribed testosterone to Ilene but failed to notice that Ilene’s mental condition was deteriorating. Here’s Ilene’s mother Elvira Syed:

SYED: Testosterone can increase aggression, emotional numbness, and suicidal thoughts, especially in a vulnerable unstable teen. But no one stopped to ask if it was safe.

Patients noticed that their doctors had stern words for the parents who didn’t affirm their children’s new gender identity.

SIMON AMAYA PRICE: The pediatrician then asked my dad in front of me, would you like a dead son or a living daughter?

ABERNATHY: I was told that if I didn’t do this, I would probably end up dead.

PRISHA MOSLEY: She asked my parents if they would rather have a dead daughter or a living son. I believed I would die without transition.

A 2019 study by LGBTQ advocacy group The Trevor Project reported that 35 percent of young people who identify as transgender considered suicide in the past year.

But some medical experts say that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones won’t help.

A Swedish study shows that after 10 years, those who had undergone transgender hormones and surgery were 19 times more likely to die of suicide than regular adults. A 2023 study of 315 underage patients who underwent hormone treatments also reported some concerning numbers. Dr. Michael Laidlaw is an endocrinologist:

MICHAEL LAIDLAW: The most common adverse event was actually suicidal ideation on 11 participants. And two kids or young people actually died by suicide. I thought, "That's what we were trying to prevent with this, weren't we?" Apparently not.

Still, some say the Federal Trade Commission is overstepping its boundaries by weighing in on a medical issue. In an open letter, one hundred and forty-nine Federal Trade Commission employees asked Ferguson to cancel the conference because in their words, “the practice of medicine falls under the jurisdiction of state licensing boards, not the FTC.”

Ferguson disagrees.

FERGUSON: The FTC is the federal government's guardian against false and deceptive health claims. We have brought dozens of enforcement actions against false and misleading health claims from shyster snake oil salesmen to powerful pharmaceutical companies.

A few hours after Ferguson made the announcement, a representative from the Department of Justice had an announcement of its own. The department had issued subpoenas to nearly 20 gender clinics—making it the fourth federal agency to take action against pediatric gender medicine.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Juliana Chan Erikson in Washington.

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