The Federal Trade Commission is charged with protecting citizens from unfair and deceptive trade practices. These practices usually refer to scams which prey on the elderly and infirm, but now also include others which attack the emotionally vulnerable, such as those suffering from eating disorders or victims of sexual assault. The FTC’s July 9th consumer protection hearing opened a new line of inquiry into the dangers of gender-affirming care for minors. According to guest speakers at the FTC’s hearing, trade practices involved in children’s gender-affirming care have been shown to be manipulative of this vulnerable segment of the population. 

For instance, Simon Amaya Price, a social de-transitioner, recounted his narrow escape from medical transitioning professionals, including a therapist at Boston Children’s Hospital encouraging him to go behind his parents’ backs to attend “transgender support groups,” and a pediatrician stating that 15-year-old Price was in immediate danger of self-harm if he was not allowed to transition. These medical professionals ignored the fact that Price was suffering from the emotional trauma of sexual assault and two years of homophobic bullying in school, and immediately accepted Price’s own Googled “self-diagnosis” that he was transgender, alleging that lucrative medical transition drugs and surgery alone would solve all his problems.

The FTC also heard from Jamie Reed, a former operator in a pediatric gender-transitioning center who has firsthand experience of the trade practices employed by the business. Reed explained to the commission that any medical center of any type involved in diagnosing a condition must be able to present universally consistent diagnostic guidelines to the FTC for analysis. However, Reed revealed that no pediatric transitioning center has presented any such guidelines, exposing the public and especially uninformed minors to the dangers of a clinic that will diagnose its patients using unregulated, inconsistent, and medically untrustworthy diagnostic practices. According to Reed, normal medical clinics will evaluate their patients and discharge those who are not actually ill, but pediatric transitioning centers have been shown to recommend medical transitioning to all patients, including those as young as three years old, permanently altering the lives of people too young, mentally impaired, and uninformed to truly know what is happening to them. Given the gravity of the trade practices employed by businesses providing gender-affirming care for minors, we recommend Attorney General Tong hold a similar hearing to begin ensuring the safety of Connecticut’s minors, as the Federal Trade Commission has done. Watch the recording of the FTC hearing here. For more news on the dangers of gender-affirming care for minors, see this article. The FTC is seeking testimony from victims of “gender affirming care”. Submit your story here.