Emails show evidence gender transition providers for kids hid what they do, misled journalists

The University of California San Francisco scrubbed its website of details on its provision of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removals of healthy breasts and genitals for minors, following a query from then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson's show, according to a massive production to Judicial Watch in a California Public Records Act lawsuit.

The UC system's designated campus for health sciences and University of Southern California-affiliated Children's Health Los Angeles also hid the fact that a 9-year-old was part of their blocker study through the National Institutes of Health, when they corrected New York Times reporters who asked about an 8-year-old in the study.

The evidence of obfuscation, misleading and threatening the media – one official suggested suing Carlson before he reported anything – is sprinkled throughout nearly 2,500 pages of three-year-old internal conversations among so-called gender-affirming care leaders of UCSF and CHLA and both conservative and mainstream media. 

It suggests a pattern of withholding information that could cut the taxpayer and insurance spigot to the lucrative world of medicalized gender transitions for minors and set back gender ideology in U.S. medical institutions, which have resisted their European counterparts' dramatic pullback on medicalized pediatric transitions.

CHLA researcher Johanna Olson-Kennedy admitted hiding the results of her NIH-funded study, that gender-confused children don't see mental-health benefits from blockers, because "I do not want our work to be weaponized" by opponents. She also falsely characterized the study population to the Times to explain away her findings.

Much of the damage to the industry's reputation and cash flow is self-inflicted, through its own public recordings of practitioners candidly discussing the gruesome and lucrative nature of surgeries, hormone therapy and the lifelong medical management they require, and how to overcome parental opposition to child transitions.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, which hid research on the importance of children seeing faces when it endorsed COVID-19 mask mandates, then claimed it was an accident, also banned a critic of gender ideology the morning of its conference last fall.

Group seeks 're-psychopathologization' of transgender identity

Judicial Watch sued on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation nearly two years ago when UCSF rejected its CPRA requests for communications to and from Child and Adolescent Gender Center Medical Director Stephen Rosenthal and Gender Affirming Health Program Director Madeline Deutsch that matched gender-affirming care-related keywords.

For varying periods between June 2022 and August 2023, DCNF sought records that mentioned the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, its Standards of Care 8, hormone therapy, puberty suppression, chest and genital surgeries and then-Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who pressured WPATH to remove safeguards in SOC 8.

"Normal people know that introducing permanent sex changes for nine-year-olds is sick," DCNF Chairman Neil Patel said in response to the disclosures. "That’s why these people tried so hard to hide the information."

UCSF and CHLA did not respond to Just the News queries about their behavior as documented in the CPRA production.

Even before court rulings documented the practically irreversible changes to the body from blockers, polling suggested the vast majority of Americans across political parties opposed medicalized transitions for minors.

Genspect, which fights gender ideology from a secular perspective, is seeking to capitalize on global scrutiny of pediatric gender transitions by calling for the "re-psychopathologization" of transgender identity, 15 years after WPATH's declaration to "de-psychopathologize" gender variance based on "political advocacy," in Genspect's view.

"This campaign has caused catastrophic harm by removing essential psychiatric guardrails, fueling a social contagion, and exposing vulnerable people to experimental medicalization," Genspect Canada Director Mia Hughes told its conference last month. 

Its proposal would classify transgender identity not as biological or innate but "an all-consuming pathological belief heavily influenced by culture," based on the psychiatric concept dating to the 19th century known as "Extreme Overvalued Belief."

'I’m so glad you removed the pediatric content' after Carlson message

UCSF went to the mattresses after Carlson's show asked "how many genital surgeries you have performed on minors in the past year" – its own guidelines said these decisions are made "case by case" – and whether it's "worried about being sued into the ground like Tavistock," the shuttered U.K. pediatric gender clinic. It gave UCSF three hours to answer.

Vice Chancellor of Communications Won Ha warned colleagues the show "does not follow ethical journalistic standards" and will use "any response from us in any way that suits their preconceived, false narrative, and will likely generate more attention to their partisan cause." Rosenthal responded: "Maybe at some point they can be sued."

Deutsch speculated Carlson was following up on conservative host Matt Walsh's recent expose of Vanderbilt University Medical Center's surgical and hormonal procedures for gender-confused minors, with its officials calling the clinics financially lucrative and threatening employees who refuse to go along, prompting VUMC to rush to take down the evidence.

Vanderbilt paused the procedures a few weeks later, but told Tennessee lawmakers – who had cited Walsh's report – it was because VUMC needed to review the changes in Standards of Care 8 and complete its internal clinical review of the new guidance in minors.

"I’ve taken down our peds content in the guidelines for now and instead direct people to" WPATH's Standards of Care 8, Deutsch told UCSF colleagues. "I’m so glad you removed the pediatric content from the UCSF guidelines," Rosenthal responded.

Deutsch justified the removal by saying Carlson's show was referring to content that "is 6 years old anyway and slated for updating next year. I’ve also made a few light edits to the rest of our website to minimize any ability for the content to be weaponized."

The next day, Sept. 22, 2022, a pediatrics employee at the University of Chicago called Rosenthal's attention to "a report on top surgery in transgender and nonbinary adolescents and a related editorial," which may refer to two articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association's pediatrics journal that UCSF provided in the production.

"I thought this was not standard of care until the age of legal majority because of issues of regret and potential physician legal liability, and that puberty blocking therapy to prevent this sort of thing was the standard of care. Am I mistaken?" the UChicago person asked.

No 8-year-old with fragile bones, but 9-year-old on blockers not mentioned

Deutsch told colleagues Oct. 2 they no longer needed signoff from a mental health professional before performing surgeries under the changes in SoC 8 – Levine's pressure had prompted the removal of age minimums – and "any qualified provider," such as the "treating surgeon," could now provide the letter justifying surgery.

She said UCSF's new social worker will no longer focus on "formal gender dysphoria assessments and letter writing."

Several questions from the Times 10 days later, for a forthcoming story on puberty blockers in trans adolescents that includes "some information related to the big N.I.H. multi-site study on blockers and hormone treatment," prompted scrambling between UCSF and CHLA.

The NIH had awarded "nearly $8 million to examine the effects of blockers and sex hormones" based on a 2014 proposal – apparently referring to Olson-Kennedy's study – yet "the investigators have yet to report on key outcomes of treatment," reporters Christina Jewett and Megan Twohey wrote.

They asked about a child in the study "who started blockers at age 8, developed 'significant osteopenia,' [a milder former of osteoporosis] and switched to hormone treatment at 11 'to support bone health,'" citing investigator reports to NIH. The reporters also questioned why blockers' effects on mental health and bones hadn't yet been reported.

CHLA told Rosenthal:"You need to correct the information about your participant," and after securing the "2019 study update," he responded that the youngest participant was "9 years, 3 months" and did not develop osteopenia. The participants who had already been on blockers "were significantly older" than 8 when they started blockers.

He quoted from the 2019 update, which said the youngest among 311 cross-sex hormone participants was 11 years old and had started them "to support bone health due to significant osteopenia" but was not treated with blockers at age 8.

CHLA didn't share Rosenthal's extended comments with the Times reporters. "There is no such participant in our study" who started blockers at 8 and switched to hormones at 11 for bone health, CHLA said, using the quote Rosenthal wrote.

DCNF reporter Rachel Page's Nov. 10 email to UCSF, which mentioned a forthcoming documentary on "adults" including detransitioners who underwent hormonal and surgical transitions and asked for a meeting with UCSF, prompted less concern.

An assistant professor in the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry asked Rosenthal and Deutsch if DCNF might try to "ambush any of our providers," and a senior PR official promised to alert strategic communications "to see if other steps should be taken."