Biden FTC ignored 'false and deceptive health claims' for youth gender transition: FTC chairman

The Trump administration's Federal Trade Commission is doing its job by treating so-called gender-affirming care for youth the same as products and services that make sweeping health claims, Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in opening a daylong FTC workshop on the subject Wednesday.

"The more vulnerable the population," such as gender-confused youth, the more likely that the population will be targeted with unfair and deceptive trade practices, he said.

Ferguson contrasted the current commission's probe with what he considered the Biden administration's disinterest in scrutinizing the scientific claims for the provision of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and breast and genital surgery for gender-confused youth, when the FTC is explicitly the "federal government's guardian against false and deceptive health claims."

Throughout the prior administration, "science was beside the point" when it came to best practices for gender-confused youth, Ferguson alleged, noting then-Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to remove age minimums from its forthcoming standards of care because those could spur legislation against such treatment.

UCLA researcher Johanna Olson-Kennedy similarly refused to publish National Institutes of Health-funded research on puberty blockers that found no mental health benefits from them because, as she said, those results could spur state legislation against such care, Ferguson noted.

Biden officials "didn't care about the parents and kids" who would have a "lifetime of regret" from irreversible treatments, such as workshop speaker Prisha Mosley, who at 14 was recommended for testosterone injections and "clinically necessary" breast removal after a "brief consultation" with a pediatrician who determined she was really a boy, Ferguson said.

"These are not stories of liberation but of desperation" for youth and parents who were told the problems stemming from sexual abuse and other "personal crisis" would be fixed through gender transitions, he said, despite convincing research from the U.K. that the "gateway drug" of blockers don't improve psychological well-being and no evidence that transition reduces completed suicide, as a transgender lawyer said in Supreme Court oral argument.

"We have brought dozens of enforcement actions against false and misleading health claims," from herbs and spices that purportedly treat cancer to products that supposedly treat COVID-19 and recently "unproven stem cell therapy" targeting the elderly and disabled, Ferguson said.

Refusing to investigate these practices simply because one political party opposes it is the definition of politicization, he said.