“My name is Elvira Syed, and I lost my 17-year-old daughter, Ilene, to gender ideology and the system that failed her at every step.”
Elvira shared her heartbreaking story at a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing examining the dangers of “gender affirming care,” sitting alongside several other individuals who were also victimized by radical gender ideology in the medical community. The hearing was conducted in response to a plethora of studies, reports, and credible news stories that suggested the medical community has engaged in serious malpractice and abuse to perpetuate a political agenda on confused minors and their concerned parents.
“Our speakers today include medical ethicists, physicians, whistleblowers, parents, and survivors. We have Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, progressives, even feminists, who are concerned about a profit-seeking industry pushing to medicalize and in some cases sterilize gender dysphoric minors at younger and younger ages,” FTC Senior Policy Advisor Jon Schweppe explained.
The hearing began with a panel of three detransitioners and two parents sharing the details of their experience with so-called “gender affirming care.” Mother Elvira Sayed testified to the tragic story of this “care” leading to her daughter’s suicide. Another parent, Gareth Amaya Price, tearfully recalled that when he told a pediatrician he did not want to take his son to a gender clinic, the doctor asked him whether he would like a dead son or a living daughter.
Two of the detransitioners on the panel, Kayla Lovdahl and Claire Abernathy, both received double mastectomies mere months after initially expressing gender confusion. Claire was 14. Kayla was 13. They have both suffered severe complications in the years following those surgeries. Kayla shared a glimpse of what the repercussions of “gender affirming care” can look like:
“I’m nearing eight years post-op this September. As you can probably all tell, my voice is permanently lowered from the testosterone I took from 12 to 17. I do have a slight Adam’s apple. I can’t raise my voice for long periods of time. I can’t scream if I’m in danger. I still grow facial hair. I have atrophy and urinary issues. 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. Today, I live with chronic joint pain. I’m only 20. At no point along the way was I offered an off-ramp. I didn’t even know what detransition was until I was almost 18 and began to taper myself off the hormones, scared to go back to the doctors.”
Every single individual on the panel recalled the same startling detail: none of them were warned about the potential side effects in addition to potential fertility issues down the road. Make no mistake – this is medical malpractice. “Gender affirming care” practitioners must be held accountable.
Unfortunately, this malpractice is broader than the medical community. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson explained the complicity of the Biden administration in perpetuating this twisted political agenda:
Just over a year ago, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration had pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH to remove age minimum requirements for cross-sex hormones and other sex change surgeries from their forthcoming guidelines on the care of transgender youth. Why did the Biden administration object to age minimum requirements? According to emails provided to the New York Times and the state of Alabama in its suit against the Biden administration, the Biden health agencies worried that including minimum age requirements in the guidelines would “result in devastating legislation for trans care.” The Biden administration’s concern was not that age minimum requirements were unscientific, unreasonable, or unhelpful to doctors, therapists, parents and children experiencing gender dysphoria. Science was beside the point.
Instead, their concern was political. They worried that age minimum requirements gave too much ammunition to critics of gender-affirming care. The Biden administration didn’t care about the parents and kids who might’ve relied on those requirements when deciding whether to consent to expensive hormone treatments and sex change surgeries. They didn’t care about the parents and kids who might’ve been spared a lifetime of pain and regret if their doctors, therapists and surgeons had observed those requirements. They cared about politics; they didn’t care about people.
Following the hearing, the FTC opened a 60-day public comment period to hear from individuals who have been victimized by “gender affirming care.” Ferguson explained that the FTC’s primary duty is “to protect vulnerable people from deceptive claims about health and cures.” The public comments will help determine if certain organizations, practitioners, and clinics have engaged in deceptive trade acts or practices.
The FTC’s investigation goes hand-in-hand with several others currently being conducted by the federal government. This week, the DOJ subpoenaed 20 medical centers and doctors over their involvement “in performing transgender medical procedures on children,” which was outlawed by an executive order earlier this year.
“Every young boy and girl, every concerned parent and guardian, has the right to be informed of all the material information about the risks of these procedures. I promise that our agency will do everything in its power to achieve that end,” Ferguson concluded.
