First, Do No Harm

PITT Parents,

Please use the draft letter below as a springboard to write your own version, calling upon insurance companies and medical institutions to stop the harmful practices of removing healthy body parts from minors in the name of what is euphemistically referred to as “gender affirming care.” Speak up, be brave, and be bold. We are the only thing standing between our children and those who stand to profit from their destruction.

In recent news, Kaiser Permanente announced they will stop providing gender-affirming surgeries for minors releasing this statement: “After significant deliberation and consultation with internal and external experts including our physicians, we’ve made the difficult decision to pause surgical treatment for patients under the age of 19 in our hospitals and surgical centers,” the nonprofit health care system said in a statement Wednesday.”

One of the biggest health care providers in the U.S. has finally come around to understand the implications of what they are doing. Whether it’s because of the directives of the new administration, the release of recent studies (Cass Review) or because they have developed a conscience (most unlikely), now is the time to reach out to others and warn them. Gender affirming care is not health care - it the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of confused, captured and mentally ill children and young adults. And it must stop.

Draft letter…….

Dear Kaiser Permanente et al,

Immediately Cease the Irreversible Harm You Are Inflicting On Our Children!

I am writing as a member, a parent, and as a concerned citizen, to express profound alarm over your corporation’s practice of performing irreversible procedures on otherwise healthy minors, while your in-house therapists label concerned mothers and fathers as “toxic” for exercising basic parental judgment, often encouraging our children to estrange themselves from loving, protective parents in order to pursue ideologically driven medical destruction without parental advocacy. Your policies betray medicine’s first duty: primum non nocere—first, do no harm!

You have become one of the leading organizations to remove healthy reproductive organs from children who lack adult judgment. No amount of euphemistic language—“gender‑affirming,” “top surgery,” “care pathways”—hides the truth that you have amputated healthy reproductive organs from children for profit. While you have recently promised to “pause” these procedures for individuals under the age of 19 by the end of August, you continue to prescribe puberty blockers that stunt bone density, and administer cross‑sex hormones that permanently sterilize kids who cannot legally buy cough syrup. These procedures are irreversible; the remorse statistics you bury in footnotes do not erase the regret these children will feel when adulthood clarifies what adolescence could not.

You have also weaponized mental‑health professionals to sever families that do not affirm this medical mayhem. Your therapists have told our children that their parents are “unsafe,” “toxic,” and “controlling” merely because we’ve asked for a second opinion and more time to educate ourselves or permit our children to grow into themselves. They coach our children to go “no contact” with the very parents who have loved, fed, and sheltered them from birth for simply asking questions or expressing concerns. They have weaponized therapy to emotionally blackmail and gaslight frightened parents into compliance, or risk losing their children altogether—if not by means of the misrepresented and discredited suicide statistics, by risk of estrangement. That is overt manipulation masquerading as therapy, and it is an ethical disgrace.

You continue to ignore emerging evidence and global medical consensus shifts. Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. have sharply curtailed or paused these interventions on minors after systematic reviews found weak evidence of benefit and significant risk of harm.Your continued acceleration of surgeries and hormone regimens—chasing revenue while other nations pull the emergency brake—suggests profit, not patient welfare, has been the primary drive of your decisions.

You are courting massive legal and financial liability. Families are coordinating with one other, medical‑ethics attorneys, and whistle‑blowing clinicians to pursue every civil remedy available. As today’s “patients” realize they were fast‑tracked to irreversible procedures without mature informed consent, they will sue. When discovery reveals communications prioritizing market share or ideological conformity over medical prudence, juries will punish. Your current profits will pale beside those judgments!

But you still have a choice. Immediately:

1. Suspend all irreversible medical interventions on minors except in the clearest cases of congenital anomaly or life‑threatening pathology, including puberty blockers and hormones.

2. Establish independent, parent‑inclusive ethics panels—free of financial or ideological conflicts—to review each pediatric case with parental involvement.

3. Retrain or replace therapists who coach children to cut off loving, concerned families.

4. Commit to transparent, long‑term outcome tracking and publish all data, good or bad.

Following are summaries and links to the systematic reviews and official assessments from Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom regarding medical interventions for minors with gender dysphoria:

Sweden:

Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (SBU) – 2022

In 2022, the Swedish SBU conducted a comprehensive systematic review on hormone treatments for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria. The review concluded that the evidence supporting the efficacy and safety of such treatments is of low quality. Specifically, it found a lack of reliable data on the psychosocial effects of hormone therapy in this population. Consequently, the SBU recommended that these treatments be considered experimental and only provided within the context of clinical research.

Reference:

https://www.sbu.se/en/publications/sbu-assesses/hormone-treatment-of-children-and-adolescents-with-gender-dysphoria/

Finland:

Council for Choices in Health Care in Finland (COHERE Finland) – 2020

COHERE Finland published guidelines in 2020 emphasizing a cautious approach to treating minors with gender dysphoria. The guidelines recommend prioritizing psychological interventions over medical treatments, such as hormone therapy or surgical procedures. Medical interventions are advised only in exceptional cases and should be based on thorough individual assessments.

Reference:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11930-023-00358-x

United Kingdom:

The Cass Review – 2022

Commissioned by NHS England, the Cass Review, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, conducted an independent assessment of gender identity services for children and young people. The review highlighted that existing clinical guidelines are not sufficiently evidence-based and that the quality of evidence supporting medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is poor. It recommended a more holistic and individualized approach to care, emphasizing psychological support and cautioning against the routine use of medical treatments in minors.

Reference:

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143642oe_/https://cass.independent-review.uk/

These reviews underscore the importance of evidence-based practices and caution in the medical treatment of minors with gender dysphoria.

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If you refuse to protect our children from this mayhem, please understand that parents like me will not be silenced, and we will not forget. We will withdraw our business, rally our communities, lobby legislators, and expose your practices in every forum—from statehouses to shareholder meetings—until this medicalized barbarism ends entirely!

I urge you to remember why the public once trusted your white coats: physicians were guardians, not activists, and certainly not sales teams for irreversible surgeries and off-label use of pharmaceutical drugs for confused teenagers and young adults. Restore that trust. Halt the harm now. Return to the most basic precept of medicine:

First, do no harm!

Sincerely,

One of many deeply concerned but determined parents

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