America’s biggest children’s hospital has announced plans to halt its gender reassignment treatment for children as the deadline to comply with a new Texas law looms and damaging claims from whistleblowers emerge.
Mark Wallace, CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), on Wednesday wrote in an internal hospital memo that it would stop prescribing hormones to minors and help them get gender-affirming care, as it is known, across state lines.
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the Houston-based facility, saying puberty blockers and other trans ‘medical experiments’ violated state rules.
A whistleblower claims the hospital were rushing transgender kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support. They also alleged that parents were ‘scared’ into allowing their children to have treatment.
The move to end the transgender treatment program follows Texas Republicans passing a law banning gender reassignment treatments for most minors, which is set to take effect in September.
‘Over the next few months, Texas Children’s will modify the gender-affirming care we offer to comply with the new law,’ Wallace wrote in an email that was shared by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank.
Christopher Rufo shared the hospital’s letter about ending trans care on social media
Mark Wallace (left), CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital, has been under pressure from Christopher Rufo, the right-wing intellectual who led the Manhattan Institute’s research into trans care at his hospital
‘We will work with patients and their families to manage the discontinuation of hormone therapies or source appropriate care outside of Texas.’
Wallace said ending care for transgender youth was ‘painful’ and ‘immensely heart-wrenching.’ His staff would instead offer ‘psychosocial support and any form of care we can within the bounds of the law.’
‘I understand that there are many viewpoints and opinions related to this matter, but I want to remind everyone that our mission is to create a healthier future for all children,’ he added.
DailyMail.com asked TCH spokespeople to confirm the details of the internal hospital memo, but they refused to directly address the issue.
The massive hospital received nearly 5 million patient visits in 2022, but staffers declined to answer questions about how many trans minors obtained drugs or surgical procedures through its clinics.
Texas senators last week voted for a bill to block transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies, and Gov Gregg Abbot, a Republican, says he plans to sign it into law.
Christopher Rufo, the right-wing intellectual who led the Manhattan Institute’s research into TCH, has in recent days published damaging testimonies from two whistleblowers about alleged transgender procedures at the hospital.
The first insider provided medical records showing TCH staff had been providing sex-change treatments to kids in recent months, even after officials said they had stopped doing so in March 2022.
The second whistleblower, whose allegations were also published on Wednesday, said TCH doctors were rushing trans kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support.
‘In our hospitals, they have completely gone full-blown woke and changed people’s sex to whatever they identify as instead of their biological sex,’ the latest whistleblower said, according to a transcript published on Wednesday.
Texas Children’s Hospital (pictured) has been providing transgender treatments to children despite promising to stop the practice, it is alleged
Sex reassignment treatments for teens have become a hot-button issue. Pictured: a young detransitioner bares the breast-removal scars she came to regret
The unnamed medical professional painted a bleak picture of care at TCH, with ideologically-driven doctors rushing children onto cocktails of sex reassignment drugs while racking up bills of tens of thousands of dollars.
‘Transgender medicine is hugely lucrative,’ said the hospital insider.
‘It’s like $70,000 to $80,000 dollars per kid if they go through with the whole thing — all the pharmacology drugs, all these companies that are making millions of dollars.’
The way the whistleblower tells it, children with depression, autism, other mental health issues and histories of anguished suicide bids latch onto the idea that they’ve been ‘born in the wrong body’.
They’re exposed to transgender ideology on Reddit.com and other sites, where they’re ‘coached on exactly what to say’ to meet the trans medical criteria and let doctors greenlight sex-reassignments, it is claimed.
‘They’re looking for affirmation,’ the whistleblower said. ‘They’re seeking the validation and approval of the adults in their lives. They’re insecure.’
TCH doctors were among the pro-trans ‘activists’ who nowadays dominate the medical field, and who readily affirm any child that fits the criteria without properly weighing any other mental health problems, the insider claimed.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says ‘unhinged activists’ are behind a medical system that’s too eager to get confused kids onto puberty blockers
‘I think they believe that they’re making their mark on history, and they’re wanting to play God,’ the whistleblower said.
‘Everyone’s on their side: the media is on their side, big tech is on their side. And everyone is applauding these providers who do this.’
The whistleblower gave examples of parents of being ‘shut down’ by doctors if they did not immediately affirm a child’s new gender identity. Some were told their child was at risk of killing themselves, it was claimed.
‘They’re scared of being reported to Child Protective Services,’ the whistleblower said.
‘They’re intimidated by these doctors that are on the side of their kid and have a lot of power.’
The whistleblower said sex-reassignments leave adolescent patients appearing ‘externally happy,’ but questioned if pediatric health bodies were right to push an affirmation-on-demand model of care.
‘They’re going to wake up in 10 years and discover that they’re infertile, that they can’t have children, that their sexuality is completely dysfunctional,’ said the insider.
Whistleblower documents released by the Manhattan Institute (pictured) purportedly show that Texas Children’s Hospital has continued to provide so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for young gender-dysphoric patients, including the administration of implantable puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
Pictured: Records purportedly from the hospital show appointments with minors as young as 13 who are booked in for appointments relating to transgender treatments
Advocates of gender-affirming care say it is necessary treatment for suicide-prone minors. Critics say kids are too young to opt for irreversible sex change treatments, and often just need mental health counselling instead.
A TCH spokeswoman told DailyMail.com that doctors had provided ‘high-quality care for all patients … within the bounds of the law.’ The hospital did not immediately provide any details about Wallace’s statement.
TCH last March said it had stopped gender-affirming therapies after Gov. Gregg Abbott, a Republican, ordered the state’s child welfare agency to probe reports of gender-confirming care for kids as ‘child abuse’.
Rufo says TCH ‘secretly restarted its child sex-change program three days later.’
He published documents from a first unnamed whistleblower showing TCH doctors provided gender procedures to kids within days of the hospital’s decision, and continued to do so throughout 2022 and into 2023.
They appear to be photos of a hospital computer screen showing TCH medical records. The images have been redacted to remove the names of the young patients, as medical records are confidential.
Texas Attorney General Paxton, a Republican, last week launched a probe into what he called transgender ‘science experiments’ at TCH over its alleged ‘mutilative and irreversible gender transitioning procedures.’
The TCH scandal underscores how sex-reassignment treatments for children have become a frontline in America’s culture wars, and how hospitals providing such care in red states increasingly operate in a gray area.