Medical Educators Are Becoming Lobbyists

We’ve warned patients and policymakers that medical schools are wading into divisive policy debates. According to a recent report, 75% of medical schools advocate for woke “policies and/or legislation at a local, state, or federal level.” Now we have details on which policies, exactly, some of these medical schools are focused on.

A growing number of medical educators are testifying against policies that wisely restrict so-called “gender-affirming care” for children. These policies try to protect vulnerable and young children from profoundly life-altering and largely irreversible surgeries and treatments. Yet this common-sense approach is unacceptable for the ideologues who run virtually every medical school, which explains why so many medical educators are trying to stop these policies.

For instance, after Alabama restricted this potentially harmful medical practice, no fewer than 8 medical educators filed a legal brief seeking to reinstate care that could harm children. Six of the signers came from the Yale School of Medicine. Similarly, when Arkansas passed a bill protecting children, a professor of pediatrics from the Duke University School of Medicine testified in a trial, seeking to overturn the state’s policy.

Plenty of other medical educators are wading into the fray. One from the UPenn Perelman School of Medicine has publicly opposed the pro-protecting-children policies that six states and counting have introduced. So has a professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

The list goes on, and in each case, these educators attempt to cite evidence to support their position. Yet as scholars like Leor Sapir have shown, the medical literature presents a much less favorable and more complicated conclusion. In fact, the evidence against so-called “gender-affirming care” is so strong that many European countries, including the United Kingdom, are moving away from it.

You won’t hear these facts from the American medical schools that are pushing for extreme policies. Instead, they’re turning their professors and educators into full-time political activists and lobbyists. They should spend more time teaching medical students to care for patients – and less time promoting harmful policies that could hurt patients, especially vulnerable children.