The Gender-Affirming Care Double Standard

In medical terms, is one in 1,000 a rare event? The answer, it turns out, is political.

When it comes to Type-2 diabetes, the health-care establishment appears to agree that the prevalence of 1.04 cases per 1,000 among 15- to 19-year-olds is cause for alarm. Diabetes Care, the flagship journal of the American Diabetes Association, noted in 2009 an “increasing and alarming incidence of type 2 diabetes in adolescent populations.” By 2023 that journal referred to it as “an awakening epidemic.” That same year, another journal echoed the sentiment, calling pediatric Type-2 diabetes an “urgent challenge.”

While a one-in-1,000 event is an “epidemic” and “urgent challenge” when it comes to Type-2 diabetes, however, it’s apparently nothing of the kind when it comes to so-called gender-affirming care for minors. A newly published study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics estimates that 1.40 of every 1,000 adolescents born female have received a prescription for cross-sex hormones by the time they turn 18. The study therefore concludes that, from 2018 through 2022, “receipt of puberty blockers and hormones was rare.”

Read more in City Journal.