America’s largest children’s hospital has announced plans to halt sex reassignment treatment for children as the deadline to comply with a new Texas law approaches and damaging whistleblower claims emerge.
Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) CEO Mark Wallace wrote in an internal memo from the hospital on Wednesday that it would stop prescribing hormones to minors and help them get gender-affirming care, famously, across state lines.
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the Houston-based facility, saying puberty blockers and other “medical experiments” on transgender people violated state rules.
A whistleblower claims the hospital rushed transgender children onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health care. They also claimed that parents were ‘afraid’ of having their children undergo treatment.
The move to end the transgender treatment program follows the passage of a law by Texas Republicans banning sex reassignment treatments for most minors, which is expected to take effect in September.
“In the coming months, Texas Children’s will adjust the gender-affirming care we provide to comply with the new law,” Wallace wrote in an email shared by the Manhattan Institute think tank.
Christopher Rufo shared the hospital’s letter about stopping trans care on social media
Mark Wallace (left), CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital, faces 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 withdrawal of hormone therapies or seek appropriate care outside of Texas.”
Wallace said ending care for transgender youth was “painful” and “immensely heartbreaking.” His staff would instead “provide psychosocial support and any kind of care that is possible within the limits of the law.”
“I understand there are many viewpoints and opinions on this issue, but I want to remind everyone that our mission is to create a healthier future for all children,” he added.
DailyMail.com asked TCH spokespersons to confirm the details of the hospital’s internal memo, but they declined to address the matter directly.
The massive hospital received nearly 5 million patient visits by 2022, but staffers declined to answer questions about how many trans minors received drugs or surgical procedures through the clinics.
Texas senators last week voted in favor of a bill to ban transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies, and Governor Gregg Abbot, a Republican, says he plans to sign it into law.
Christopher Rufo, the right-wing intellectual who led the Manhattan Institute’s investigation into TCH, has published damaging testimony from two whistleblowers in recent days about alleged transgender procedures at the hospital.
The first insider provided medical records showing TCH staff had been giving sex reassignment treatments to children in recent months, even after officials said they stopped doing so in March 2022.
The second whistleblower, whose allegations were also published Wednesday, said TCH doctors rushed trans children onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health care.
“In our hospitals, they have completely woken up and changed people’s gender to what they identify rather than their biological sex,” the latest whistleblower said, according to a transcript published Wednesday.
Texas Children’s Hospital (pictured) has been providing transgender treatments to children despite promising to end the practice, it is alleged
Sex reassignment treatments for teens have become a hot button issue. Pictured: A young detransitioner reveals the breast removal scars she regretted
The unnamed medical professional painted a bleak picture of care at TCH, with ideologically driven doctors rushing kids on cocktails of sex reassignment drugs while racking up bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“Transgender medicine is hugely lucrative,” the hospital insider said.
“It’s about $70,000 to $80,000 dollars per kid if they go through with the whole thing — all the pharmacologic drugs, all these multimillion-dollar companies.”
As the whistleblower tells it, children with depression, autism, other mental health problems and a history of distressed suicide attempts cling to the idea that they were “born in the wrong body.”
They are exposed to transgender ideology on Reddit.com and other sites, where they are “coached on exactly what to say” in order to meet transgender medical criteria and allow doctors to perform gender reassignments, it is claimed.
“They’re looking for confirmation,” the whistleblower said. “They seek validation and approval from the adults in their lives. They’re insecure.’
TCH doctors were among the pro-trans “activists” who dominate the medical field today, readily affirming that every child meets the criteria without properly weighing other mental health issues, the insider claimed.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says ‘unhinged activists’ are behind a medical system too eager to give confused kids puberty blockers
“I think they believe they are making their mark on history and they want to play God,” the whistleblower said.
“Everyone is on their side: the media is on their side, big tech is on their side. And everyone applauds these providers who do this.’
The whistleblower gave examples of parents being “shut down” by doctors if they didn’t immediately confirm a child’s new gender identity. Some were told their child was at risk of suicide, it was alleged.
‘They are afraid to report this to Child Protection,’ says the whistleblower.
“They are intimidated by these doctors who are on their child’s side and have a lot of power.”
The whistleblower said gender changes make adolescent patients look “outwardly happy,” but questioned whether pediatric health authorities were right to push through a model of confirmation-on-demand care.
“They’ll wake up in 10 years and find out they’re infertile, they can’t have kids, their sexuality is completely dysfunctional,” the insider said.
Whistleblower documents released by the Manhattan Institute (pictured) reportedly show Texas Children’s Hospital is continuing to provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to young gender dysphoric patients, including administering implantable puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Pictured: Documents purportedly from the hospital show appointments with minors as young as 13 who have been booked for appointments related to transgender treatment
Proponents of gender-affirming care say it is a necessary treatment for suicide-prone minors. Critics say children are too young to opt for irreversible gender reassignment treatments, and often just need mental health care instead.
A TCH spokeswoman told DailyMail.com that doctors had provided “high quality care to all patients … within the limits of the law.” The hospital did not immediately provide details about Wallace’s statement.
TCH said last March it had stopped gender-affirming therapies after Gov. Gregg Abbott, a Republican, ordered the state’s Child Welfare Service to investigate reports of gender-affirming child care as “child abuse.”
Rufo says TCH “secretly restarted its child sex reassignment program three days later.”
He released documents from a first unnamed whistleblower showing that TCH doctors provided gender procedures to children within days of the hospital’s decision, and continued to do so through 2022 and into 2023.
They appear to be photographs of a hospital computer screen displaying TCH’s medical records. The images have been edited to remove the names of the young patients, as medical records are confidential.
Texas Attorney General Paxton, a Republican, last week launched an investigation into what he called transgender “scientific experiments” at TCH over alleged “mutilating and irreversible sex reassignment procedures.”
The TCH scandal highlights how sex reassignment treatments for children have become a front line in America’s culture wars, and how hospitals providing such care in red states are increasingly operating in a gray area.