'Identity medicine' warrants investigation, say groups

Some doctors in the U.S. are actually prescribing hormones and puberty blockers and performing mutilation surgeries for children who want to be the opposite sex. In late July, OneNewsNow reported on a letter from a medical coalition led by the American College of Pediatricians to U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, asking that Dr. Adams look into that practice.

Now another group – The Kelsey Coalition – is petitioning Adams to delve into the matter and make recommendations before the harm goes further. California endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw, who is with The Kelsey Coalition, tells OneNewsNow it's bad enough that the parents are falsely buying into it.

"The problem is growing more and more," he laments, "and I think another aspect of this is they're pushing this in the schools so that kids are led to believe they may be born with a different gender in their head compared to what's in their body."

Resulting in children getting the notion that it's okay to be the opposite gender – a mindset they tend to grow out of in their upper teen years.

"[It's very harmful] starting kids on puberty-blocking medications, which are very dangerous, [and] cross-sex hormones before they have any idea what their body is really like," Laidlaw adds, "and [before they] have an opportunity to have counseling or looking into some kind of underlying psychological problems or abuse …."

The Kelsey Coalition argues that the treatments and procedures of "identity medicine" are being done without one long-term study backing their safety or efficacy. Yet "gender confirmation surgeries," as they're known, jumped more than 150 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to a report by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.