EXCLUSIVE – Efforts to treat gender dysphoria among minors should be utilized with mental health counseling and compassionate care, not with hormone blockers and "mutilating surgeries" that can potentially have long-term and irreversible ramifications, said Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Adm. Brian Christine.
Christine, a urologist who oversees public health offices and programs within HHS and leads the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, came out in support of the Trump administration's Tuesday announcement of a new rule that will bar Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, from funding puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
"Gender dysphoria is certainly a real condition. There are some children who have gender dysphoria, some minors who have that," Christine told Fox News Digital. "Now, in the past, it's been an incredibly small percentage. And what we've seen is this has really turned into a social contagion. In other words, where there's so many more kids being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, that's not really explained by simple epidemiology."
What medical professionals know, Christine said, is that the vast majority of minors who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria will move beyond it if they are provided with competent, compassionate counseling.
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"What you don't want to do is carry out treatments… we refer to them as sex-rejecting procedures, where you're using castrating chemicals or cross-sex hormones or mutilating surgeries to permanently change their bodies and give them potentially life-long complications that can happen," he said.
The rule being implemented by the Trump administration means Medicaid and CHIP will no longer financially support pediatric gender treatments. It doesn't ban the procedures.
"By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we're following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish," Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a Tuesday statement.
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So far, the science doesn't support "sex-rejecting" procedures on children, Christine said.
"What does the science support? Mental health care, compassionate counseling," he said.
In a Tuesday Truth Social post, President Donald Trump called gender transition surgeries and the providing of hormones for minors "barbaric."
"We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies," he wrote.
In opposition to many on the left, Christine uses the term "corrective care" to differentiate between helping minors move past gender dysphoria and the language used by critics who support medical treatments.
"The term from the left is gender-affirming care. I can tell you that mutilating surgeries and castrating chemicals affirm nothing," he said. "Absolutely not. They are harmful."
Twenty-seven states have enacted restrictions on "gender-affirming care" for minors, according to KFF, a health policy group.
According to the rule, which takes effect on Oct. 13, children being treated with hormone blockers and other drugs will be transitioned off instead of being forced to quit cold turkey, Christine said. The federal funding will be available for a tapering off period of six months for children currently on hormone therapy, CMS said.
Historically, gender dysphoria has involved a very small percentage of adult males, said Christine, who called it a "true diagnosis" that has been hijacked for ideological purposes.
"Now you have dramatic numbers of minors, and more importantly, young girls, when you virtually never saw that in the past. Again, adult men, that's been the history," he said.
"What you've seen is this transition, this social contagion, and I believe individuals who are complete ideologues who follow the gender ideology who say little boys can be little girls and little girls can be little boys and there's no differences between the sexes," he added. "That's completely wrong."