How the Gender Industry Suppressed Evidence of Harm: Leo Sapir

🔵 Try Epoch Times now: https://ept.ms/3Uu1JA5

This is the 30 minute TV version of Jan Jekielek’s interview with Leor Sapir. The longer-form version was released on Epoch TV on January 18, 2025.

🔴 Watch the extended version of this episode: https://ept.ms/Y0118LeorSapir

“The UK has now banned puberty blockers—probably will ban cross-sex hormones too, is my prediction, in the next few years,” said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

He has been following the massive increase in children identifying as transgender and undergoing what’s known as “gender-affirming care” treatment—from puberty blockers to double mastectomies.

“WPATH [The World Professional Association for Transgender Health] commissioned systematic evidence reviews as part of the process of developing [Standards of Care Version 8]. When it found out that the evidence reviews, specifically for minors, were unimpressive and did not get them the results that they wanted—that would support their medical approach, they suppressed them. They basically instructed the researchers at Johns Hopkins University who were doing these systematic reviews to not publish them,” said Sapir. “Any way you look at it, WPATH greatly deviated from how responsible, trustworthy medical guidelines are supposed to be developed.”

“HHS needs to deprogram itself from gender ideology. It needs to get rid of all the ideological language, all the directives the NIH for example, needs to stop pumping money, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into research whose only purpose is to promote these interventions, I actually think that instead of cutting off, instead of shutting off the valve, NIH should reorient itself and devote money to studying the harms which are not studied. Nobody’s studying harms because the gender clinicians doing the research don’t want to know they’re only studying benefits, and then they’re spinning the results of their studies. We need evidence on detransition and regret, which are real and growing phenomena.”

“We need the federal government to use its powers to investigate how the American medical profession went off track here and what can be done to restore us to a place of evidence based ethical medicine.”

CHAPTER TITLES
0:00:00 – Introduction to the Topic
0:01:02 – Luo Sapir’s Background and Expertise
0:04:20 – Lack of Consensus Among Medical Associations
0:07:41 – The Alabama Case and WPATH’s Suppressed Evidence
0:15:33 – Europe’s Systematic Approach to Evidence Review
0:18:17 – Explanation of Gender Affirming Care Approach
0:20:00 – Recommendations for the Incoming Administration

Leor Sapir about the absence of credible evidence in favor of transitioning: “These interventions, including social transition in school, are said to be based on credible science, credible research over the years, and there just isn’t that kind of evidence to support it. And I found it fascinating that you have this, you know, consensus has formed around these types of interventions, psychological as well as physical. In the absence of any credible evidence, school personnel and advocacy organizations believe, sometimes sincerely, that they are just following the best practices as announced by the medical community.”

“Last year, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons broke with the consensus and said we recognize that there’s really no good evidence for this in minors.”

Sapir explains how a pseudo consensus on transitioning developed: “If you actually look at how these treatments ascended to the level of a consensus among medical associations, first of all, these are professional trade unions. It’s important to recognize that they exist to protect doctors and promote the interests of doctors… The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, about a decade ago, convened a special working sub group on LGBTQ health and appointed, I think it was six clinicians to that subgroup who were all kind of ideologically on board with gender transition treatments for kids, and the rest of the leadership of the AAP deferred to their colleagues in the specialized Subcommittee on the assumption that they know what they’re talking about.”

Why age minimums were eliminated for transitioning drugs and surgeries: “They said, we’re now eliminating all age minimums for medical interventions for kids, with the exception of phalloplasty, right? So all surgeries, all hormones, puberty blockers, all none of that have any age minimums from now on. And it turns out that they did that, not for any clinical reason or because of evidence, but they did that under pressure from Dr Rachel Levin, who was the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Biden administration.”

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