On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the openly transgender Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine. Levine directed nursing homes to admit COVID-19-positive patients. Levine has also openly supported experimental transgender drugs for gender-confused children.
The Senate confirmed Levine, 52 to 48. Every single Democrat voted for the transgender nominee, while every Republican except Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted against him.
LGBT activists celebrated Levine’s confirmation.
“At a time when hateful politicians are weaponizing trans lives for their own perceived political gain, Dr. Levine’s confirmation lends focus to the contributions trans people make to our nation and deflates absurd arguments calling for their exclusion,” Mayor Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, said in a statement. “[Levine’s] experience leading the health department in Pennsylvania will serve our country well and [Levine’s] unique perspective regarding healthcare for trans people will be invaluable.”
Levine, who has not revealed whether or not he underwent transgender hormone “treatments” or surgery to confirm his female identity, has given lectures on how to perform sex changes on children since at least 2012, The National Pulse reported. In 2014, Levine argued that adults should give children latitude to choose their genders. He coached adults, “try not to force them one way or [the] other.”
Biden Taps Transgender Health Official With Horrifying COVID-19 Nursing Home Record
In 2017, Levine recommended cross-sex hormones for children in their mid-teens. According to a video of his speech obtained by The National Pulse, Levine warned about the dangers of going through “the wrong puberty” and encouraged hormones to prevent the natural process of adolescent development.
Research shows that there are significant risks with sex reassignment surgery, including heart conditions, increased cancer risk, and loss of bone density.
Some endocrinologists have warned about the negative effects of “puberty-blockers” and cross-sex hormones.
“I call it a development blocker — it’s actually causing a disease,” Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an independent private practice endocrinologist in Rocklin, Calif. who consults with Sutter Roseville Medical Center, told PJ Media. The disease in question is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. It occurs when the brain fails to send the right signal to the gonads to make the hormones necessary for development.
There is no evidence that transgender surgery improves the mental health outcomes of gender dysphoric people. Men and women who formerly identified as transgender and underwent surgery have grown to reject transgender identity and lament the damage they did to their own bodies.
Last year, Britain’s High Court ruled that children under age 16 lack the ability to consent to “puberty-blocking” drugs and cross-sex hormones that have irreversible life-long effects. Children who undergo such “treatments” often persist in transgender identity and lose their ability to have children later in life, so some refer to cross-sex hormones and “puberty blockers” as “chemical castration.”
Many states are considering laws that would prevent doctors from prescribing these experimental treatments for minors. However, it seems extremely likely Biden and the Democrats in Congress will further these dangerous treatments in legislation and regulations connected to the Equality Act.
By nominating Levine for a key HHS post, Biden has sent a dangerous message about transgenderism in medicine. Medicine, of all fields, should follow the science of biological sex over unclear notions of transgender identity. After all, Levine himself acknowledged that the causes of gender identity — which he defined as “who you feel inside” — remain unclear.
Biden, Levine, and the rest of the transgender establishment are consciously muddying the waters of well-established biological fact. This carries significant consequences for the field of medicine — and it bodes ill for gender-confused children.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
