Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw tore into a Democrat witness Wednesday over her inability to cite a medical study that states the benefits of transgender surgeries for minors.
Crenshaw’s comments came during a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing when he questioned Yale School of Medicine assistant professor Meredithe McNamara about his proposal to withdraw funding from certain hospitals that provide surgeries, puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to transgender minors.
“You’ve said that we cherry-picked data. How do you mean that?” Crenshaw asked McNamara.
“So, it is very unscientific and flawed to pick a single study or a single statistic and discuss it in isolation,” she responded. “Medical experts are able to talk about all of the evidence as a whole.”
“Totally agree,” the Texas congressman told McNamara. “It’s good to look at systematic reviews, right? That’s the gold standard of evidence when you’re trying to understand whether something works or it doesn’t. The British Journal of Medicine looked at 61 systematic reviews with the conclusion that, quote, ‘There is great uncertainty about the effects of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries in young people.’ The Journal of the Endocrine Society came up with the same conclusion, even the American Academy of Pediatrics. They all cite the lack of evidence.”
“If you’re doing a therapy, and it’s, you know, temporary, fine, whatever, maybe let’s try it and see if it works,” he continued. “But when you’re talking about permanent physiological changes, do you not agree, just from an ethical standpoint, that you might want extremely strong evidence of the benefits? There’s no systematic review that states that there’s strong evidence of benefits.”
“Sir, are you aware of how the quality evidence grading system works and how it’s applied?” McNamara shot back.
Telling her that he and his team “read through it,” Crenshaw made clear to McNamara that it was his reasoning for “citing these journals.”
“Which journal says something different? We should have that debate. Tell me a journal that has done systematic reviews that cites different evidence, that cites strong evidence of benefits for these therapies,” he said.
McNamara responded, “The standards of care were developed based on extensive—”
“You’re not telling me any study, don’t say ‘standards of care,'” Crenshaw interjected. “Tell me one.”
“So, um, the standards of care,” McNamara said.
“The standards of care,” Crenshaw questioned. “That’s not a journal, that’s not a study. That’s not an organization. That’s not an institution. You’re just saying words. Name one study.”
McNamara failed to name a specific study prior to Crenshaw’s time expiring.
The Children’s Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act is a bill that must be reauthorized every five years, Crenshaw’s office noted earlier this month. The bill provides funds to train pediatric medical residents at 59 hospitals nationwide. Historically, it has helped train almost half of the nation’s general pediatric residents.
This year, Crenshaw introduced the legislation with a stipulation that the program funding be banned from going to children’s hospitals that offer “gender affirming care” to minors.
“There is no other human rights atrocity in America that is so quickly gaining momentum and validation within the very institutions that should know better,” Crenshaw said when introducing the legislation. “One of these institutions is children’s hospitals. In a place where ‘do no harm’ is the ultimate guiding principle, there is no excuse to ever perform these treatments that permanently alter a child’s physiology. From now on, we will not allow a dime of this taxpayer-funded program to go toward children’s hospitals that cater to the harmful pseudoscience that is ‘gender affirming care.'”