Megan Brock and Kate Anderson
- Top gender doctors complained that transgender attendees at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference in 2023 felt unsafe because of “anti-trans activists” and detransitioners at the event, according to emails exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- One of the doctors, Dr. Gina Sequeira, the co-director of the Gender Clinic at Seattle Children’s Hospital, said in an email to colleagues that they need to demand answers from AAP leadership to “get a clearer idea of what is being done internally to ensure our safety at future” conferences.
- “These members have expressed that this decision has made them lose trust in the AAP and question the degree to which the NCE can be a safe space for them in the future,” Sequeira wrote in an email on Oct. 25.
Several gender doctors complained that detransitioners and “anti-trans” activists were allowed to attend an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference and claimed they made attendees feel unsafe, according to a series of emails exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The AAP holds its National Conference and Exhibition (NCE) each year, and in October 2023, the organization allowed the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) in Medicine, which opposes the medical transition of minors, to have a booth in the exhibit hall, prompting outrage from attendees, according to emails obtained through a public records request. Dr. Gina Sequeira, the co-director of the Gender Clinic at Seattle Children’s Hospital, sent an email to colleagues on Oct. 25 claiming that having detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley and gender industry whistleblowers such as Jamie Reed at the conference had made doctors and “LGBTQ-identified” attendees question whether NCE could be a “safe space for them.”
“These members have expressed that this decision has made them lose trust in the AAP and question the degree to which the NCE can be a safe space for them in the future,” Sequeira wrote. “I know we escalated some of these concerns to Mark in our brief meeting on Monday and he provided us with verbal reassurance that something like this wouldn’t happen again, but I think given the severity of what occurred and the degree of harm this decision caused our members, we should request a formal response from leadership to ensure we get a clearer idea of what is being done internally to ensure our safety at future NCEs.”
The emails did not specify which “Mark” Sequeira and her colleagues had spoken to, but Mark Del Monte is the CEO and executive vice president of the AAP. Del Monte did not respond to a request for comment.
Another conference attendee, Dr. Christopher Harris, the medical director at Enanta Pharmaceuticals, also chimed in the email thread and claimed that he and Dr. Brittney Allen, the co-director of the Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health at the University of Wisconsin Madison, “engaged” with Mosley and Reed. Harris said that he attempted to get Reed and Mosley to denounce “anti-trans laws” but that “trying to get them to tell a coherent story was akin to nailing Jello to the wall.”
Harris was listed as the chair of the executive committee of the AAP Section on LGBT Health and Wellness, but the page has since been taken down from the AAP’s website. Allen, who was also on the committee, is one of several defendants in a lawsuit against the AAP over its policy, which claimed that the effects of puberty blockers, such as leuprolide, are “reversible” and that some of the effects of cross-hormone therapy are reversible as well.
Sequeira went on in her email to claim that one “trans-identified” individual had been verbally harassed by members of FAIR’s booth and that many AAP members had told her they were upset that FAIR had been allowed into the conference to begin with, according to the email. She also linked to the Trans Data Library which lists “information about the anti-trans political effort in real time” and encouraged her colleagues to learn more about “the members of the anti-trans movement.”
Monica Harris, the president of FAIR, told the DCNF that the AAP had just recently barred them from attending its 2024 conference in September and that the organization had provided no reason for the denial. She also noted that this was the first FAIR had heard of any complaints regarding alleged improper behavior by its members and wanted the opportunity to discuss it further with the organization.
“We believe in respectful disagreement, even when people are intolerant of our viewpoints or our approach,” Harris said.
The Trans Data Library has a profile on Reed, who exposed the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital for rushing children into getting sex-change surgeries, often without parental consent, and argues that her claims are “unsubstantiated allegations” and “have never been corroborated.” A New York Times investigationpublished in August, however, corroborated many of Reed’s accounts and found that Reed’s experiences offered “a rare glimpse into one of the 100 or so clinics in the United States that have been at the center of an intensifying fight over transgender rights.”
Cole, who began medically transitioning at 13, and Mosley also have profiles on the website. Cole’s profile claims that “critics have noted inconsistencies in descriptions of her treatment” and that she is “a rare example of a transgender person who has expressed regret over her transition.”
Cole testified about her experience in front of Congress in July 2023, saying “I look in the mirror sometimes and I feel like a monster.”
“After my breasts were taken away from me, the tissue was incinerated,” Cole said. “Before I was able to legally drive, I had a huge part of my future womanhood taken from me. I will never be able to breastfeed. I struggle to look at myself in the mirror at times. I still struggle to this day with sexual dysfunction.”
Cole told the DCNF that the Trans Data Library is not a “reliable source and shouldn’t be taken seriously,” saying that the story she’s shared about her experience is “backed by legal documents that are publicly available.” She also said that in some sense she found “Sequeira’s comments to be humorous” but “in other ways” it was “deeply concerning.”
“There should be nothing scary about a Detransitioner,” Cole said. “There’s nothing scary about some medical professionals with a booth speaking at a trade show. That is really quite silly! Unless, of course, you are afraid of being sued by the kids you’ve harmed.”
Monica Harris also told the DCNF that it is “unfortunate” that the “medical establishment” feels “threatened by opposing or dissenting views, especially coming from people who feel that they have been legitimately harmed by certain medical practices.”
AAP, Allen, Christopher Harris and Sequeira did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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