NEW: Yesterday, HHS re-released its major report on pediatric gender medicine after putting it through post-publication peer review. The responses from America’s top medical organizations were a stunning display of incompetence and cowardice.

HHS invited three major groups that have spent years insisting “gender-affirming care” for minors is safe, effective, and based on strong evidence. Two of the three—the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society—refused to participate in the peer-review process at all.

The one group that did participate, the American Psychiatric Association, submitted a review so sloppy it’s impossible to believe they even read the report.

Their criticisms were factually wrong, contradicted by the text itself, and required the HHS authors to patiently walk one of the nation’s largest medical organizations through the most elementary principles of evidence-based medicine.

This was an invitation to professionally participate in the scientific process at the highest level of federal policymaking, on an issue they claim to understand better than anyone else, and on which they have demanded public trust.

If they were truly confident the evidence was on their side, this would have been the moment to demonstrate it. Instead, they walked away, representing a massive dereliction of responsibility.

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