Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services released a new report questioning the validity of purported “gender-affirming care,” noting the physical harms that come from the treatment methods used on minors claiming transgender identity or enduring gender dysphoria.

The new report, designed as a “review of evidence and best practices” related to transgender procedures on minors, warned that the “gender-affirming” model of care for children “includes irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions on minors with no physical pathology.”

The interventions “carry risk of significant harms,” such as infertility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, poor cognition, cardiovascular disease, and surgical complications.

While treatments in other segments of the medical world are “first established as safe and effective in adults,” the development of purported “gender-affirming care” instead started in children, with certain researchers developing the “pediatric medical transition protocol in response to disappointing psychosocial outcomes in adults who underwent medical transition.”

Other issues with “gender-affirming care” include protocols which were “adopted internationally before the publication of the first outcome studies,” as well as the continual lack of a “consensus about best practices for the care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria.”

Trump administration officials have implemented policies against “gender-affirming care” in recent months, even after the Biden administration consistently claimed over the past four years that “gender-affirming care” is beneficial for the physical and mental wellbeing of children.

Skeptics of surgical and hormonal procedures counted as “gender-affirming care” note the physical harms they render and the inherent impossibility of changing the sex of an individual.