(The Center Square) – In a room with a licensed doctor seeing a teenager or preteen and their parents, it is the child with mental health assessment minimized or omitted that leads decisions made because of “embodiment goals.”
That’s the findings of "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices," as released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And that’s the norm not the exception Prisha Mosley has found personally and in talking to friends from coast to coast and border to border in America.
Mosley calls it a “medical scandal.”
“That’s exactly how it happened to me, and my detransition friends,” Mosley told The Center Square in a Monday afternoon interview. “Anything else is called gatekeeping. Anything other than the affirmation model is called gatekeeping. If a child says trans, there's no way for trans not to happen.
“You hear about it online, in schools … gender dysphoria is a sham diagnosis. That can be put on anybody.”
From children expressing harm from adults or bullies to just about anything, Mosley says.
“Distress. Suicide reality,” is what it should be called, Mosley says.
And there are treatment routes for those.
Within the report, “The ‘gender-affirming’ model of care, as practiced in U.S. clinics, is characterized by a child-led process in which comprehensive mental health assessments are often minimized or omitted, and the patient’s ‘embodiment goals’ serve as the primary guide for treatment decisions. In some of the nation’s leading pediatric gender clinics, assessments are conducted in a single session lasting two hours.”
Some are less.
Mosley moved to North Carolina in third grade, at about age 7. Big Rapids, Mich., is now home for the 27-year-old and her son, he with the bassinet gifted by Mosley’s good friends Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan.
Mosley is an ambassador with Independent Women, a nonprofit that bills itself with "unique, persuasive methods and trusted brand" that shapes "public preferences, policies, and movements to create a better future for everyone." Gaines and Scanlan were previously, and remain in a working relationship with the organization.
As a teen, Mosley and parents were part of the growing trend to transition from female to male. She started testosterone at 17, had surgery at 18, and like many in the five to 10 years later range, had regret.
“That’s how long it takes to see the catastrophic results,” Mosley said.
Mosley, like former collegiate swimmers Gaines and Scanlan seeking to protect women’s spaces everywhere with emphasis on sports, is speaking out for detransitioners and peers “who believed the lies like I did.”
“I know what it’s like to be desperate,” Mosley said. “I know what kind of person you have to be trying to find a magical cure. Sometimes the truth hurts. There isn’t a magical cure. You have to learn good coping mechanisms, and fight for better times. Anyone selling a cure that easy is just selling something.”
Mosley understands trust in the medical world. She points to the professionals at the top of the industry chain for blame. Wednesday's report is peer reviewed, though notably invited but declining were the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society.
“They rely on that trust, that’s how it happens,” Mosley said. “They asked my parents if they wanted a dead daughter or living son … right in front of me in the room.”
The report says, “The evidence for benefit of pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain.”
“The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics peddled the lie that chemical and surgical sex-rejecting procedures could be good for children,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “They betrayed their oath to first do no harm, and their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. That is not medicine – it’s malpractice.”
Born a female, surgeries in North Carolina were performed to change Mosley to a boy. State law changed this year, with North Carolina becoming the 18th state to define men and women in a law that also increased the statute of limitations to 10 years for those seeking justice for harm from gender transition.
Mosley filed the lawsuit in Gaston County in July 2023. It states that at age 17, testosterone injections were started, and a double mastectomy was performed. Among the eight defendants are a plastic surgeon, two licensed counselors, and a physician.
Part of the case was cleared to proceed in May of last year. The medical malpractice did not go forward due to the prior statute of limitations. In August, Mosley’s legal team filed to reinstate based on the new law.
The judge dismissing her complaint retired two days later. The case now is with the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
“This report marks a turning point for American medicine,” said National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “The evidence in it meticulously documents the risks the profession has imposed on vulnerable children. At the NIH, we are committed to ensuring that science, not ideology, guides America’s medical research.”
Even with the report, generational impact is still happening.
“What are we going to tell the young people who can’t have children because the medical profession stole that from them?” said Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Brian Christine. “Our report is an urgent wake up call to doctors and parents about the clear dangers of trying to turn girls into boys and vice-versa.”
Mosley says people identifying as trans are not doing well.
“The whole message is a medical scandal,” Mosley said. “That includes for adults. Adults can’t consent to lies, or medical experiments when not given all the information. None of it is being tracked. It’s a big experiment, and no one can consent to that.
“It’s a death cult that no one has been put on top of. We’re at a turning point.”
The report is clear, Mosley says, that “there isn’t really a magical cure for that. And people are terrified out of their minds.”