Pro-transgender activists, along with those suffering from gender dysphoria, are definitely not going to be happy about recent statements from a longtime cardiologist and professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Michigan. Dr. Venk Murthy warned healthcare providers that they should cease providing “gender-affirming care” for children due to mounting scientific evidence, legal concerns, and public opinion.
Murthy wrote a commentary piece for the Independent Women’s Forum, arguing that a recent decision by the University of Michigan’s Faculty Senate to once again prescribe cross-sex hormones, surgeries, and puberty blockers for patients under the age of 19 “places our institution at odds not only with emerging international scientific consensus but also with broader public sentiment — and, crucially, with the precautionary approach now adopted by health authorities in several European nations, as well as our own.”
“Michigan Medicine’s pause on ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors was prudent, not only scientifically but legally,” Murthy wrote. He then pointed to the conclusions of a recent Justice Department probe, saying it “reflects growing scrutiny of practices once promoted as unequivocally beneficial. While major U.S. medical organizations continue to endorse ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors, including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, researchers increasingly recognize the evidence base for these interventions in children and adolescents as weak.”
One has to wonder how much risk associated with these drugs doctors actually disclose to patients undergoing “gender-affirming care,” and how well young people grasp the potential long-term irreversible effects they may suffer later down the road. Surely, if young people understood the true dangers, they would put off transitioning until adulthood, right?
That may be true in theory, but like it or not, transgenderism has become a social contagion. Teenagers appear especially susceptible to narratives pushed by liberals in public schools, universities, and Hollywood. So even if they understand that transitioning could completely alter the trajectory of their lives, pressure from the left may overwhelm them. Being a teenager is difficult enough without adding gender confusion into the mix.
Murthy later cited the 2024 Cass Review, which found that “most studies backing ‘gender-affirming care’ are of low quality, with insufficient long-term data on outcomes like mental health improvement, rates of detransition, or risks such as bone density loss, infertility, and potential cancer links.”
The cardiologist also referenced a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report titled “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” which found “significant, long-term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked” harm caused to children by “puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations.”
“These interventions carry risk of significant harms including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret,” the report stated.
Big Pharma, of course, won’t welcome a top cardiologist speaking plainly, especially when his words threaten profit margins. Pharmaceutical companies that manufacture these “medications” make enormous sums off families with gender-confused children. When companies aggressively push a particular treatment, altruism rarely motivates them; profit does. Unfortunately, many doctors assist these efforts by promoting such treatments in exchange for financial gain or career advancement.
Murthy’s commentary also emphasized therapy as the most supported approach and aligned with international findings that most gender-distressed youth resolve their dysphoria naturally after puberty when therapists address underlying issues. In other words, children need therapy that helps them cope with distress, accept themselves, and allow matters to resolve over time.
“As a cardiologist, I am particularly alarmed by the cardiovascular risks these interventions pose to developing young hearts,” Murthy explained. “Cross-sex hormones, such as estrogen in biological males or testosterone in biological females, are known to alter lipid profiles, increase blood clotting, and elevate the risk of thromboembolic events, stroke, myocardial infarction, and hypertension.”
“At a taxpayer-funded public university like ours, especially one in a purple state, faculty governance should reflect not just internal ideologies but responsibility to scientific evidence and the communities we serve,” Murthy wrote. “Michigan voters and families deserve assurance that doctors at their public medical center do no harm and respect their views.”
The Michigan cardiologist closed his piece with a blunt assessment of the current state of healthcare.
“There’s another hard truth that Faculty Senate members — many of whom are not doctors and are unaffiliated with the medical school — presumably did not consider: people no longer automatically trust doctors or academic medicine the way they once did,” Murthy wrote. “Years of overreach, mixed messaging, and insistence on contested practices have left deep scars. When elite institutions charge ahead on weak evidence — especially on something as irreversible as medicalizing children’s gender distress — it confirms every suspicion that ideology has captured us more than science.”
“Only humility will allow us to rebuild that shattered trust,” he concluded. “Anything less, and we’ll keep hemorrhaging the one thing medicine can’t function without: the public’s confidence.”
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