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Guest Column: The Manufactured Consensus Around Trans ‘Medicine’

A question that ought to haunt the Western world is how, over the last decade, an obviously unscientific claim—that men can become women and vice versa—birthed an anti-scientific movement that still, somehow, won the endorsement of virtually the entire scientific and medical community in the developed world? Within a few short years, nearly every association involved in healthcare affirmed not only that a person can be “transgender,” but also a litany of ghoulish, harmful procedures that were called healthcare.  

At least part of the answer to this gnawing question is that the endorsements were the result of close ties between medical groups and radical gender activists. As The Daily Wire recently reported, according to findings by the watchdog group, the American Accountability Foundation, one woman was listed as “managing” or “executive” director on tax documents for 26 major medical organizations around the United States. Sue O’Sullivan holds these numerous roles through her position as co-founder of Veritas Association Management, an Illinois-based professional services company. However, she is also managing director for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH. 

Aside from showing up on social media and at WPATH events, O’Sullivan is listed on multiple documents by that organization promoting transgender “medical procedures,” including “putting children on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.” Her organization has led in promoting the most extreme forms of “affirming medicine,” including “removal of breasts for girls who identify as boys,” and has “opposed laws to protect kids from such procedures.” WPATH also condemned President Trump’s recent executive order cutting funding for these practices.    

Tax documents also show that O’Sullivan spent around eight times as many hours working with WPATH on trans issues as she did with any of her other management roles. Those roles included titles at The American Pediatric Surgical Association, The American Society of Andrology, The Society for Cardiovascular and Magnetic Resonance, The Society of Academic Bone Radiologists, The Society for Vascular Medicine, and the Society of Ob/Gyn Hospitalists, to name a few.  

Beyond the organizations that listed O’Sullivan in key roles, this watchdog group identified another 25 names with “ties to Veritas.” Many of these individuals have issued statements in recent years “in support of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for children or backing transgender ideology.” In a remarkable understatement, American Accountability concluded that “the ties between O’Sullivan and WPATH could jeopardize the medical integrity of other organizations managed by Veritas Association Management,” specifically by causing “the radical transgender procedures advocated for by WPATH to be normalized in the medical mainstream.”  

This would be laughable and ethically horrible if it had not resulted in the mutilation and sterilization of many children in this country. However, organizations like these lead the American medical establishment and command expected public trust. This trust has been irreparably broken by issuing statements and taking positions as if they were the conclusions of careful investigations by experienced physicians. Instead, it turns out their public statements were the equivalent of marching orders, handed down from headquarters run not by doctors, but by ideologues, who presumably kept doctors in line through fear.  

None of these revelations can undo the damage already done to lives irreversibly changed. Still, it is important to understand how the whole medical establishment was sucked in to this incredible evil. The vast failure of experts to resist what amounted to a pseudoscientific coup must be investigated thoroughly. The last decade has exposed an unbelievable amount of cowardice and incompetence among the medical establishment, especially in protecting children from powerful adults entrusted with their care. To be frank, a lot of people need to lose their jobs. Some should be prosecuted. 

This is also a warning for the future. Every field, even medicine, is susceptible to values and worldview. Basic beliefs about the human person and the sanctity of life have consequences. Physicians and other providers with integrity must have the courage to stand up to ideological emperors, especially the ones with no clothes. And as frustrating as it is to be called “anti-science,” Christians must be prepared to defend created reality, and protect the most vulnerable from the next manufactured “consensus.”

Copyright 2025 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

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