The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry no longer wants to hear from their European counterparts.

Why? Europe is beginning to set guardrails to protect children from dangerous and questionable gender transition practices, and American Psychiatrists don’t want to hear any evidence against their preconceived notion that sterilizing and mutilating children is an unalloyed good.

Critical🚨: ⁦@aaronsibarium⁩ with a new report on institutional capture at ⁦⁦@AACAP⁩.

The group allegedly rejected top European experts who transition kids from presenting at its conference because they support guardrails for hormones. https://t.co/4lYx7eEENb

— Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir) August 11, 2023

It’s a remarkable move if you think about it. The shift in European policies is not due to hostility to the idea of gender transition itself–although I wish it were–but rather due to growing concerns that there is no science behind the practice of medically transitioning children and no curiosity about the longer-term consequences of doing so.

The AACAP is not just rejecting the European approach–it is actively rejecting the idea of even allowing a discussion of the pros and cons of the medical approach to gender dysphoria. They prefer ignorance to hearing contrary opinions.

They are as bad as climate scientists, whose reaction to contrary opinions is rage.

A top pediatric psychiatry organization has nixed at least three panels with leading European psychologists about Europe’s move away from chemical interventions for children with gender dysphoria, raising questions about the politicization of American medicine and underscoring a clinical divide between the United States and much of the world.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), which sets practice guidelines for the field, rejected one panel in 2022 and two more this May on the advice of its “Gender Identity Committee,” whose co-chair, Aron Janssen, has described restrictions on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as an “effort to oppress.”

The new hotness in science these days is the ruthless suppression of data and opinions that aren’t in line with the political opinions of the elite. Insults are hurled, censorship is implemented, and cancellation of people who aren’t in line with the approved narrative is the norm. Academic institutions are demanding loyalty pledges to critical race theory and alphabet ideology, and even requiring the submission of essays proving adherence to and commitments to promote the ideological line.

The AACAP is demanding that its members remain ignorant of contrary opinions. And we are not talking about opinions that simply reject the idea of gender transitions, but merely questions about how and when it is best to begin medical transitions. The AACAP insists that children must be sterilized and mutilated as young as possible.

It is “highly unusual” for the academy to axe events with international speakers, said Kristopher Kaliebe, a psychiatrist at the University of Southern Florida who organized the panels. And it was odder still given that the speakers were some of the biggest names in gender medicine, most with a long track record of transitioning children.

All three panels would have included Riittakerttu Kaltiala, the chief psychiatrist at one of Finland’s two pediatric gender clinics, who has been prescribing puberty blockers since 2011 but—amid skyrocketing referrals to her service—has in recent years called for more guardrails on what can sometimes be irreversible treatments.

“There are people who benefit from medical transition, even early transition initiated during developmental years,” Kaltiala told the Free Beacon. But, she added, there are also people for whom “rapidly proceeding to gender reassignment will result in harm.”

The academy’s unwillingness to host Kaltiala and other likeminded clinicians suggests that even this moderate stance may now be a bridge too far for America’s premier child psychiatry association, where even senior officials are raising concerns about ideological capture.

AACAP has chosen “advocacy over science,” Kaliebe said in an email to James McGough, who oversees conference programming, after the second two panels were nixed. In response, McGough conceded that politics likely played a role.

The AACAP is shutting down debates that include some of the strongest advocates for their overall ideological commitment to gender transitions. The problem is simply that they worry about what appears to be a social contagion that could leave children scarred for life without guardrails.

I have made it clear that I reject the idea of medical treatment for gender dysphoria entirely in children, and am skeptical that it is the best approach in adults. I don’t outright reject the possibility that in some limited number of cases, it is preferable to the alternative, but would like to see more evidence. I am also leery of politicians making what are ultimately personal decisions for adults. Sometimes we have to let people make what appear to be bad decisions, lest we empower the state to run our lives.

But it is widely understood that the state has an interest in defending minors against abuse, and subjecting children to experimental treatments with no track record and no solid base of research is abuse.

The AACAP is proving my point. The “experts” promoting these “treatments” are unwilling to even hear out their colleagues’ evidence and concerns about the current policies. Closing their ears and minds to evidence that deviates from their current commitments is the exact opposite of what scientists and medical practitioners should be doing.

The panels with European clinicians were an attempt to puncture that consensus. The first one, rejected from AACAP’s 2022 conference in Toronto, Canada, would have presented new research on the changing demographics of gender dysphoria, which used to present mostly in young boys but is now concentrated among teenage girls, many of whom have other mental health problems. Invited speakers included Kaltiala and Lisa Littman—the doctor who popularized the idea that gender dysphoria could be driven by social forces—as well as two laypeople, Corinna Cohn and Grace Lidinsky-Smith, who had gender reassignment surgery but later regretted their transition.

The inclusion of detransitioners was “not appropriate given our format,” McGough wrote in a 2022 email explaining the rejection. But an academy member familiar with the approval process said it was unheard of for the group to nix a panel presenting new research, especially from such prominent doctors.

“I’ve never seen a research symposium be rejected,” the member said.

Today’s crop of scientists are the equivalent of flat earthers who see what appears to them to be convincing evidence–the lack of any discernible curvature of the earth from their vantage point–who then subsequently refuse to look at any contrary evidence. Rather than getting up into a plane and seeing the curvature for themselves they simply insult others who disagree.

The difference, of course, is that flat earth fanatics are basically harmless, while doctors and psychiatrists have real power.