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Doctors must take continuing medical education courses to maintain their licenses, and transgender activists took objection to one of these courses, leading a nationwide institution to effectively cancel it. Washington State University had spent nearly a year reviewing—and then approving—a course explaining the side effects of experimental transgender medical interventions on children and Europe’s growing rejection of “gender-affirming care.” Yet activists cried foul, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center, a pro-transgender activist group best known for demonizing conservatives. “It is deeply concerning that a set of educational courses developed from peer-reviewed, evidence-based presentations has been suspended following activist pressure,” a spokesperson for the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, the group that created the course, told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday. “These CME modules were created to help clinicians understand Europe’s evolving approach to youth gender medicine and the growing emphasis on safeguarding and long-term outcomes.” “We are disheartened and frankly perplexed by the decision to suspend these courses following activist demands, after they had already undergone nearly a year of rigorous accreditation review,” the SEGM spokesperson added. “Allowing ideology or activism to override scientific evidence and professional judgment undermines both patient care and confidence in our medical institutions.” Transgender Activist Pressure Washington State University’s college of medicine had approved a 7 SEGM courses delving into whether there are “male” or “female” brains separate from male or female bodies; “misconceptions in youth gender medicine;” the changes in European practice; and more. On Oct. 29, pro-transgender activist Erin Reed’s Substack published an article drawing attention to the SEGM course, and later that day, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (the national body approving such courses) launched an investigation and ordered Washington State University to revoke the course’s accreditation during the investigation. “WSU told SEGM they’ve ‘never seen anything like this from a national accrediting body,'” the SEGM spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “We cannot find anything that indicates that the agency can demand that the provider suspend a course before the investigation has taken place,” Dr. William Malone, an Idaho endocrinologist who co-founded SEGM, told The New York Sun. The University and ACCME Weigh In WSU’s college of medicine “acted as an accreditor through its Continuing Medical Education program,” Pam Scott, the university’s vice president of system communications, told The Daily Signal. “WSU did not create or provide these courses.” She emphasized that “accreditation indicates that the courses met ACCME’s requirements for scientific balance and educational integrity,” and it “does not represent the university’s endorsement” of SEGM. Scott said “course materials are suspended” while the university works with ACCME to confirm that materials “comply with ACCME standards.” Ellen Sullivan, ACCME’s vice president for communications, told The Daily Signal that the council “does not comment publicly on specific providers or activities that may be under review.” She noted that all accredited courses must comply with “ACCME Standard 1, which requires that content be accurate, evidence-based, and based on current science and best available evidence.” Transgender activist groups in the Pacific Northwest responded to the cancelation by demanding that accreditation groups permanently distance themselves from critics of “gender-affirming care” like SEGM. The activist groups condemned SEGM’s message as “disinformation” and warned, “In a time when transgender individuals face elevated rates of suicidal ideation and barriers to competent care, accrediting courses that spread disinformation is not only unethical but also endangers lives.” The Southern Poverty Law Center The Substack article that appears to have inspired ACCME’s action cited the Southern Poverty Law Center in both its subtitle and its first sentence. The SPLC “has dubbed the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine an anti-LGBTQ hate group for its role in proliferating pseudoscience and transphobic policies,” the article’s subtitle reads. The article suggests WSU had lent “undue legitimacy to a dangerous cell of what the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed an anti-trans pseudoscience network.” Critics say that the SPLC uses its “hate group” accusation as a weapon to further its own agenda by silencing those who disagree. The SPLC leverages its reputation of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to attack conservatives and Christians, putting groups like SEGM on a “hate map” with Klan chapters—a map the SPLC says reveals “the infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The SPLC has advocated transgender lessons for children through its education program and sued to block laws restricting “gender-affirming care,” while putting SEGM on the “hate map,” and publishing a report condemning their positions as “pseudoscience,” thereby delegitimizing doctors who disagree with its agenda. “Rather than providing any evidence of ‘hate’ or ‘pseudoscience,’ the SPLC report substituted labels for argument, reframed scientific disagreement as bigotry, claimed unfounded guilt by association, and leaned on a closed loop of activist sources that cite one another to simulate corroboration,” SEGM noted in an official response to SPLC. The SPLC’s “pseudoscience” report relies on the “Standards of Care” published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Internal communications at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health reveal a host of serious concerns about “gender-affirming care” for minors, such as children’s inability to give informed consent and horrific side-effects, such as the development of liver cancer in teenagers who took cross-sex hormones. SEGM also noted that, while the SPLC brands it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” SEGM’s president and many of its collaborators “are members of the LGBTQ community.” SEGM says it “has taken great care to avoid wading into political debates, seeking only to enable evidence-based decision-making about care for gender-dysphoric youth, without prescribing specific policy solutions.” Big Tech companies that previously used the SPLC to screen for “hate” have distanced themselves from the group, and the FBI also separated from the SPLC, with Director Kash Patel calling it a “partisan smear machine.” The SEGM spokesman told The Daily Signal that the group hopes ACCME’s review will be fair. “American clinicians deserve access to accurate, balanced information on the evidence guiding international approaches to youth gender dysphoria.” The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
