HHS gives AMA, WPATH and other medical groups 10 business days to state positions on pediatric gender procedures

HHS sent letters on Oct. 14 to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society and others. The department wants each group to state its current position on what HHS calls "sex-rejecting procedures" for minors. It also wants any planned revisions to guidance and a timeline for those changes.

The deadline is 10 business days. HHS says it expects a written response within that window, counted from the Oct. 14 letters.

What HHS is demanding

Kennedy's letters follow earlier requests. The Daily Wire, which obtained the letters exclusively, reported that Kennedy first wrote to the groups in December seeking "timely and substantive" responses. According to that account, only three acknowledged receipt: WPATH, the Endocrine Society and the American Psychological Association. The American Academy of Pediatrics is also on the list of recipients.

"To date, the Department has received nothing," Kennedy wrote to the unresponsive groups, according to the Daily Wire. "For an organization that rarely wants for words on this subject, the silence is telling — and deeply disappointing."

In the letters, Kennedy wrote that continued silence would be "a choice to place commitments to radical ideology ahead of evidence-based medicine and the children" the groups claim to protect.

In the public announcement, Kennedy cast it as a transparency issue. "When medical organizations set standards that shape the care of children, they have a responsibility to explain the evidence behind those standards," he said. "Parents and clinicians deserve transparency."

The letters lean on an HHS report, "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices," which the Daily Wire says documented "substantial evidence of harm for minors." HHS also points to its own actions: a move to bar Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals from performing these procedures on children, a ban on federal Medicaid and CHIP funding for them, and what it calls potentially fraudulent insurance coding tied to the procedures.

An HHS official told the Daily Wire the department will "evaluate responses and determine appropriate next steps consistent with its statutory and regulatory authorities." The department has not said what those steps could be.

Medical societies get louder

The letters arrive as professional groups are becoming more openly adversarial toward Kennedy across several issues.

Jeremy Faust, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today, said in a recent podcast discussion of his interview with Jeanne Marrazzo that groups such as the AMA and the Infectious Diseases Society of America are "becoming less shy" about criticizing the federal government. Marrazzo is now IDSA's CEO. She previously led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and, per Faust, was fired and filed a whistleblower complaint.

Faust said societies once softened their messaging to preserve a working partnership with Washington. Now, he said, some are willing to say the federal government is mishandling vaccines and that Kennedy "is actually not helping people." Faust is a journalist offering his own read, and Marrazzo has her own history with the department. Both are interested parties.

The AI summit

Kennedy has also drawn fire from the medical side over artificial intelligence. At the MAHA Summit in Washington on Sept. 29, he said he had recently met OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who told him "today it would be malpractice for a doctor to make a diagnosis or make a prescription without at least checking AI."

Kennedy said a patient with a thousand-page record gets six minutes with a doctor, while AI "can give you a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country." He said the technology could "free us from medical tyranny."

Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a cancer specialist and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said Kennedy "obviously doesn't understand how AI works." Emanuel argued that AI aggregates the medical literature, "and that means what you're actually getting is medical expertise." HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Emanuel described "one narrow use" of the technology. She said Kennedy wants Americans to use AI to understand their own data and make better decisions with their doctors.

Some MAHA allies are unhappy too. The Associated Press reported that OpenAI and Anthropic were among the summit's sponsors, along with more than a dozen other companies with business pending before the federal government. Sponsors paid up to $300,000, and many got speaking slots alongside top administration health officials.

Vice President JD Vance, who appeared with Kennedy, said the way to manage AI risk is to ensure companies are not shielded from product liability claims. Lawsuits are already pending over allegations that chatbot medical advice caused serious harm, including one by a Florida pastor against OpenAI.

Vaccine injuries and coverage rolls

Separately, HHS opened an NIH research clinic for patients with health problems after vaccination. It also plans to propose a billing code to reimburse doctors who report suspected serious vaccine side effects to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. In a statement, Kennedy said, "We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries — not dismiss or gaslight them."

Some vaccine researchers who are skeptical of Kennedy's broader vaccine agenda backed the research itself. Helen Chu, a former member of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said adverse events deserve to be taken more seriously. Daniel Salmon of Johns Hopkins said more safety research would be "very helpful," provided it is rigorous.

On Oct. 14, Kennedy also disputed reports that the administration is cutting people from Medicare, Medicaid or Obamacare. He said the effort targets duplicate enrollments and records for deceased people, and that eligible Americans are not losing coverage.

The next marker is the 10-business-day deadline HHS set in its Oct. 14 letters.