CNA Staff, Jul 31, 2025 / 16:35 pm (CNA).
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating potential “unfair or deceptive trade practices” regarding transgender surgeries and drugs.
The launch of the federal inquiry is designed to “gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing” from “false or unsupported claims” about transgender treatment, according to a press release. The inquiry focuses on affected minors but is also open to adults who have been affected.
The agency’s investigation comes after President Donald Trump pledged to end federal support for transition drugs and surgeries in an executive order he issued at the outset of his administration this year.
The Federal Trade Commission, a federal agency that promotes marketplace competition and consumer education, will investigate whether practitioners have violated a long-standing law against deception in the marketplace.
The investigation falls under the purview of the agency as the primary enforcer of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, a federal law that, among other things, prohibits deception and false advertising in the marketplace. The agency will investigate if practitioners have gone against Sections 5 and 12 of the act, which ban “unfair or deceptive acts” and false advertising, respectively.
The commission “is uniquely positioned to investigate this potentially unlawful activity,” the agency stated, noting that the organization “has a long history of bringing enforcement actions” in health care.
The agency “encourages members of the public to comment on any issues or concerns that are relevant to the FTC’s consideration of this topic, including by submitting any written data, advertisements, social media posts, disclosures, or empirical research,” the press release read.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, commended the agency “for investigating the horrific scheme to target minors with barbaric gender procedures.”
“Everyone involved — including the ‘doctors’ — should face massive liability for the damage they did to vulnerable children,” Cotton said in a post on X.
This is not the commission’s first look at the transgender issue. Earlier this month, the agency hosted a workshop in Washington, D.C., to investigate “unfair or deceptive trade practices” within transgender treatment.
The workshop brought in doctors, medical ethicists, detransitioners and their parents, and whistleblowers to share their testimonies.
Andrew Ferguson, a Catholic Virginian who chairs the commission, told detransitioners and survivors that the agency “hears you, we hear all of you, and we want to understand how the law is being broken,” according to a report by Daily Wire.
At the workshop, the U.S. Justice Department’s Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle announced that the department had issued more than 20 subpoenas against medical clinics as part of an investigation for fraud and false statements, National Review reported.
The deadline for the public to submit comments is Sept. 26. Comments will be posted to Regulations.gov, while another forum is available for confidential comments.
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Bring it on.
Heads need to roll, reputations need to be trashed, institutions need to be bankrupted paying “compensation”.
“Bring it on!
Heads need to roll, reputations need to be trashed, etc…”
Amen, Cleo! I think Pres. Trump is perfectly capable of taking the inevitable condemnation and attempts to undermine his character, and NOT backing down from the powerful bullies! He loves children (he has five of them who seem to have turned out well!) and for years, has been involved with various children’s charities that many people don’t know about. I think his motives are pure (after all, he’s already fabulously wealthy and he can’t be re-elected for a third, fourth, and fifth term as POTUS according to the U.S. Constitution, and he’s smart enough to know that he can’t be elected King, Pope, Supreme Ruler of the Universe, or even one of the “Top 25 Sexiest Men in the World” by People Magazine!), and I hope that God will come to his aid and through his efforts, encourage people of faith, intellect, and good science (not pseudoscience) to stop sitting back and being “accepting” of stuff that they know good and darn well in their hearts and heads is not good for children, especially young teens who are experiencing all the normal hormonal ups and downs of the onset of adolescence (which has always been hard for kids!) and have no idea of how to do anything or what to believe or trust until they grow a little older and wiser.
Our children need to be guided through adolescence and allowed to grow up to young adulthood first, and THEN they can be more capable of utilizing their intellect along with their emotions (and hormones) to examine their sexuality and recognize what is true and what isn’t (i.e., IF they’re not addicted to porn by then).
I also think that taking the phones away from very young children and teens would be a wise plan, especially in the schools, and hope that this trend continues. Many of the influencers of young people do their work on the internet, especially those sites that attract children and young teens. And too many post-COVID pandemic parents are too busy trying to earn a decent living these days to spend the quality time with them that kids need, and often the grandparents live far away, and the family doesn’t have a lot of friends that they regularly socialize with, and finally, many families have abandoned any kind of religious observation, especially going to church, often due to exhaustion and the desire to have just one day that they aren’t rushing here and there to prepare for the work/school week.
The odds are incredibly against those who desire “truth” about all things in life, including human sexuality. The “movie world” and “gaming world”–both pure fantasy–that many of us live in and are surrounded by are strong and dangerous influencers and we have to be prepared for a tough battle with these worlds. God, have mercy and help us all to know YOU and Your will for us humans and have the courage to submit to it.
The FTC is surely aware, already, of the published literature. At least two samples of which have been noted along the way at Catholic World Report:
“[….] Compared to the general population, adults who have undergone sex-reassignment surgery continue to have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes. One study found that, compared to controls, sex-reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide [….]” https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/executive-summary-sexuality-and-gender
And, authors of the 2019 study which claimed so-called gender-transition surgery may improve the long-term mental health of recipients–issued a CORRECTION, only a year after publication. The authors of the study—Richard Bränström, Ph.D., and John E. Pachankis, Ph.D.—report that: “the results actually demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care.” It seems that a huge data-dump was initially misinterpreted.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/08/04/researchers-reverse-gender-surgery-offers-no-advantage-to-mental-health/
Similar and scientifically rigorous findings were published a decade earlier: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
And, similarly reported in 2022: https://www.heritage.org/gender/report/puberty-blockers-cross-sex-hormones-and-youth-suicide