LGBTQ activists force Washington State medical school to stop teaching course on risks of child sex changes

According to Fox News, the course, produced by the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), had been approved by WSU in June after an extensive vetting process. It is now on hold while the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) reviews complaints.

CME programs are designed to help physicians and other healthcare professionals maintain and update their medical knowledge, sharpen clinical skills, and improve patient care. SEGM’s course was one such offering, focusing specifically on medical interventions for gender-dysphoric youth.

The video series from SEGM’s 2023 international academic conference covered topics such as “Transgender identities and the brain,” “Misconceptions in youth gender medicine,” and hormone treatments for gender-dysphoric youth.

According to SEGM, the course was intended to offer “guidance on the benefits, risks, and ethical considerations of medical interventions for gender-dysphoric youth.” The group says WSU’s continuing medical education team spent approximately nine months reviewing the content and ultimately concluded that it met national standards for scientific balance and educational integrity.

WSU approved the videos for CME credit in June, and for months, the course was available to clinicians seeking CME credit without apparent controversy.

In October, after SEGM published a press release promoting the CME series at WSU, a transgender activist named Erin Reed published a report on Substack by a guest author describing SEGM as an “anti-trans hate group” and encouraging readers to file complaints with the ACCME, which accredits institutions such as WSU to offer CME activities.

ACCME’s president, Dr. Graham McMahon, reportedly told “Erin in the Morning” that the publication’s characterization of SEGM “raises questions that appear appropriate for an inquiry.” Other LGBTQ groups picked up the story, and users on Bluesky demanded action, according to The New York Sun.

After Reed’s article was published, WSU’s continuing medical education office informed SEGM by email that it was suspending learner credit for the course series after being notified that ACCME’s complaints department had opened an inquiry into the material.

In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated SEGM as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” placing it alongside organizations the SPLC accuses of promoting anti-LGBT or anti-trans rhetoric. SEGM called the label politically motivated and unsupported by evidence.

According to an email obtained by Fox News, WSU’s continuing medical education office told SEGM that ACCME had requested an explanation of how the university approved the course materials. WSU was reportedly given until November 16 to respond and was asked to suspend learner access to the material while the investigation is ongoing. The videos remain online, but healthcare professionals can no longer earn CME credit for watching them.

Erin Reed celebrated the suspension on Bluesky, writing, “I’m pleased to announce that following our reporting, multiple people have reported that a formal inquiry is being made into SEGM’s accreditation, and that the CME courses are at least temporarily pulled down.”

A SEGM spokesperson told Fox News, “We were perplexed by how quickly the ACCME acted to open an inquiry into the course, and by how rapidly it was suspended. The timing was striking: it occurred almost immediately after an activist published a blog post criticizing the course. That simply isn’t enough time to have meaningfully reviewed several hours of educational content for factual accuracy or compliance.”

“The course had been available for months without any intervention,” the spokesperson added. “The sudden reversal suggests the process was driven more by external pressure than by a careful scientific review. We hope the ACCME’s formal investigation will now proceed in a transparent, evidence-based manner consistent with its own standards of fairness.”

WSU spokesperson Pam Scott said in a statement that the university is cooperating with the accrediting agency.

SEGM previously worked with a research team at McMaster University led by Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a leading expert in evidence-based medicine, and in 2025, the team published three systematic review papers assessing the impact of puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and mastectomies on the overall well-being of gender-dysphoric youth. The authors concluded that the certainty of evidence supporting benefits was “low or very low.”

Following publication, the McMaster group reportedly faced intense backlash from activists and issued a public apology in August.

A SEGM spokesperson told Fox News that these incidents show a pattern in which “asking scientific questions in gender medicine is treated as inherently suspect.”

“Across the US, CME courses on youth gender dysphoria overwhelmingly present only one perspective,” the organization said. SEGM contrasted that with recent policy shifts in several European countries, noting that health authorities in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland have moved toward more cautious, psychotherapy-first approaches for gender-dysphoric youth after conducting systematic evidence reviews.

According to SEGM, those European developments are “almost never represented” in American CME programs.

“SEGM’s course was designed to close that gap by giving physicians access to the full range of international evidence so they can make informed, ethical decisions for patients,” the group said. “Yet, while many CME programs contain unverified claims that go unchallenged, our carefully vetted course was singled out for scrutiny. That imbalance raises serious questions about whether ideology is shaping what doctors are allowed to learn, which erodes trust in the system and harms the already vulnerable population we all aim to serve.”