The American Medical Association’s (AMA) advocacy for gender transition on minors is based on vanishingly flimsy evidence, as shown in a series of newly released videos obtained by The Daily Wire. The videos resulted from research by Michigan State Rep. Brad Paquette (R). After Paquette introduced bills (HB 4466, HB 4467, and HB 4468), opponents appealed to the AMA’s 2021 open letter in opposition to such legislation and urged Paquette to “trust the experts.”

“A lot of folks said, ‘Well, you’re not a doctor, Brad,’ and, ‘Well, the AMA supports this,’” related Paquette. “And so, I went to the AMA. I started to talk to their experts and came to find that they have no idea what they’re talking about.”

Paquette first arranged a call with AMA President Bobby Mukkamala, an otolaryngologist (head and neck surgeon) in Flint, Mich., who was elected president of the AMA in June 2025. The call included at least four other participants, including Dr. Eithan Haim, the whistleblower who outed Texas Children’s Hospital for secretly continuing to provide gender transition procedures to minors.

When asked about the AMA’s advocacy for gender transition procedures on minors, Mukkamala demurred. “I’m not an expert at all. I’m not an expert at all in the science that you’re talking to me about. I defer to the experts,” an apparent reference to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). When Haim brought up flaws in the studies frequently cited by WPATH, Mukkamala responded that he hadn’t actually investigated the issue firsthand. “I rely on a specialty society to look at them and then give us their opinion of them. I’m not an expert at all. And honestly, I don’t think you are either.”

But Mukkamala went further. “Neither one of us spent an hour working on transgender care, neither one of us,” he told Haim. “So we have no business discussing the science that’s brought to the American Medical Association from people that spent years in training for this, and years taking care of patients for this.”

This doctrine comes straight from the Dr. Fauci Obedience School for Beagles. Don’t question “The Science,” because the slightest breath of criticism will scatter its house of cards across three counties. Mukkamala’s argument is either naked elitism (that people are not capable of rationally discussing scientific findings without the proper credentials) or an appeal to magical powers (that science operates according to supernatural principles that make it immune to the analysis of ordinary reason).

Does it need to be spelled out more clearly? Without a doubt, Haim, Paquette, or any other American adult can appropriately discuss the science regarding gender transition procedures for minors because they have an innate capacity to reason. The whole purpose of scientific endeavor is to gain knowledge about the natural world through rational processes and to produce findings that hold up to rational scrutiny. Appeals to science would carry no weight if they failed to pass muster according to the basic reason available to all.

As a trained physician, Mukkamala surely knows this. But, instead of persuading with reason or evidence, he sought to shut down the conversation with a power play. This is the tactic not of a scientist, but of a critical theorist. In this, Mukkamala may not represent every member of the AMA, but he is representative of the type of scientist who comes to lead an organization captured by the political Left.

Paquette’s epic quest to plumb the depths of the AMA’s great expertise on gender transition procedures for minors had turned out more like Dorothy’s visit to the Wizard of Oz — without the happy ending. The expert he was not allowed to question turned out to have no expertise at all. Yet, somehow, he still was not allowed to question the experts.

Unsatisfied with ending his quest at the locked iron door in front of him, Paquette asked for a key — a recommendation from Mukkamala to go talk to a real expert. Little did he know that the door led through Alice’s rabbit hole. Mukkamala arranged for Paquette to speak with Jesse Krikorian, a transgender-identifying practitioner of family medicine associated with the University of Michigan hospital system (Krikorian’s faculty page has been taken off the website).

By Mukkumala’s own standards, however, Krikorian could hardly be considered an “expert” in providing gender transition procedures to minors. Krikorian graduated from a residency program at Marquette in June 2024. Since that time, however, she told Paquette that she has worked with many transgender-identifying children, including a seven-year-old boy whose biggest concern was the “appearance of a bulge in her [sic] ballet leotard.” Needless to say, such cases give no experience, much less expertise, on the long-term effects of procedures that don’t begin before puberty.

(It is likely no coincidence that a transgender-identifying family doctor would see an unusually high proportion of transgender-identifying children, as the parents likely played an influential role in both decisions.)

However, what Krikorian lacked in experience, she made up for in her ability to muster a wide array of arguments for gender transition procedures (almost as if expertise was never a requirement at all). She downplayed the long-term effects of puberty blockers on bone density, claimed 13- and 14-year-olds could reasonably understand the irreversible infertility of cross-sex hormones, and disparaged the U.K.’s Cass Report and a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that reached the opposite conclusion. Not all of her arguments agreed with one another, such as the contention that cross-sex do not cause permanent infertility, but “if your life plan involves genetic children, go ahead and bank sperm.”

Ultimately, she admitted, the whole point of gender transition procedures was to manipulate feelings, whatever the physical toll inflicted. “There’s nothing about starting puberty blockers that means that you have to continue them. There’s nothing about starting hormones that means you have to continue them,” she argued. “It’s only if you like the results that you’re getting, if you’re happy, if you’re feeling good, if you’re feeling better about yourself and more able to function in society, that you keep going with them.”

But the most disturbing comment by Krikorian was a bid to begin indoctrinating children with transgender ideology before they even have a solid grasp on what gender is. “Developmentally, kids generally have a pretty stable sense of gender identity starting around age three,” she claimed. “They may not tell us unless we asked, but it’s generally there around that age. Just developmentally, that’s when that comes in.”

Technically, if “stable” merely means “unchanging” and not “solid,” this is plausible, but only for the reason that nearly all children embrace their biological sex and never waver from that. But the point Krikorian is trying to make — that some children reject their biological sex at the tender age of three — is highly doubtful.

Just any parent of a toddler if their child has “a pretty stable sense of gender identity.” The most likely response you’ll get — after a nervous chuckle — is, “Man, I’d settle for having him potty trained, honestly.” Tots don’t have a solid grasp of others’ gender identity, much less their own. In this author’s home, the same child has asked more than once, “Are you a boy, mommy?” It takes time merely to clarify the categories.

Toddlers are even less capable of accurately discerning their own internal feelings about gender identity. They are notoriously temperamental, prone to wild mood swings. They can cry for 10 minutes for no good reason, with no understanding of why they are crying or how to stop. This is why God gave toddlers to parents who love them and patiently care for them. Otherwise, toddlers would never survive. How can Krikorian claim that a child unable to process basic emotions like anger or disappointment can conclusively declare his or her gender with an authority that trumps his or her biology?

These are the empty arguments brought by the AMA to support gender transition procedures for minors. These are the inexperienced experts summoned by the AMA to support gender transition procedures for minors. If this is the best that transgender advocates can muster, then it’s no wonder that 27 states passed laws protecting minors from gender transition procedures in only four short years.