Dr. Mehmet Oz is challenging New York state Attorney General Letitia James over controversial transgender care and sexual reassignment surgery for youths, saying, “Our children are not guinea pigs.”
James is threatening legal action against NYU Langone Medical Center if it doesn’t reinstate its transgender youth health program, which hospital officials announced last month it was scrapping.
“Our children are not guinea pigs,” Oz said in the March 10 letter to James, which The Post obtained.
“Given that emerging medical evidence continues to demonstrate the harm these procedures inflict on children, it is both irresponsible and false to declare the other side of this ongoing scientific debate definitively ‘medically necessary.’”
Oz continued, “It is worse still to compel doctors to perform procedures that remain the subject of substantial dispute. It is also unethical. Your claim that discontinuing these interventions constitutes unlawful discrimination is irresponsible.”
NYU Langone Medical Center “permanently” axed the program in February after the Trump administration threatened to yank federal funding to the hospital if it continued providing gender-affirming care.
In a letter sent to the health care system on Feb. 25, James, the Empire State’s chief lawyer, claimed the absence of the Transgender Youth Health Program was “jeopardizing” health care access to vulnerable New Yorkers.
“NYU Langone appears to be suddenly and indefinitely cancelling transgender children’s future appointments thereby jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” the letter read.
James’ office gave NYU Langone until Wednesday, March 11, to resume the procedures.
But Oz, in his response letter to James, said, “As a doctor, I am appalled that your office would attempt to force a hospital to perform potentially life-altering medical procedures on children that are not solidly grounded in science to make a political point.”
“My office stands behind NYU’s decision.”
Oz said NYU Langone Health’s decision to discontinue “sex-rejecting procedures” for children is not just defensible, “it is a serious and necessary course correction” to stop “surgical and chemical interventions on vulnerable children with potentially irreversible consequences.”
In his letter to James, Oz cited a report ordered by the Trump administration confirming what several European health authorities acknowledged years ago: that the potential risks or damaging effects of sexual reassignment surgery on children are significant.
The United Kingdom, for example, imposed restrictions on prescribing puberty blockers.
“Those governments framed their decisions as grounded in formal evidence reviews and evolving assessments of the clinical data — not politics and baseless pressure campaigns,” Oz said.
The Post reached out to the Attorney General’s Office for comment.
