Private emails from leaders of an influential transgender medical organization expose how ideology and consensus, rather than science, has undergirded the explosive growth of the child sex-change industry. The emails were revealed under Freedom of Information laws.

As their gender clinic boomed with patients, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical directors Maddie Deutsch and Stephen Rosenthal acknowledged behind the scenes that research supporting child sex-changes was “shoddy” and fueling “predatory practices,” emails show.