While many health care associations support the experimental transgender medical interventions euphemistically described as “gender affirming care” for minors, most doctors in Florida agree with the public to support laws protecting kids from these “treatments,” a new study finds.
“We see that a strong majority of doctors believe sex-change interventions should be prohibited for minors,” Ian Kingsbury, director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine, told The Daily Signal.
The study, provided to The Daily Signal, shows that most doctors in the Sunshine State also reject racial preferences in admissions and the theory of racial concordance—that patients receive the best care from a doctor or nurse of their own race.
Opposition to racial preferences and “gender-affirming care” contradict the positions of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Endocrine Society—medical groups that ostensibly represent doctors. Yet the doctors’ positions align with the general public in Florida, according to another survey Do No Harm commissioned as part of the report.
“This overlap in opinion is no coincidence, but a clear call to re-center medicine around common sense and sound science,” Kingsbury said. “We cannot allow harmful ideologies pushed by woke activists to sully the integrity of medicine any longer. Instead, we must reinstitute excellence and integrity within our medical organizations, schools, and hospital systems.”
Do No Harm advocates for removing contested ideologies, such as transgender ideology and critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist and requires fundamental change to root out racism), from medicine in order to focus on quality.
‘Gender-Affirming Care’
When a doctor diagnoses a minor with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite the child’s sex), “treatment” first consists of “social transition,” encouraging peers to treat a boy as a girl or vice versa; then to drugs to delay puberty, which in other contexts are used for chemical castration of sex offenders; then to cross-sex hormones to make males appear female or vice-versa; and finally to surgeries to remove healthy sex organs and replace them with facsimiles of the opposite sex’s organs.
Documented side-effects of cross-sex hormones include higher risks of cancer, blood clots, and death.
Even advocates for gender-affirming care have written—in applications to receive federal funding for research—that there is no definitive proof that these grotesque interventions have positive outcomes for young patients. The Department of Health and Human Services reviewed the evidence for these interventions and found “extremely weak evidence” for benefits to counter the downsides.
The Results
While the health associations mentioned above oppose laws to protect minors from transgender interventions, both rank-and-file doctors and the general public in Florida supported them.
The survey asked doctors and the general public: “Florida has passed legislation that prohibits medical professionals from providing sex change interventions, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery, to individuals under 18. To what extend to you support or oppose that law?”
Most doctors (66%) said they “strongly support” (55%) or “somewhat support” (11%) such laws, while only 11% said they “somewhat oppose” them, and less than a quarter (23%) said they “strongly oppose” them. This support echoes that of the general public, 60% of whom said they strongly (49%) or somewhat (12%) support such laws.
Both groups also supported a policy that would “require that trans athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth.” Three-quarters of doctors said they “strongly” (64%) or “somewhat” (11%) support such a policy. Similarly, most Floridians (76%) agreed, saying they “strongly” (59%) or “somewhat” (17%) support it.
Doctors and the general public also agreed that the increase in diagnosis of gender dysphoria among minors should be a source of concern. In asking about this issue, Do No Harm cited two reports: a Reuters report that 15,172 minors (ages 6-17) had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2017 and another survey finding that 42,167 kids had been diagnosed with it in 2021.
The survey asked doctors and the general public whether the increase should be “a source of concern,” a “cause for celebration” or neither. Most doctors (64%) said it should be a source of concern, while only 1% said it should be a cause for celebration, and 35% said neither. Almost half of the public (49%) said it should be a concern, while 3% said it should inspire celebration and 47% said neither.
Racial Questions
The survey asked doctors and the general public whether this statement was true or false: “Patients have better health outcomes when they are of the same racial or ethnic background as the doctors who treat them.”
Most doctors (69%) said the statement was false, as did most of the public (78%).
The survey also asked about college or university admissions. Most doctors (68%) agreed that “applicants should be admitted solely on the basis of merit, even if that results in few minority students being admitted.” Most of the public (59%) also agreed.
The survey was conducted from May 24 to June 2, 2025 and included 736 licensed Florida physicians and 600 Florida voters.
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