Science of sex and gender being misrepresented by Trump officials, experts warnhttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/science-of-sex-and-gender-being-misrepresented-by-trump-officials-experts-warn/ar-AA1XckMU?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=fd1aed5dc18c43a3acc6c52ecacb8708&ei=116 🔗 [Link: msn.com/en-us/news/us/science-of-sex-and-gender-being-misrepresented-by-trump-officials-experts-warn/ar-AA1XckMU/]Melody Schreiber (27 Feb 2026)
As more health systems end gender-affirming care for patients amid a crackdown from the Trump administration, scientists and advocates say the science of sex and gender is being misrepresented – and will have major repercussions for the healthcare for all Americans.
Trump officials "don't actually understand the science at all", said Jey McCreight, who is the founder of Beyond X&Y and has a doctoral degree in human genomics. McCreight, who uses they/them pronouns, added that using misinformation to limit who can seek healthcare is a warning for all patients.
"These attacks are fundamentally coming from a broader attempt to dismantle science and expertise and truth," they said.
Jess McLaughlin, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage, who also uses they/them pronouns, said: "These oversimplified understandings of the biology of sex are being used to back up transgender legislation and federal policy."
They said: "The science is being misrepresented in such a way to hurt people."
The administration is "not just attacking trans people, it's attacking women's rights, bodily autonomy around abortion, disabled people, autistic people", McCreight said. "It's a larger movement to try to make people conform to what's seen as an ideal, but that ideal really comes from white Christian nationalism, not scientific reality."
The HHS order referred to gender-affirming care as "sex-rejecting procedures", a phrase that appears to have originated with a conservative religious group in April 2025. That rhetoric implies "a very strict set of characteristics that don't change", McLaughlin said, "which is just not true".
