Dear Mr. Brown:

I am writing to express my concern regarding pharmaceutical interventions provided to children under the category of “gender-affirming care.” These interventions include puberty blockers, anti-androgens, and wrong-sex hormones.

The toxic effects of puberty blockers include “emotional lability” (crying, irritability, impatience, anger, aggression), headache, general pain, acne, seborrhea, rash, vaginitis, vaginal bleeding, vaginal discharge, convulsions, and pseudotumor cerebri (a condition that mimics the symptoms of a brain tumor – headache, blurred vision, double vision, loss of vision, pain behind the eye with eye movement, ringing in the ears, dizziness, and nausea – although no actual tumor is involved).

The toxic effects of anti-androgens include decrease in bone mineral density, increased risk of bone fractures, weight gain, decreased muscle mass, insulin resistance, decreased sex drive, sexual dysfunction, hot flashes, gynecomastia, shrinkage of the testicles, anemia, and fatigue.

The toxic effects of wrong-sex hormones include changes in liver enzyme levels indicative of liver dysfunction, changes in blood serum lipid profiles predictive of heart disease, blood clots in the veins (venous thromboembolism, or VTE), testicular cancer, and liver cancer.

Despite this long list of toxic effects, these drugs are given routinely to children with no physical abnormality of any kind.

I am concerned that these interventions may be in violation of Maryland Criminal Law §3‑601, which as you know defines child abuse as physical injury that:

1.    creates a substantial risk of death; or
2.    causes permanent or protracted serious

A.    disfigurement;

B.    loss of the function of any bodily member or organ; or 

C.    impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.

I urge you to appoint a task force to investigate whether any or all of these interventions are in violation of existing Maryland law against child abuse. As I am sure you already know, your professional counterpart in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has already publicly declared these interventions are in violation of existing Texas law.

Thank you for your kind consideration.