President Joe Biden’s nominee to be Director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy refused to answer Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’ questions Wednesday about gender-affirming care for young kids with gender dysphoria.
Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the nominee to lead Biden’s science office, refused three times to answer Cruz’s questions about gender-affirming care. She described the topic as a “complex” issue she wasn’t particularly familiar with.
“The Biden administration’s Assistant Secretary for Health, Rachel Levine, all but said that the science surrounding ‘gender-affirming care’ was ‘settled’ … gender-affirming care is a euphemism for all sorts of policies that, with young children, can involve puberty-blocking drugs, that can involve, at extreme levels, surgeries that permanently alter their reproductive capacity, their capacity for the rest of their life,” Cruz said. “Do you think it’s accurate that questions such as that are settled science and no one is even allowed to ask what are the consequences of an 8-year-old child being given severe drugs that alter their physiology for the rest of their life?”
“Sen. Cruz, I think you are talking about an area that is quite complex, I think gender is actually complex in ways that are surprising to many people,” Prabhakar answered. “My view on this matter is that fundamental to this topic is respect for the individuals who are involved.”
Cruz interjected to point out that Prabhakar wasn’t answering the question, and repeated it. “That’s an area that’s, again, very complex. It’s not one that I have deep personal familiarity with. It’s one that I would want to learn a lot more about,” Prabhakar said before being interrupted again.
Cruz said that it wasn’t a complex question, and that it’s “amazing” that a nominee to be a top science adviser couldn’t say whether or not asking questions about “gender-affirming care” is okay. (RELATED: They Say There’s ‘No Argument’ About Letting Kids Have Sex Changes — But Plenty Of Scientists Are Pushing Back)
“Unfortunately, what you’re demonstrating here is that politics is more important than science,” Cruz concluded.