Limitados por políticas de Trump, los registros de cáncer solo reconocerán a pacientes como “hombre” o “mujer”

Maximum clearances in U.S. cancer stages must soon strictly classify patients’ gender as male, female or unknown, a change that scientists and patient advocates say will negatively affect the health of the transgender population, one of the largest. marginalized from the country.

Doctors and trans rights activists say the change makes it much harder to understand diagnoses and cancer trends in this population.

Some studies have shown that tobacco consumption among transgenerate people is more common and that the usual cancer detection checks are fewer, which could increase the risk of developing disease.

Cancer investigators explain that this change is the consequence of the fact that the Trump administration only recognizes the sexes “male” and “female”.

Scientists estimate the measure will impact every cancer registry in the country — in every state and territory — so that all receive federal funds.

Starting in 2026, financial records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) will be required to classify patients’ gender as male, female, or not indicated/discredited. And only federal health agencies receive data from patients classified this way.

Currently, registries allow for specifying whether a cancer patient’s gender is “male,” “female,” “other,” providing different options for “transsexual,” and whether gender is not stated or uncovered.

In January, President Donald Trump issued an execution order that allowed the federal government to recognize gender alone. The authorities of oncological registries inform that the orders change the way of collecting data from cancer patients.

“In the United States, we received federal funds with virtually no other options,” said Eric Durbin, director of the Kentucky Cancer Registry and president of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). This institution, which receives federal money, sets the standards for reporting cancer cases throughout the United States and Canada.

Under the new standard, patients should be classified as “sex unknown” when they are documented as something distinct between male and female (e.g., nonbinary or transsexual) and there is no additional information about the sex assigned to the nacer.

An incomplete vision

The investigators report that currently they do not have quality population data on the incidence of cancer in transgender people. If you are making significant progress to improve this information, this work is now related to the risk of what is not done.

“To respect cancer and issues related to this disease, you can use cancer registries to see if you’re experiencing the greatest air contamination, because pockets of lung cancer are highest in those areas. You can look at the impact of residue buildup. Nuclear ones are linked to the types of cancer that are most common in those zip codes, in those areas of the country,” explained Shannon Kozlovich, executive committee member of the California Dialogue on Cancer.

“The more sectors of the population we have in this database, the fewer we have that are hidden,” he added. “Yes, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Over the decades, cancer registries have made it the most comprehensive vigilance tool in the country for understanding cancer incidence, surveillance tasks, and for identifying trends of concern.

Each year, hospitals, pathology laboratories and other health centers report cancer cases to regional and state registries. The compiled data documents incidence and mortality tasks by region, race, sex and age.

Federal programs are the primary sources of cancer statistics, with information on decades of millions of cases. The National Cancer Registries Program of CDC financial organizations in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Pacific territories estadounidense. Your information represents 97% of the country’s population.

For its part, the Vigilance, Epidemiology and End Results Program of the National Cancer Institute, experienced SEER, the compilation and publication of registry data that relate to the situation of the country’s population.

Information published on cancer registries has led to changes in treatment and prevention, as well as other policy measures designed to reduce the burden of diagnosis and mortality.

For example, this data makes it possible to identify the increase in cases of colorrectal cancer among people under the age of 50. As a result, U.S. clinical guidelines now recommend that adults begin checks at ages 45 and 50.

Several states have also been approved by your own measures. Lara Anton, of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said that in 2018, epidemiologists at the Texas Oncology Registry found the state had the nation’s highest rates of hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of human body cancer more common in men than women.

Due to this, the Texas Cancer Prevention and Investigation Institute launched a state project to restore the increase in the situation. The Registro Oncológico de Texas is united with SEER in 2021.

“When a patient has cancer in a registry, we will follow for the rest of their life. So we need to know if people are expected to survive past the type and stage of cancer,” Durbin said. “This is crucial for the formulation of public policies.”

The NAACCR communicates national standards that define the type of data that must be copied with each diagnosis. These standards are set by the CDC, the National Cancer Institute and other organizations.

According to Durbin, the registries compiled more than 700 pieces of patient data, including demographic, diagnostic, therapeutic and monitoring information. CDC and NCI financial records must specify the sex of the patient.

NAACCR’s definitions and data standards ensure uniform collection across the country. “All of this basically follows the standards that NAACCR establishes,” Durbin said. Although registries may list specific data at the state level, you must follow these lines when transferring the information to the federal government.

In an emailed statement, Andrew Nixon, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, said, “HHS uses biological science to guide policy, no ideological agenda like that is the Biden administration.”

A retrocession

NAACCR periodically posts updates to your lines. But, according to Kozlovich, the change in the “sex” category that will eliminate transgender options starting in 2026 was an emergent decision brought about by Trump administration policy.

Kozlovich was part of a group that encouraged the inclusion of sex data and the generation of separate variables in the collection of oncologic information.

According to an analysis of CDC data by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles (UCLA), 2.8 million people aged 13 have been identified as transgender nationwide.

Scientists and human rights advocates have come forward in interviews with people concerned that this position might have a greater risk of developing cancer or experiencing better health conditions in comparison with others.

“Without evidence of our health desires, there is no incentive for girls,” said Scout, executive director of the LGBTQIA+ Cancer Network.

A study published in 2022 concluded that transgender people and those of diverse generations were between two and three times more likely than cisgenerous people to consume cigarettes, electronic cigarettes or habanos. Tobacco use is a leading cause of cancer and cancer death.

A Canadian study published in 2019 concluded that trans patients were less likely to receive recommended checks to detect maternal, uterine and colorectal cancer. A 2023 study by Stanford Medicine investigators found that LGBTQ+ patients were three times more likely to experience a recurrence of maternal cancer compared to heterosexual cisgender people.

Scarlett Lin Gomez, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist and director of the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry explained that in less than 10 years, the National Cancer Institute has improved its ability to monitor cancer trafficking in people of different sexual orientations and gender identities. Oncology registries are a logical point explained.

“I moved forward slowly but correctly,” Gómez said. “But now, from my perspective, we are completely backslidden.”

The decision not to retrieve trans identity information from cancer patients is one of several changes that have been reported to the registries under the Trump administration, according to scientists in charge of surveillance services and health agencies.

An HHS order to reduce contracting spending has caused funding records for NCI’s SEER program. Although CDC funds for registries have not been cut, the presupposition that Casa Blanca proposed for FY 2026 eliminated funding for the National Cancer Registries Program.

Other Trump administration measures against trans people include canceling grants for LGBTQ+ health surveys, dismantling the National Institutes of Health’s Sexual and Gender Minority Health Office, and suspending specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth in the National Suicide Prevention Line 988.

“Since then, investigators cannot justify funding investigations that could benefit trans patients,” Gomez lamented. “Es un form de borrar su existentencia”.