Michael Laidlaw
This content was last updated Nov. 15, 2023, 10:51 p.m. UTC
Michael Laidlaw is an American endocrinologist, a former member of the conservative group American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and a member of the defunct Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working Group, which promoted anti-trans theories such as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). He has testified in favor of banning gender-affirming care for minors in multiple court cases. Laidlaw currently works in California.
Examples [of incidents similar to transgender healthcare] in the United States: the despicable Tuskegee syphilis experiment on African-Americans. The entire German medical establishment was behind atrocious human eugenics experiments in Nazi Germany, including untold numbers of children.
Education and Work
Laidlaw earned his Medical Degree from the University of Southern California's Medical School in 2001, then completed his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at Los Angeles County Medical Center.
He has worked in his own private endocrinology practice since 2006, and was a member of The Endocrine Society from 2006 to 2022.
Laidlaw has published three anti-transgender articles in conservative think tank The Witherspoon Institute’s journal The Public Discourse.
GD Working Group
Laidlaw was a member of the Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working Group (PAGDWG), a now defunct anti-transgender international association of medical professionals against transgender healthcare. Formed in 2018 to support a then upcoming ROGD paper by Lisa Littman, PAGDWG’s roster included many noteworthy anti-transgender medical professionals, such as Ray Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, and Lisa Marchiano. Laidlaw has been credited as a member of PAGDWG in multiple amicus briefs filed in anti-transgender court cases.
ACPeds
Laidlaw was a member of ACPeds until 2018. He has co-authored multiple papers with other ACPeds members, such as Michelle Cretella, André Van Mol, and Quentin Van Meter. He was a signee on a petition filed by ACPeds in 2018 to demand that members of then president Trump’s administration issue a legal definition of sex as a “binary, biologically determined, and immutable trait from conception forward.”
Amicus Briefs
Laidlaw has provided expert testimony in amicus briefs, as well as witness reports and affidavits, in multiple anti-transgender court cases. These include Adams v. School Board of St. John County, alongside far-right hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF); DH and John Doe v. Jami Synder; Hecox and Jane Doe v. Bradley Little; Eknes-Tucker v. Ivey; and Travis County v. Greg Abbott.
Laidlaw testified in a 2022 deposition that he has never performed primary research on gender dysphoria or transgender people, that has never published a paper using original research on gender dysphoria or transgender people, that none of his published works about gender dysphoria are peer reviewed, and that he has never managed the care of a patient experiencing gender dysphoria.
Elisa Rae Shupe leaks
In March of 2023, Laidlaw was exposed in a batch of emails leaked by former detransitioner Elisa Rae Shupe for having worked alongside other medical professionals and politicians in a secretive working group formed to craft anti-transgender legislation headed by South Dakota representative Fred Deutsche.