“Gender-affirming” doctors authored an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics of the BMJ (British Medical Journal) in which they advise the trans industry how they can prevail over parents who are reluctant to allow their children to participate in treatments, such as puberty blocker, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
Dr. Samuel Dubin, a plastic surgeon at University of Michigan School of Medicine, and his colleagues wrote the article titled “Medically Assisted Gender Affirmation: When Children and Parents Disagree.”
In the authors’ view, there is a lack of guidance for trans providers of “gender-affirming” medical treatments in how to handle the situation of parents who refuse to give consent to allow their children, who claim to identify with a gender incompatible with their biological sex, to be treated with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and, even sex reassignment surgery.
The authors state their mission:
Our discussion approaches this parent–child disagreement in a manner that prioritises the developing autonomy of transgender youth in the decision-making process surrounding medically assisted gender affirmation. We base our arguments in the literature surrounding the risks and benefits of gender-affirming therapy in transgender children and the existing legal basis for recognising minors’ decision-making authority in certain medical situations.
“We conclude that situations where a parent prevents a minor from receiving treatments related to gender dysphoria violate the Harm Principle and justify state intervention,” Dubin and colleagues assert.
“Neglect, as a medico-legal term, can be used to initiate an evaluation by Child Protective Services and remove a parent as a child’s legal guardian in the most severe instances,” they add, citing others in the transgender industry who continue the narrative that “gender-affirming therapies … improve quality of life, decrease depression and decrease high-risk behaviours.”
The authors advise:
[R]esearch supports invoking parental neglect when youth who experience extreme gender dysphoria are prevented from accessing medically recommended gender-affirming interventions. This course of action as a recourse for parent–child disagreement over gender-affirming medical interventions requiring consent is consistent with the established understanding of paediatric ethics and thresholds for over-riding consent.
“Detransitioner” Hacsi Horváth, who identified as a woman for 13 years until 2013, tweeted, “No child is ‘trans.’”
Disgraceful and repulsive. “Trans” industry personnel discuss how to overcome or even go around parent objections to “affirmatively” sterilizing & transing children. No child is “trans.” | Journal of Medical Ethics https://t.co/FpXk8PO8gc
— Hacsi Horvath (@givethemseeds) January 27, 2020
“Disgraceful and repulsive,” he said, calling attention to the BMJ article. “‘Trans’ industry personnel discuss how to overcome or even go around parent objections to ‘affirmatively’ sterilizing & transing children.”
As Breitbart News reported in December, radical LGBTQ organizations and the transgender drug and surgical industry are obtaining name-brand support from some of the nation’s medical and mental health societies who provide cover for their experimentation on children who suffer from gender dysphoria.
For example, the BMJ authors state “current gender-affirming medical practice” is in accord with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization that Atlanta-based pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter explained was launched by psychologist John Money and sexologist Alfred Kinsey to push a political agenda for gender ideology.
“This is not a scientifically based organization,” Van Meter told Breitbart News during an interview in 2018. “It’s essentially a pseudo-professional group of people who are pushing an agenda and have been since the beginning.”
“To be a member in WPATH, you only need to have an interest in transgender issues,” he explained. “There is no professional degree required, no training specifically, no certification. If you want to be a member, all you need to do is pay your dues.”
Van Meter added that guidelines published by the Endocrine Society “are essentially a rubber-stamped version of the WPATH guidelines.”
The BMJ’s “gender-affirming” authors support their position by observing “WPATH and the Endocrine Society suggest that transgender children can make their own medical decisions at the age of 16 years.”
The authors also note a 2016 statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that suggests “children begin involvement in their medical decisions in a developmentally appropriate manner beginning at age 7, with a graduating involvement based on age and disease experience.”
The authors cite the AAP as they shut down the concerns of parents who hesitate to provide consent for life-altering drugs or surgeries for fear their children will regret the decision later in life.
“Recently, the AAP has reaffirmed this position specifically in the transgender population,” Dubin and colleagues state. “Children ‘reverting’ to their gender assigned at birth is a controversial concern that some parents may have in pre-pubertal children that has recently been denounced by the AAP and a systemic review.”
“The Pediatric Endocrine Society’s statement that puberty suppressing agents are reversible is highly deceptive. Adolescents can never regain the years lost to the blockade of normal bone, brain, and pelvic development.” My latest https://t.co/NftMdxUUbp via @PublicDiscourse
— Michael K. Laidlaw, MD (@MLaidlawMD) January 14, 2020
Dr. Michael Laidlaw, a California-based endocrinologist, told Breitbart News the medical societies often cited by the “gender-affirming” industry “have created an institutionalized childhood pathway towards sterility.”
He added:
It’s really critical to understand that our medical organizations beginning with the Endocrine Society and moving on to the Pediatric Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatricians, that, with respect to this topic, have been taken over by the most radical elements. These radical trans activists were involved in writing the Endocrine Society guidelines in 2009 and 2017. These are low to no quality evidence guidelines, and anyone can read for themselves the poor evidence they have for these treatments for children and adolescents.
The medical societies, Laidlaw said, have been infiltrated by radical transgender activists with “one of the most insidious child sterilization programs ever devised.”
The BMJ authors, nevertheless, cite these societies freely, to provide evidence for the “benefits” of puberty-blocking drugs and even surgical treatments for young people:
Recent insurance database analysis and patient-reported outcome studies identified patients as young as 14 years old undergoing a gender-affirming mastectomy. Some research works suggest there are psychosocial benefits to individuals receiving gender mastectomy in their teens. For both surgical and hormonal gender-affirming care, there are psychosocial and physical benefits for transgender minors.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, confirmed to Breitbart News Dubin and colleagues “make the case for a child’s right to self-consent to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and body-modifying surgeries – with state override of resistant parents.”
“Parents are already losing their children over this issue,” she said, adding:
Sadly, with a few exceptions, the medical establishment is placing sexual ideology and profits above children’s health and well-being. While opposition to the transition of youth is being painted as a “right-wing” movement, this label cannot apply to the Australian College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners in the United Kingdom, and the Swedish National Council for Medical Ethics, all of whom characterize prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in youth as experimental and dangerous. Similarly, world-renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Christopher Gillberg has referred to this as “possibly one of the greatest scandals in medical history” and his neuropsychiatry research group at Gothenburg University has called for “an immediate moratorium on the use of puberty blocker drugs because of their unknown long-term effects.”
Horvath wrote in 2018 that “gender-affirming” proponents “could well be described as marketing and recruitment for ‘being trans.’”
“Patients of any age need only say they think they are really the opposite sex, or wish they were, and affirmative care clinicians are happy to get busy, scheduling surgeries and prescribing lifelong drug regimens,” he asserted.
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This article was republished with permission from Breitbart News
Dr. Susan Berry
Susan Berry has a doctorate in psychology. She writes about cultural, educational, and healthcare issues.
