DoD Medical Staff Call Puberty Blockers, Hormone Replacement, for Kids ‘Human Rights’
A team of military medical practitioners in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defended “gender-affirming” care, including hormone replacement and puberty blockers for dysphoric minors as young as seven years old.
In an article that appeared in the latest edition of the American Journal of Public Health, a team made up of medical professionals and clinical psychologists advocated that kids “have an inherent ability and right to consent” to surgical interventions.
“Gender-affirming health care, such as puberty suppression and affirming hormones, mitigates these risks and optimizes patient-oriented outcomes, but many TGD youths have difficulty accessing services,” the authors of “Caring for Military-Affiliated Transgender and Gender-Diverse Youths: A Call for Protections,” write.
“Some well-intentioned military-affiliated clinicians may not be aware that a ‘watchful waiting’ approach has a different risk profile than a gender-affirmative approach (which allows for gender identity exploration), and that ‘conversion therapy’ is unethical, harmful, and generally illegal,” the military health officials wrote in one section. “Patients may face ‘gatekeeping’ and major delays in care, including protracted and pathologizing psychiatric evaluations that question patient motives.”
However, such arguments are “laughable” to Stanley Goldfarb, a doctor for the organization Do No Harm. “The notion that 7-year-old children are capable of such decisions is beyond laughable,” Goldfarb told Fox News. “The existence of a large, perhaps as much as 25% cohort of ‘detransitioners,’ suggests the folly of assuming the soundness of childhood decisions.”
Asked by Fox News whether the department supports the research produced by its members, the DoD responded by saying it “will train its health care providers in keeping with current science and best medical evidence,” in a statement provided to Fox News.
The paper cited another academic study that showed over half of the military-affiliated physicians “would not prescribe gender-affirming hormones regardless of training.” Nearly 90 percent of such practitioners “indicated they did not have sufficient training to prescribe gender-affirming hormones to transgender adults.”
