First: Do Ho Harm… An Insider’s View Of Trans Treatment For Kids
By DEACON MIKE MANNO
A brave gender clinician recently published an article that exposes the lie promoted by the Progressive Left, the Biden administration, and trans activists wherever they may be located, many of whom are teachers and staff of our public school system.
Jamie Reed didn’t necessarily target those progressive groups in her article published in The Free Press February 9. She began:
“I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor.”
She went on to explain that for the past few years she worked for the Washington University School of Medicine where she worked with teens and young adults who were HIV positive, noting that many of them were either trans or gender nonconforming. She served as case manager for the then recently established transgender center in the university’s children’s hospital. There she oversaw about a thousand “distressed young people,” the majority of which received hormone prescriptions which “can have life-altering consequences.”
She left the clinic last November “because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.”
In describing some of the patients, she wrote: “The girls who came to us had many co-morbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. . . . Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t)….The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.”
She noted that to begin the transition process the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist, usually the one that the hospital recommended. They then had a meeting or two with the therapist who would then “green light” the process.
“When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor.”
But, she reported, the center downplayed the negative consequence and emphasized the need for transition. She quoted the center’s website as telling potential patients: “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.”
In reference, she wrote that there are no reliable studies showing same.
Then she turned to several cases that she had handled in which the child-patient was harmed. She obviously holds the hospital, doctors, and staff responsible for what was happening, but spared no criticism for parents, some of whom were almost aggressively supporting transition of their children, and others who did not understand the science and simply took the word of the doctors. One case was particularly interesting.
One mother brought in her 11-year-old daughter for puberty blockers. During intake the mom described her girl as being “kind of a tomboy.” When asked if the girl had ever used a boy’s name or said she felt like a boy, the mother said no. Ms. Reed then told the mom that her daughter really didn’t meet the criteria for evaluation.
About a month later the mother called back and said her daughter was now using a boy’s name, was distressed over her body, and wanted treatment. The girl met with a doctor who approved her for trans treatment and prescribed puberty blockers. Now at the time the mother and father were engaged in a custody dispute and the father was against the trans treatment while mother was pushing forward. At a hearing on the matter a doctor from the hospital testified that the girl recently described as a tomboy was in need of the puberty blockers.
The judge ruled in favor of the mother who quickly signed the permission forms and the 11-year-old got the puberty blockers against her father’s wishes.
As we all know from public reporting, there are numerous trangendered persons who seek to detransition. Unfortunately, many despair after transition, finding the medical treatment is not what they had expected and many of those people eventually commit suicide.
Ms. Reed and a colleague began to track those who were attempting to return to their birth gender and why.
“We thought the doctors would want to collect and understand this data in order to figure out what they had missed. We were wrong. One doctor wondered aloud why he would spend time on someone who was no longer his patient.”
As she began to raise concerns about the treatment kids were receiving, she noted that for the first time in her career she was getting lower marks on her performance evaluations. She was told, “Get on board, or get out.” Ultimately, she got out.
Currently there are more than one hundred such clinics in the United States that Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman and assistant secretary for the U. S. Department of Human Services, says are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who should not receive them.
Nonetheless, Ms. Reed disagrees, “Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.”
She mentioned three nations, Great Britain, Sweden, and Finland, who have investigated and curbed some of the practices of children in these clinics, calling the treatment for youngsters “experimental.”
“Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed,” she concluded. “Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: ‘We are building the plane while we are flying it.’ No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft.”
She has taken her notes and views to the office of the Missouri attorney general whom she is now working with on remedies.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/)
