By Deacon Mike Manno
(The
Wanderer) – 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/)
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