(RightIsRight.co) – Confirming parents’ long-standing fears, Doctors Protecting Children issued a grave declaration expressing “serious concerns” about gender-transition treatment for minors.
The conservative American College of Pediatricians and the Catholic Medical Association are among the eighteen health policy and medical associations that have signed the “Doctors Protecting Children” declaration, along with nearly 100 doctors and health leaders.
The declaration stated that “responsible informed consent is not possible” with minors due to the “extremely limited long-term follow-up studies of interventions, and the immature, often impulsive, nature of the adolescent brain.”
Most gender confusion in minors “will resolve those mental incongruencies after experiencing the normal developmental process of puberty,” the declaration said.
In addition, physicians should instead recommend psychotherapy for underlying mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, autism, and prior emotional trauma.
There are “serious long-term risks associated with the use of social transition, puberty blockers, masculinizing or feminizing hormones, and surgeries, not the least of which is potential sterility.”
Evidence-based medical research now demonstrates there is little to no benefit from any or all suggested ‘gender-affirming’ interventions for adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria.
Furthermore, American College of Pediatricians Executive Director Jill Simons said the group has been “sounding the alarm” since the leaking of internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
Such documents showed experts privately acknowledging that young patients often lack proper understanding about the severity of the life-altering medical decisions they are making and the possible consequences involved, including sterility, derailed sexual development, and general regret.
This is despite WPATH publicly advocating in its Standards of Care 8 for those with diagnosed “gender incongruence” to have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries as long as patients can demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment.”
Other WPATH members have said the current transgender treatment protocol might be correlated with advanced diseases, such as cancer.
One doctor reported treating a 16-year-old patient who developed large liver tumors after being prescribed norethindrone acetate, which can serve as a puberty-blocker substitute, to suppress menstruation for several years and testosterone for one year.
WPATH member Dianne Berg, a child psychologist and co-author of the child chapter of Standards of Care 8, acknowledged children lack the ability to “understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
Meanwhile, a recent study in England found no comprehensive evidence to support the routine prescription of transgender drugs to minors with gender dysphoria.
Copyright 2024, RightIsRight.co
