Pediatricians who aren’t on board with pronouns, puberty blockers, and hormones are guilty of “transphobia” and need help, according to Dartmouth Health staff. They suggest pediatricians reflect on their “implicit bias” and that they “do some personal work in understanding how biases negatively affect the care they provide.”
In their American Academy of Pediatrics article, endocrinologist Frances Lim-Liberty and Jessica Smith, nurse practitioner and program coordinator for the Dartmouth Health Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender program, claim that pediatricians who “lack knowledge” may default to the “watch and wait” approach to see whether children will outgrow their confusion without affirmation and medicalization. “This method is outdated and harmful, denying resources needed to explore gender identity.” Never mind that research consistently shows that about 80% of children will outgrow their gender dysphoria if their identities aren’t affirmed.
They try to coerce physicians with The Trevor Project’s trans-or-die myth. “When youth are not affirmed, there is a significant increase in depression, anxiety, risky behaviors, and suicide.”
Lim-Liberty and Smith seem to be ignorant of developments in European nations, where national health services and medical associations have restricted access to puberty blockers or issued stark warnings. They make no mention of the July 14 letter to the Wall Street Journal, “The Evidence of Gender Transition for Youth,” in which 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries, including Finland’s leading expert, Riittakerttu Kaltiala, challenged Endocrine Society President Stephen Hammes’ claim that gender-affirming care improves well-being and reduces suicide.
Related: Experts: Child Transing Doesn’t Reduce Suicide
These international experts emphasized that “There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.” They implore US medical societies “to align their recommendations with the best evidence, rather than exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.” These risks “are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication, and the anguish of regret.”
Anyone who’s set foot in a high school knows that transgenderism is a craze. Physician and researcher Lisa Littman hypothesized that transgenderism spread among teens as a social contagion. She coined the phrase Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) to describe girls who suddenly identified after being influenced by peers and social media stars.
But Lim-Liberty and Smith dismiss ROGD in language better suited to an advocacy group’s newsletter than a medical journal: “fictitious phenomenon,” “distinctly biased,” “anti-trans agenda,” “talking points,” “insidiously undermine.” They seem unaware that concerns about ROGD led to the closure of Tavistock in England, the world’s largest children’s gender clinic, as documented in BBC Journalist Hannah Barnes’ book “Time to Think.” In 10 years the number of girls seeking sex-trait modification at that clinic had increased by a mind-boggling 5,337%.
The Dartmouth staff’s article serves as a warning about how deeply Dartmouth Health is invested in an ideology that teaches that boys and girls are born with gender identities, and if these identities don’t match their bodies, they need to be turned into life-long medical patients.
