A leading US children’s hospital that was investigated over its gender transition practices has announced it will no longer offer the treatment to children. Washington University which runs the gender clinic at St. Louis Children’s Hospital was accused of pressuring young patients to expedite their transitions.
The Christian Post reports it will no longer prescribe drugs or hormones to children after the state of Missouri recently enacted new laws that allow patients who were treated as minors, to sue clinics and doctors. The university said that created an “unsustainable liability” for health-care professionals.
Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson signed off on the law earlier this year. He said it protected children from making “life-altering decisions they could come to regret.” Describing such procedures as “harmful” and “irreversible,” Governor Parson stressed that “these decisions have permanent consequences for life and should not be made by impressionable children who may be in crisis or influenced by the political persuasions of others.”
In February, Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey called for a moratorium on the St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s performance of such procedures and launched an investigation into claims from a whistleblower that the gender clinic was “permanently harming vulnerable patients in its care.”
The whistleblower who was a former case manager at the clinic alleged that “it had permanently sterilised hundreds of children, caused many children to make attempts on their lives, and performed irreversible gender-transition surgeries on minors — all while lying to the public and parents.” Her sworn affidavit stated that the clinic “prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones automatically, without individualised assessment of each child, and often without parental consent.” Her claims were substantiated by a New York Times investigation.
The university had earlier announced that an internal investigation found that “allegations of substandard care causing adverse outcomes for patients at the clinic were unsubstantiated.” It determined the clinic should adopt a more detailed and formalised approach to documenting parental consent and in responding to any requests of public engagement on the matter of transgender care.
The Christian Post writes that the American College of Pediatricians has identified potential side effects of puberty blockers as “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.” It also warned that cross-sex hormones can cause youth to experience “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.”
Twenty-one states have passed similar legislation as Missouri, although some are still subject to legal challenges.
Photo: Facebook – St Louis Children’s Hospital
