Posted on 02/20/2012 5:23:47 AM PST by reaganaut1
CHICAGO—A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.
It's an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.
An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, "I a boy" and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press.
Pediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr. Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston.
"If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They're out there. They're in your practices," Spack said in an interview.
Switching gender roles and occasionally pretending to be the opposite sex is common in young children. But these kids are different. They feel certain they were born with the wrong bodies.
Some are labeled with "gender identity disorder," a psychiatric diagnosis. But Spack is among doctors who think that's a misnomer. Emerging research suggests they may have brain differences more similar to the opposite sex.
Spack said by some estimates, 1 in 10,000 children have the condition.
Offering sex-changing treatment to kids younger than 18 raises ethical concerns, and their parents' motives need to be closely examined, said Dr. Margaret Moon, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' bioethics committee. She was not involved in any of the reports.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You can’t change your sex. To do so, you would have to change every cell in the body.
It’s funny...
We oppose genital mutilation in other countries,but not here.
markoman
I just woke up to the realization that I was born a billionaire...now I need the government to make my fantasy a reality.
An 18-month-old. Really. At 18 months, they could just as easily say, “I a puppy”, so does that mean the parents should help turn the child into a dog? GEEEEEZ
I suppose if the little darling had said “I a boat” they would’ve put sails and a rudder on her.
Munchausen by Proxi syndrome.
Human brains continue to grow outside the womb.
I have read as long as 10 years. consistently 3-5 years.
so some quack reinforces a lunatic mother’s agenda and presto a child is destroyed.
This is disgusting- pure child abuse. The way things are going it’s hard to even imagine what the world will be like in 100 years.
An 18-month-old. Really. At 18 months, they could just as easily say, “I a puppy”, so does that mean the parents should help turn the child into a dog? GEEEEEZ
This is not about turning boys into girls, but about turning boys into eunuchs.
If an unborn child is an inconvenience, kill it.
If it "progresses" to the moment of birth, but is still an inconvenience, kill it.
And if it "progresses" further to childhood, mutilate it to serve a political ideology.
Progressivism 101.
This is shocking and sickening.
We are well on the way to normalizing homosexuality. Remember the alphabet coalition, “LGBT”? The gay community embraces the “T”, the trans-sexual, trans-gendered as part of their movement.
What I’m trying to say is, that since we have normalized homosexuality, we are now on the way to normalizing all other gender identity, gender confusion, sexual problems, sexual issues.
Homosexuality was once considered a mental disorder. Not saying that we should put such people away in a mental facility, but, we have normalized that. Now the bar is lowered, and now we want to normalize this whole area of gender confusion. For now, these areas are still officially considered mental conditions, but you wonder for how long that will be the case.
What shocks me most of all is that this involves children. It’s one thing to talk about adults who want operations or hormones to change their gender identity. It’s one thing for someone who is a consenting adult to make decisions in this area.
It’s something else again to take the word of an 18 month old that he/she feels they belong to the wrong sex. And that they are taking the word of children that they feel they belong to the wrong sex, and doing these treatments, is Dr. Mengele territory, in my opinion.
And some would be shocked that God would withhold His Grace and allow Obama’s re-election and the destruction of America, for it’s abuse of it’s liberties.
Why aren’t children taken away from such mothers?
Good point that, parents are reinforcing this in their kids. Kids can say they want to be the other sex. But without the active involvement of liberal minded parents, taking them to doctors and such, nothing like this would happen.
Children pretend. It’s a huge part of being a child. A kid in my neighborhood used to live in his Batman costume. It didn’t mean he was Batman. He’s now a very normal, successful adult.
The idea that adults play on a child’s imagination, turning that imaginary life into his reality is sickening to say the least.
My cousin and I, when we were little, used to pretend we were horses. It was years before I realized that really, I’m a cat.
To do this to children and adolescents is nothing short of evil. Especially with the kind of research that has now been done on the brain and how it develops, we now know that the human brain isn’t fully developed in people until they are in their 20’s. Young children and teens simply cannot make such a decision that will impact their lives so drastically. And the adults involved should really know better.
I decided to look up the suicide rates for these people and they are very high. For adults, it is around 30% (much higher than the general population in this country). For "transgendered teens" it is close to 50%.
Now, if there were any other surgery that had suicide rates that high, would people still be allowed to do it? No! There would be congressional hearings, there would be lawsuits. But, no, not this surgery. Any criticism of it is off limits.
There was an article some years ago by a physician who had started this whole gender-changing surgery. He had decided to stop doing it because it didn't help with the "pathologies" that he had seen before the surgery. They had the surgery, and still had all the problems. Nothing changed, so he decided to rethink it, and stop doing the surgeries.
Why did you cherry pick my statement?
I concluded by saying the risks were too high. Which is exactly what you pointed out.
um.....ok?
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