Using Children As Guinea Pigs Is Not HealthCare

On Tuesday, March 31, Equality Utah sent an email that included the following misinformation:

“Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility. And being visible literally saves lives. This year, a wave of anti-transgender bills swept across the country. Sadly, the Idaho governor just signed two anti-transgender bills into law. 
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Here in Utah, the Eagle Forum worked aggressively to push legislation to criminalize transition related healthcare for transgender children. They recruited Representative Brad Daw to carry out their harmful legislation. Thankfully, when Rep. Daw met with transgender children and their parents and doctors, he just couldn’t do it. He listened with an open heart and refused to advance the Eagle Forum’s cruel medical ban.

We are grateful to the courageous advocates who are working to change hearts and minds on Capitol Hill.”
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Equality Utah referred to “healthcare for transgender children.”  It is incomprehensible to call experimental medical procedures, that hurt and permanently damage children, “healthcare.” These are unproven treatments that use children as guinea pigs.

It is important to know that many organizations including Empowered Families, a coalition of 30 pro-family organizations, along with the Berean Baptist Church and The Compassion Coalition, and Utah Eagle Forum all joined together on this critically important legislation, and worked very hard during the Legislative session to protect children dealing with gender dysphoria (discomfort with one’s biological sex).

These experimental treatments are currently legal in Utah and are seriously harming our children, including:

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• Puberty blockers:  Children as young as 9 years old, are taken to adolescent transgender clinics where they are given unproven drugs, usually Lupron, to block puberty.

1. There is not a single long-term study to demonstrate that puberty blockers are safe for gender incongruent youth. This means that the claim that puberty blockers are harmless for gender incongruent youth is a lie.
2. There are also many harmful life-long side effects associated with the use of Lupron. These include premature osteoporosis, seizures, anxiety disorders in young women, obesity and testicular cancer in young men, memory problems in men and women, and when prescribed simultaneously with or followed by cross-sex hormones, permanent sterility in both sexes. The fact that the long-term permanent harm caused by these procedures have not been ruled out by the promoters of treatments means that informed consent is not possible for parents or their children.
3. Puberty blockers used on young boys have been reported to cause the development of their genitalia to be arrested.  By their late teens, it was found that their genitalia were equivalent to that of a 9 year-old boy and that they experienced a loss of sexual sensation. This is a permanent condition. 

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• Cross-sex hormones: Trans-identified youth next take dangerous cross-sex hormones to try to present as the opposite sex. Young girls are given testosterone and young boys are given estrogen.​​ 

1. This puts youth at an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots, cancer and more across their lifespan. And the best long-term evidence we have among adults shows medical intervention fails to reduce suicide.
2. Most gender-distressed teens are girls and boys who are anxious, depressed, traumatized, struggling with ADHD, autism or other mental illnesses, and are uncomfortable with their bodies and struggling with their identity. Several case reports and series show that the vast majority of teens can embrace their bodies through psychological counseling alone.

 

• Surgery: Top and bottom surgeries are being given to adolescents to change their sexual body parts. Girls as young as 12 years old are being subjected to mastectomies. These surgeries can and often do render children permanently sterile.

These misguided, draconian therapies and procedures can hardly be called Healthcare. Rather, they are radical, irreversible and dangerous experiments on children, without any credible medical or scientific validation. Introducing opposite sex hormones, and surgically removing and crudely reconstructing sexual  body parts, cannot change a human male into a female and a human female into a male. It may tragically succeed in making one look something like the other, but these children and/or adults will always remain the biological sex they were assigned by God.

The truth is, the rates of non-persistence (those who change their mind and are comfortable with their biological sex) are EXTREMELY HIGH. According to the DSM-5, females who identify during childhood as male, the rate of non-persistence can be as high as 88%.  For males identifying as females, the rate of non-persistence is as high as 97.8%.  There are many other studies with similar results. This shows that the vast majority of children resolve and identify as their biological sex by adulthood.

Dr. Michelle Cretella M.D., executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, has said, “Puberty is not a disease. It is a critical window of development that is permanently disrupted by puberty blockers because time machines do not exist. When normal puberty is artificially arrested, valuable time that should be spent in normal development is forever stolen from these children. This time period, during which highly significant and irreplaceable advances in bone, brain, sexual and psycho-social development occur, is time that can never be given back.”

Dr. Cretella went on to say, “the medical establishment is “affirming” a population of emotionally troubled and neurologically diverse youth onto a pathway of chemical and surgical sterilization and other life-long risks. This is eugenics not healthcare. Minors and their parents are being led astray by a few in the medical establishment and greater cultural movement driven by an evil ideology and financial greed, not science and the Hippocratic Oath. The suppression of normal puberty, sterilization, and the surgical mutilation of children constitutes atrocities and crimes against humanity, not healthcare.”

According to the Controlled Substance Database of Utah, the number of female to male transgender minors in Utah going through medical transition in 2019 was 553. That was just the girls, we don’t have the numbers yet for the boys (male to female), but we can assume that it is significant.  That would mean that presently approximately 1000 children are being medically “treated” with this experimental treatment. That is a 10000% increase over the last 5 years. A thousand children being used as guinea pigs.  A thousand children whose bodies are being mutilated. A thousand children who are being sterilized. And Equality Utah calls this “Healthcare for transgender children.” Appalling.

It is time that the Legislature and the people of Utah do something about this. Please talk to all of the candidates currently running for public office, especially those running for governor or the legislature, about this horrible practice.  The legislators are the only ones who can pass a law making it illegal for doctors to give these experimental drugs and medical procedures to children.  The governor will then need to sign the bill.  That is why we need a commitment from all of them to stop these procedures now.

Our vulnerable children and their futures are at stake.

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