The Florida Department of Health has taken an extremely smart and bold move to protect children and adolescents in the Sunshine State from very harmful exploitation by sex and gender ideologues. This protection is deeply needed and that department’s forward thinking is to be highly commended. Florida’s leadership should be replicated by the other 49 state and territorial departments of health in America.
The Florida Department of Health sent a memorandum to medical doctors across the state explaining how careful, peer-reviewed scientific research advises significant caution to physicians in providing social gender transitions, puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and removal of health body parts from our children.
This medical memorandum explains,
Systematic reviews on hormonal treatment for young people show a trend of low-quality evidence, small sample sizes, and medium to high risk of bias. A paper published in the International Review of Psychiatry states that 80% of those seeking clinical care will lose their desire to identify with the nonbirth sex. One review concludes that “hormonal treatments for transgender adolescents can achieve their intended physical effects, but evidence regarding their psychosocial and cognitive impact is generally lacking.” (emphasis in original)
The Florida Department of Health is correctly cautioning all of its medical providers throughout the state to resist getting swept up in the gender transition fad with their young patients based on “the lack of conclusive evidence, and the potential for long-term, irreversible effects” of such trendy, medically controversial treatments.
The department also explains to doctors across Florida that these guidelines toward greater caution “are consistent with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services age requirement for surgical and non-surgical treatment” as well as in line “with the guidance, reviews, and recommendations from Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, and France.”
The international trend is clearly moving away from recommending such radical medical procedures for their young people and the Florida Department of Health is wisely reflecting that growing caution. This bold, principled, and medically documented advisory is similar to what the Lone Star State has done to protect children from the dangerous and regretful craze of gender reassignment surgeries, referring to it as possible child abuse. There are well-documented legal and medical reasons for adopting such strong opposition.
Other state leaders and medical professionals should consider similar counter-cultural, but medically indicated, policies. They truly are the compassionate and protective health-care directions professionals should take.
Photo from Shutterstock.
