Dr. Spack

A word from our sponsor:

The Breast Form Store Little Imperfections Big Rewards Sale Banner Ad (Save up to 50% off)
Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

I was sent this yesterday. It is interesting that the OLD Guard is refusing to die! Well, They do not have to die but I wish they would just go away!!!! Read for yourselves.

Story was posted on Fox.news

Boston's Children's Hospital bills itself as the hospital for
children – and now it's also the hospital for children who want a sex
change, a procedure some critics are calling "barbaric."

Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has
launched a clinic for transgendered kids – boys who feel like girls,
girls who want to be boys – and he's opening his doors to patients as
young as 7.

Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the
onset of puberty. The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that
would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life,
allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the
change.

Spack also offers some teenagers hormone therapy, a drastic step that
changes the way they grow and develop. While the effects of drug
treatments can be stopped, long-term hormone therapy can be
irreversible, causing permanent infertility in both sexes.

For some, that trade-off is worth it. Transgendered children are
deeply troubled and have a "high level of suicide attempts," Spack
told the Boston Globe. "I've never seen any patient make [a suicide
attempt] after they've started hormonal treatment," he said.

Spack would not grant an interview to FOXNews.com.

But not all doctors are convinced, and some say the treatments do
much more harm than good.

"Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it
compounds their confusion," said Dr. Paul McHugh, University
Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins
University. "Trying to delay puberty or change someone's gender is a
rejection of the lawfulness of nature."

McHugh said gender reassignment for children harkens back to the dark
ages, when choir boys were castrated to retain their high-pitched
voices. "It's barbaric," he said.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal charity
affiliated with the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, says
that transgender disorder is a mental disorder, not a medical one,
and that it should be treated with behavior modification, not
hormones or surgery.

"Just as you don't give liposuction to an anorexic, you don't do
sexual reassignment surgery on men who think that they are women and
vice versa," Staver said.

"At some point in childhood," McHugh said, "many children role play
as the opposite sex, but it is a social, not a medical issue."

But other doctors say there is a transgender "gene."

Dr. Irene Sills, an physician and Senior Professor of Pediatrics at
the State University of New York, has treated 15 transgender children
in the last 6 years, and considers the condition innate as a result
of her study.

"We have had a case of identical twins that seems to disprove [other]
theories," she told FOXNews.com. "The twin girls were brought up in
exactly the same environment, but by the age of 3, one of them kept
insisting that she was a boy and kept mimicking masculine dress and
behavior."

Sills reported that her patients and their families have all been
pleased with her therapy and support. She said she never asks
families to sign a waiver before treating their children. "I trust
our procedures and I trust my patients," she said in an interview.

But some experts expect legal challenges to mount in the face of
further treatment. According to Austin Nimocks, senior legal counsel
for the conservative Alliance Defense, parents and doctors may not be
safe from litigation if children are made sterile due to hormonal
treatments – even if they do sign waivers.

"We will eventually start to see such parents and doctors sued and
possibly arrested for what is essentially child abuse," Nimocks told
FOXNews.com.

Story was posted on Yahoo News.

Comments

I'm soooo confused.

See, I knew I was crazy all those dozens of years ago. All those doctors say I was. And, here I listened to my shrinks back then and listended to myself and thunk and thunk... And more recently listened to so many friends. At least I'm not alone in my insanity.

But, on a more serious note. I sincerely doubt that the controversy will EVER go away. Not to start a "flame" war or espouse one side or the other. A look at the "creationists" vs. the "evolutionists" will show you that even should what many consider to be irrefutable evidence appear, there will be a significant population that either interprets the evidence differently, or refuses to accept the evidence.

Annette

Johns Hopkins

It creeps me out every time I hear their name come up with regard to treating transsexuals, how many years ago was it that their program was headed up by some conservative whose agenda was to study and humor the clients but not pass anybody? Nobody got surgery.
The name Johns Hopkins attached to any opinion or study commands respect but when this hack used it for pursuing his own bogus agenda and got caught at it he got off with no more than a slap on the wrist. That undoes any earned credibility.
The same thing happened when Stanford had a program, if you did not "pass" and meet certain appearance and presentation criteria they were not interested.
We are not subjects to be dictated to, we are consumers so if you do not like how you are being treated take your money and your records and go elsewhere. Its a simple process that just takes time, money and a lot of personal sorting out =)

I agree

Johns Hopkins deserves no respect, I've read up on and seen the horror they present >< They can jump off a cliff for all I care ><

 

    I just got to be me :D

 

I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D

maybe this article's comparison

laika's picture

of TG to eating disorders isn't all that far fetched. I seem to have this sudden urge to hurl ...... The "Old Guard" isn't going anwhere. It isn't simply a matter of their lacking understanding, that with sufficient education they will come around. They're paranoid. Theirs is a mission, to save the world from transgender (and other sorts of) freakiness, lest Dr. McHugh's "lawfulness of nature" be undermined and then God Only Knows what will happen; society lying in ruins while mutants hump shopping carts out in the street, or whatever they imagine. You can't educate someone out of such entrenched paranoia; you can only protect yourself (Help, the paranoids are after me!) and your rights as best you can. This war over Dr. Zucker and the next edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual seems a good place to start. Who gets to define us?

Transgender kids unfortunately lack the means to protect themselves. In this war between an acceptance of diversity that allows for self-actualization and jackboot conformity, "protect the children" is the equivalent of nuclear weaponry. The kids themselves are pawns. Parents will be swayed by that fancy title Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry (which is right up there with Admiral of the Ocean Sea) and by the authority of "fair and balanced" Fox News, and really what a relief to learn that all you have to do is badger them into conformity, which is so much less embarrassing than having to explain why little Johnny is wearing skirts now. And if he hangs himself, well somebody can write a spiffy story about it at Big Closet...
~~~hugs, LAIKA

.
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.

I'm Totally Baffled

On the farm as a child I had to clean the barn. During the winter we would stack the manure along the side of the barn as insulation. Unless my memory is failing me you could only stack that stuff so high, and then it would fall over.

But here comes FOX with an official news release that quotes official sounding officials who have somehow found a way to stack bullshit much higher and deeper than I would have thought possible.

Utter nonsense!

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Fux News

They just love their controversy, don't they? And they always make sure to give more emotional weight to the conservative side of every argument. "*Gasp* How shocking! How awful! Lookie here!"

Neanderthal Network

Dr. Spack was right not to give Fox News any quotes. It's the Neanderthal network. Daphne

Daphne