#2748 (7/30) "Doctors Need to Examine Their Motives on Trans Teens"

"DOCTORS NEED TO EXAMINE THEIR MOTIVES ON RANS TEENS" - Tony Perkins, Washington Update, July 24, 2019; https://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20190724/trans-teens

     "It was easier than signing a cell phone contract." That's how Helena, who identified as transgender at age 15, described getting her first hormone prescription. She didn't need a therapist's approval or any kind of assessment when she walked in the clinic. "You just need to go sign the paper, and they'll give you the [drugs]." Seventeen months of testosterone later, she wished she'd never taken it.

   Helena is just one of the voices warning parents and teenagers to stop listening to the culture when it comes to gender confusion. "It's a social contagion," she insists. For kids who have trouble fitting in, like she did, transitioning is one way that social media tells them they'll be popular. "It was very much the 'in' thing to do," she told Madeleine Kearns. But, like a lot of young people who've walked away from that lifestyle, Helena looks back and shudders. "I don't think I had a very good understanding ... that the things I [was doing were] going to affect me in 20 years. Which is why I think it's so messed up that it's so easy for a person like me to get hormones."

   Dr. Michelle Cretella, head of the American College of Pediatricians, agrees -- and blames the medical community for being complicit in this dangerous agenda. In a letter to U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, ACP is sounding the alarm over what they call a "grave public health concern impacting children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria (GD)." It is, they point out, "an issue so dire that the Royal College of General Practitioners in the United Kingdom issued an unprecedented warning to the public earlier this month."

   Without any sort of long-term testing, drugs and life-altering surgeries are being suggested to minors as the new "standard of care." That's wrong, she insists, especially since 61-98 percent of affected children "will outgrow their GD if allowed to progress through natural puberty." These are toxic hormones, Dr. Cretella explained on Tuesday's "Washington Watch," being given to children as young as eight -- and, in some cases, without their parents' permission.

   "This is pure insanity," she told listeners. "This is not medicine... We're talking about [kids] between ages eight and 12 being pumped full of synthetic hormones that have serious side effects -- in combination with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones... [We're sentencing kids] to a lifetime of dependence on these drugs, which put them at risk for heart attack, strokes, diabetes, cancers and continued suicidal ideation or thoughts... It's institutionalized child abuse."

   What's worse, Dr. Cretella points out, very few people in the medical community are willing to speak out. "We have physicians and drug companies profiting off of the suffering of children... [when what they really need is] therapy and sound counseling to get at any sort of underlying issue." Before this "wholesale promotion of transgenderism," she points out, doctors were cautious. They knew that "the vast majority of children who were confused about their sex, if they were supported through natural puberty, they outgrew the confusion." That's been documented, she explains in 11 studies. "But again, that was before all the transgender propaganda."

   Now, there are actually whistleblowers in clinics as far away as the U.K. "who are aghast at what's being done to these children. They've come out and said, 'Look, we have evidence that these children are suffering harm,' but that evidence is being suppressed." That's why, Dr. Cretella says, her organization decided to send the letter now -- before the situation gets worse.

The doctors who are asking questions are being reprimanded, she warned -- "or they're basically sent for reeducation." "It's politicized medicine," she says sadly. And there are physicians in areas of authority who are willingly embracing "ideology over science." Maybe with good intentions, she admits, but "there's no science to back it up." And science -- along with courage -- is the only hope for young people like Helena. Let's hope Surgeon General Adams agrees.

[italics and colored emphasis mine]

---------------------------------------

PRAYER MATTERS:

"To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against 

the disorder of the world. -  Karl Barth

"Prayer is inviting God into a seemingly impossible situation and trusting/resting in His love and grace to accomplish His perfect will in His perfect time and for His greatest glory. Intercession is  one of the great privileges AND responsibilities for EVERY believer."- Stan

------------------------------------------------------------

Praying Through the Open Doors World Watch List for persecuted believers:https://www.opendoorsusa.org/take-action/pray/monthly-prayer-calendar/
“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Psalm 119:105). For thousands of believers, reading the Bible is a rare occurrence. Please pray with us this month that God’s Word would find its way into the hands and hearts of His disciples.

July 30 | EGYPT - Pray for the 20 Christian families still living in Dahia, the neighborhood with El-Arish’s only functioning church. In El-Arish, the threat to Christians by ISIS militants is so high that the military and police must protect the neighborhood 24/7.
*Names changed to protect identities

STANDING STRONG THROUGH THE STORM - OpenDoorsUSA.org

 At my first defen