Missouri Attorney General Blasts DOD Over Military Doctors’ Support for Puberty Blockers for Children

Missouri Attorney General Blasts DOD Over Military Doctors’ Support for Puberty Blockers for Children

In a disturbing story entitled “Pentagon Doctors Claim 7-Year-Olds Can Make Decisions to be Injected with Hormones, Puberty Suppressants,” Fox News recently brought attention to an article written by four military health providers published in the American Journal of Public Health.

In the article, the four military health professionals, joined by a civilian MD, argued that the “only pathway for children of military members who present with gender dysphoria symptoms is to immediately move towards ‘gender-affirming health care, such as puberty suppression and affirming hormones.'”  Even worse, the they “went so far as to claim 7-year-olds can make their own medical decisions” about beginning the gender transformation process.

“The authors [also] said that on the basis of ‘human rights,’ ‘youths… have an inherent ability and right to consent to gender-affirming therapy'” and “demanded the military train all of its providers on their ideas on gender medical interventions for minors, despite acknowledging that 53% of military-affiliated physicians in the Department of Defense health system indicated they would refuse to prescribe hormones regardless of any training.”

Most egregiously, the doctors “proceeded to blast clinicians who pause before changing a minor’s gender to see if they would grow out of the dysphoria, calling it ‘unethical'”:

“Some well-intentioned military-affiliated clinicians may not be aware that a ‘watchful waiting’ approach has a different risk profile than a gender-affirmative approach (which allows for gender identity exploration), and that ‘conversion therapy’ is unethical, harmful, and generally illegal,” they said. “Patients may face ‘gatekeeping’ and major delays in care, including protracted and pathologizing psychiatric evaluations that question patient motives.”

“[L]aws [banning transgender drugs]… assume that [gender diverse] adolescents and their parents are incapable of understanding the risks and benefits of gender-affirming medical care and then deciding what is in the youth’s best interest,” the doctors continued. “Prior research has found that children can begin participating in their medical decision-making as early as age seven years with gradual increases in decision-making capacity, and adolescents prefer shared decision-making.”

The article’s authors include the following:

• “David A. Klein [MD, MPH, who] is with the Departments of Family Medicine and Pediatrics, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, and the Department of Family Medicine, David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, CA,” and specializes in “Reproductive health, LGBTQ+ health, Eating disorders [and] Adolescent Medicine
• “Natasha A. Schvey [PhD, who] is with the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, Uniformed Services University, ” and specializes in “Stigma and Health[,] Body weight and eating disorders, gender identity, [and] children and adolescents“
• “Thomas A. Baxter [DO, i.e. a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, who] is with the Department of Family Medicine, David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, CA”
• “Noelle S. Larson [MD, who] is with the Department of Pediatrics, Uniformed Services University, and the Department of Pediatrics, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda” and
• “Christina M. Roberts [MD, MPH, who] is with the Division of Adolescent Medicine, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, and the Department of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine,” and specializes in adolescent medicine and pediatrics.  Dr. Roberts apparently is not professionally associated with the military.

Readers should note that Children’s Mercy Kansas City funded the “open access fees” for the article. Some digging reveals that “open access fees,” also called “article processing fees,” or “APCs,” “are used by open access journals [like the American Journal of Public Health] in lieu of subscription fees that libraries and readers traditionally have paid to gain access to research articles.  APCs shift the burden of journal production costs (editing, peer review, hosting, archiving, preservation), to authors from readers.”

So Children’s Mercy Kansas City, where Dr. Christina Roberts, the only civilian-associated co-author of the article discussed above, works, paid for the article to be published.  Readers are encouraged to review Dr. Christina Roberts’ bio page, available here.  How the article came to be published is unclear, as is why four doctors who work at military facilities signed on to a civilian-sponsored article.

In any case, enter Missouri Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, who obviously became aware of the article and sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about it, as Breitbart News recently reported here:

“Even as the threats to this country from foreign adversaries worsen, your department is apparently preoccupied with advancing shocking claims that pander to activist crowds,” the letter opens.

“These gender interventions can cause permanent sterility, worsen mental health, hamper brain development, cause blindness, and even lead to premature mortality,” Attorney General Bailey’s letter reads before going on to question, “How is a seven-year-old supposed to assess all these known side effects and consent?”

Bailey cited the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, who found that “there is a lack of current evidence-based guidance for the care of children who identify as transgender, particularly regarding the benefits and harms of pubertal suppression, medical affirmation with hormone therapy, and surgical affirmation,” and noted to Secretary Lloyd:

This recognition that there is no solid clinical evidence supporting gender-transition interventions calls into question whether anybody (much less seven-year-olds) can truly consent to these interventions if they are not informed of this absence of evidence and the serious health consequences.

Bailey summarized, citing his own military experience:

I have led troops in combat and I have seen young soldiers, far from home, spill their blood to complete the mission their country asked of them.  As Secretary of Defense, you have a sacred duty to make sure that every time Americans are ordered into harm’s way they go with the assurance that their senior military leaders are one-hundred percent committed to making the mission a success and bringing them home to their families.

The Pentagon lacks this single-mindedness…When our nation’s top military brass lose focus and prioritize political correctness instead of military readiness, our nation is less safe, and our enemies are emboldened.

It is time to return to your constitutional mission of protecting the American people.

Finally, Bailey requested that Secretary Austin provide him with “all of the medical studies your doctors have relied on to advance this radical position which includes allowing grade school-aged children to undergo life-altering gender transition interventions” by April 30.

All I can say is that, as a 31-year military veteran with a daughter who was birthed by military doctors and cared for by military doctors almost exclusively until she went to college, this report sent a chill down by spine and made me realize that parents today have to watch their kids’ school and pediatric doctors like a hawk, even military parents.  Thank God someone is taking action on these radical military doctors – why it is the Missouri Attorney General and not members of Congress, I don’t know, but good for AG Andrew Bailey.

For more evidence that military children are at risk, see the tweet below where a military health professional states that a military parent cannot access their child’s medical record on-line if the child is 12 or over, that this policy has been that way for at least 6 six years, and that the medical community does not have to tell parents virtually anything that their teenage children disclose to medical:

This week in Bahrain the Navy told sailors that they talk to their children at age 12 about gender identity, sex, STD’s, pregnancy, etc. without notifying parents. When asked if "the Navy’s policy circumvents a parents right to know?" the @USNavy official answered "Yes". Insane. pic.twitter.com/sNw5nhEfwt

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) April 14, 2023

The reaction of the parent in this video is exactly what my reaction would have been, and I can say with confidence that the day I heard about this policy I would have resigned my officer’s commission.

These are truly scary times we live in.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.