Michelle Cretella is a mother of four, a pediatrician with focus in child behavioral health, and the current president of the American College of Pediatricians. In her 2016 peer reviewed article, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate,” she exposed the fact that “professionals who dare to question the unscientific party line of supporting gender transition therapy will find themselves maligned and out of a job.”
Across the nation, there are 40 or more pediatric “gender clinics” where children who are “distressed by their biological sex” are affirmed. This distress, once labeled gender identity disorder, was renamed “gender dysphoria” in 2013. Conveniently ignored, says Dr. Cretella, is “the fact that in normal life and in psychiatry, anyone who ‘consistently and persistently insists’ on anything else contrary to physical reality is considered either confused or delusional.”
Dr. Cretella explains that “the transition-affirming protocol tells parents to treat their children as the gender they desire, and to place them on puberty blockers around age 11 or 12 if they are gender dysphoric. If by age 16, the children still insist that they are trapped in the wrong body, they are placed on cross-sex hormones, and biological girls may obtain a double mastectomy. So-called ‘bottom surgeries,’ or genital reassignment surgeries, are not recommended before age 18, though some surgeons have recently argued against this restriction.”
Here are some facts offered by Dr. Cretella: 1) “Twin studies prove no one is born ‘trapped in the body of the wrong sex’” … [T]he “belief in ‘innate gender identity’—the idea that ‘feminized’ or ‘masculinized’ brains can be trapped in the wrong body from before birth—is a myth that has no basis in science; 2) “Gender identity is malleable, especially in young children” … “[P]rior to the widespread promotion of transition affirmation, 75 to 95 percent of pre-pubertal children who were distressed by their biological sex eventually outgrew that distress. The vast majority came to accept their biological sex by late adolescence after passing naturally through puberty. But with transition affirmation now increasing in Western society, the number of children claiming distress over their gender … has dramatically increased” (i.e. the Gender Identity Development Service in the United Kingdom alone has seen a 2,000 percent increase in referrals since 2009); 3) “puberty blockers for gender dysphoria have not been proven safe;” 4) “Cross-sex hormones are associated with dangerous health risks;” 5) Neuroscience reveals the “serious ethical problem in allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young themselves to give valid consent;” and, 6) “There is no proof that affirmation prevents suicide in children.”
Here is the bottom line for Dr. Cretella and others who are bold enough to speak out: “Transition-affirming protocol is child abuse.” It is “uncontrolled” and “unconsented experimentation on children who have a psychological condition that would otherwise resolve after puberty in the vast majority of cases.”
We have a role to play. We must be informed. Resources include the American College of Pediatricians, Alliance for Therapeutic Choice, Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and the Catholic Medical Association. We can write letters to the editor asking for sound ethics and an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies. We can pray for the medical community, nation’s leaders, and Church to speak up on behalf of children and adolescents … in Jesus’ name.
(Source: The Daily Signal, “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field
and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse,” 7-3-17)
The Case of Mistaken Identity 