To the editor: This week, Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announced a pause on the initiation of gender-affirming care for sufferers below the age of 19 to “totally perceive [the] implications” of a current presidential government order.
As physicians with specialties in pediatrics, psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology, we urge CHLA to contemplate the implications of stopping such care.
The analysis is evident: Transgender and gender-diverse youth undergo disproportionately from melancholy and report larger charges of suicide than their friends. Entry to gender-affirming care decreases preventable deaths. CHLA is a frontrunner in gender-affirming medication, and the choice to pause this very important care sends the unsuitable message — that the well being of youngsters might be dictated by politicians untrained in medication reasonably than the docs who care for youngsters every single day.
We name on CHLA to face up for the sufferers and the group it serves by instantly restoring entry to this lifesaving look after transgender and gender-diverse youth.
Mahima Iyengar, M.D., Los Angeles
Briah Fischer, M.D., Los Angeles
Andrea Soto López, M.D., Los Angeles
Frances Gill, M.D., Los Angeles
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To the editor: My misery as a doctor over CHLA’s determination to cease providing gender-affirming care to sufferers youthful than 19 was compounded by The Occasions’ reporting that attributes the choice to obscure “hospital officers.”
Who made the choice? Hospital directors, in contrast to physicians, don’t take the Hippocratic oath. We want public accountability. The chief government ought to be stepping as much as clarify this determination. Should you’re not going to permit docs to physician, then get up and defend your determination.
Isn’t “management” why you command a seven-figure wage?
I perceive the concern of federal funding being lower off, however there isn’t any precise federal rule to comply with but. This theoretical danger is being prioritized over the precise, present hurt to sufferers.
Isabella Sledge, M.D., Los Angeles
