To the editor: This week, Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announced a pause on the initiation of gender-affirming care for sufferers underneath the age of 19 to “totally perceive [the] implications” of a current presidential govt 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 obvious: Transgender and gender-diverse youth undergo disproportionately from melancholy and report increased charges of suicide than their friends. Entry to gender-affirming care decreases preventable deaths. CHLA is a pacesetter in gender-affirming drugs, and the choice to pause this very important care sends the mistaken message — that the well being of kids could be dictated by politicians untrained in drugs moderately than the medical doctors who care for youngsters daily.
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 resolution to cease providing gender-affirming care to sufferers youthful than 19 was compounded by The Occasions’ reporting that attributes the choice to imprecise “hospital officers.”
Who made the choice? Hospital directors, not like physicians, don’t take the Hippocratic oath. We’d like public accountability. The chief govt needs to be stepping as much as clarify this resolution. Should you’re not going to permit medical doctors to physician, then rise up and defend your resolution.
Isn’t “management” why you command a seven-figure wage?
I perceive the worry of federal funding being lower off, however there isn’t any precise federal rule to observe but. This theoretical danger is being prioritized over the precise, present hurt to sufferers.
Isabella Sledge, M.D., Los Angeles
