Posted on 01/05/2021 9:21:38 AM PST by Kaslin
The charge that sex designations on a birth certificate is medically ill-advised stands contrary to even the most basic understanding of science.
Many folks these days treat science not as a method for discovering truth, but as an undeniable, transcendent truth in and of itself. Yet these same folks fail to appreciate that some of the most dramatic and passionate attacks on science come from their compadres on the far left: gender theorists.
A vivid demonstration of this fact has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, formerly one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. In their December 2020 edition, the journal published an article that audaciously claims “Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful” to patients. Thus, “given the particularly harmful effects of such designations,” the authors argue, the practice should be changed.
To assume such a call was motivated by some new scientific, medical discovery would give the doctors who penned the article and the editors who published it far too much credit. Indeed, their interest is not medical in the least, but purely emotional, political, and ideological — something they make clear in their article.
The publication doesn’t list any specific clinical harms or offer any medical documentation for their claim. Instead, they only contend the practice should be changed “given the particularly harmful effects of such designations on intersex or transgender people.”
To back up this assertion, they cite a single law journal article. This is because, of course, there are no medical or clinical harms from the culturally universal practice of designating sex on birth certificates. The authors and editors at the New England Journal of Medicine must know this — it’s surely why they didn’t list any.
Disappointment that your objectively documented birth certificate is contrary to your newly realized gender identity is not a medical issue. It is a psychological and emotional issue, and a problem that can’t be blamed on either the official documentation or the medical professionals who “assigned” your sex at birth.
The article’s flight from science and reason doesn’t stop there, however. The authors contend, astonishingly, that “Designating sex as male or female on birth certificates suggests that sex is simple and binary, when, biologically, it is not.” They then proceed to state, incorrectly, “Sex is a function of multiple biologic processes with many resultant combinations.”
Of course, it is that simple. No one in the long, marvelous history of humanity has ever delivered a baby that was a third, fourth, or seventh sex. Indeed, the article fails to mention even one of the extra-binary sexes it hints at.
Of course, male and female are the only two biological games in town for humanity and nearly every life form. To claim differently is merely wish fulfillment.
Science and reality only know the binary. This is obvious, even to leftist French, feminist philosophers like Sylviane Agacinski, who notes in her gender treatise “Parity of the Sexes:
One is born a girl or boy, one becomes woman or man. The human species is divided in two, and, like most other species, in two only. This division, which includes all human beings without exception, is thus a dichotomy. In other words, every individual who is not man is woman. There is no third possibility.
Agacinski speaks truthfully of biology, of what it means to be human.
Medicine is the objective study of and care for the body, and there are only two forms of the human body. Swiss and French scientists writing in the journal Nature last year explained, “When properly documented and studied, sex and gender differences are the gateway to precision medicine.”
A major medical literature review published in September’s Lancet carefully documents just how true this is. Entitled, “Sex and Gender: Modifiers of Health, Disease, and Medicine,” a team of 18 internationally representative medical professors explains their exhaustive work aims “to guide clinicians and researchers to better understand and harness the importance of sex and gender as genetic, biological, and environmental modifiers of chronic disease.”
They add this “is a necessary and fundamental step towards precision medicine that will benefit women and men.” They unapologetically remind their readers of the undeniable biological fundamentals:
Sex differences in disease prevalence, manifestation, and response to treatment are rooted in the genetic differences between men and women. Genetic sex differences start at conception when the ovum fuses with a sperm cell carrying an X or a Y chromosome, resulting in an embryo carrying either XX or XY chromosomes. This fundamental difference in chromosome complement generates ubiquitous sex differences in the molecular makeup of all male and female cells.
This is why they plainly state, in dramatic contrast to the New England Journal of Medicine, “efforts to bring sex and gender into the mainstream of modern medical research, practice, and education are urgently needed, as the lack of appreciation for sex and gender differences harms both women and men.” Furthermore, unlike the New England Journal of Medicine, these authors provide more than 200 citations from peer-reviewed medical journals to support their claims.
The existence of intersex people certainly does not mean that sex is not binary. The Intersex Society of North America is very clear that being intersex is certainly not a “non” or “third” gender. Intersex status is merely a congenital anatomical, gonadal or chromosomal maladaptation of a male or female body.
In the final analysis, the charge that sex designations on a birth certificate is medically ill-advised is not just flawed because it isn’t rooted in any science, but is precisely contrary to even the most basic understanding of science. And it’s something no American should fall for just because the New England Journal of Medicine attached their shiny seal of approval to it.
The actress Michael Learned who played in The Waltons, would have have to be named Michaela had she been born in Germany.
Chromosomes: XX
Risk of testicular cancer: 0.0%
Chromosomes: XY
Risk of ovarian cancer: 0.0%
Simple medicine. No wonder the New England Journal of Medicine doesn’t know about it.
bkmk
Since I was five I’ve identified as the Queen of Spain. But every time I’ve knocked on the front door of the royal palace in Madrid an ambulance shows up and takes me away.
Bookmark under “more insanity”
President Xi and Putin are smiling.
I am saddened by the low quality of medical journals of late... full of nonsense and SJW influences...
Two years ago I predicted that “the science” would need to catch up with radical gender theory, and that we would eventually be seeing a lot of articles in medical journals claiming to scientifically confirm that theory. And sure enough, here they come . . .
There’s a British author/physician (Theodore Dalrymple) who has written an entire book criticizing articles in the New England Journal of Medicine.
They took big hits when they wrote that abortion harmed women and that childbirth should be done in their early 20’s.
New England Journal of Medicine can be a Social Justice Warrior or a medical journal. Cant be both.
Better not say that to Rainer Maria Rilke or Klaus Maria Brandauer!
Regards,
NEJM has had a leftist editorial stance for years. Has nothing to do with scientific research. They do seem to be getting more extreme though, in line with the general trend of academic degradation.
Some European countries have “suggested list of approved names”. You can opt out, but ...
California Now Requires Insurers to Pay for Breast Mutilation for Gender-Confused Teens
PJ Media ^ | 01/05/2021 | Tyler O’ Neill
Posted on 1/5/2021, 9:47:30 AM by SeekAndFind
Just before the end of 2020, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued an order stating that insurance companies cannot refuse to pay for a minor girl’s mastectomy just because she isn’t 18 yet.
He reached this conclusion by defining the surgical removal of healthy breasts and the “creation of a male chest” as medically “necessary” for girls suffering from gender dysphoria (the painful sense of identifying with the gender opposite their biological sex) rather than “cosmetic.” This means that a gender dysphoric girl’s healthy chest would be considered “abnormal” if she identifies as male.
“For far too long, individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria have had to battle a host of challenges to get access to gender-affirming care in order to be their true selves,” Commissioner Lara said in a statement. He suggested that requiring girls to be 18 before they surgically remove their breasts is an example of “outdated medical criteria” that “create barriers to necessary medical care.”
Lara had his general counsel issue this order after the group Trans Family Support Services submitted a request to the California Department of Insurance asking whether it is legally permissible for insurance providers to deny transgender mastectomy coverage for girls under 18 due to their age.
Lara ruled that “insurers may not deny coverage for a mastectomy and creation of a male chest (‘male chest reconstruction surgery’) for treating gender dysphoria in female-to-male patients based solely on the insured individual’s age.”
Note the Orwellian redefinition of terms. When an otherwise physically healthy gender-confused girl under 18 removes her breasts and has her chest reshaped to appear like that of a man, the insurance department terms this “male chest reconstruction surgery.” It uses the term “mastectomy” without acknowledging that this involves the removal of healthy tissue.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3921718/posts
I like that. That’s a keeper.
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