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Not Your Grandfather’s Children’s Hospital
American Conservative ^ | Apr 5, 2023 | William Perry Pendley

Posted on 04/07/2023 2:29:31 PM PDT by george76

In 1951, on a cold, snowy, windy April day, my parents and I were driving from Cheyenne to Colorado. Long before I-25 improved that journey, we were on two-lane U.S. 85 through tiny Nunn, whose water tower sign (“Watch Nunn Grow”) always made me laugh. None of us were smiling that day; we were anxious, not just about what we faced in Denver, but also about whether my father could stay on the highway, so limited was the visibility. It was agonizingly slow-going.

At last, he saw an oncoming vehicle, pulled to the side of the road, and threw his door open. “I’ll ask him about the weather ahead,” he shouted over the howling wind, and was gone before my mother could stop him. When he slid back behind the wheel, he looked relieved. “It clears up at the state line.”

Incredibly, there was blue sky when we reached Colorado. We made our destination, Denver’s Children’s Hospital, and my appointment with the surgeon who performed breakthrough surgery to which my parents, somewhat reluctantly, consented, especially my father, who grew up when operations were successful, but patients died.

I was born in 1945 with a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), a congenital heart defect explained to me as a hole in the heart. Specifically, a PDA lies between the two major blood vessels leading from the heart, which is normal before birth for the mother’s oxygenated blood to reach her baby. If it does not close soon after birth, however, the result is a continuous, machinery-like murmur accompanied by, among other symptoms, rapid breathing, shortness of breath, fatigue, poor weight gain, and ultimately heart failure. That was my fate months after my birth when my PDA did not close; I was sickly and puny.

The condition was discovered in 129 A.D. by Galen of Pergamon, a Greek anatomist and physician, but corrective surgery, hypothesized as early as 1907, was not successful until 1937, when performed on seven-year-old Lorraine Sweeney at Boston Children's Hospital. An in-house conflict there, two subsequent post-operative deaths demonstrating a need for more data, and the outbreak of World War II delayed further advancement. Little wonder that, in 1945, my parents were advised to await that progress.

The waiting ended in 1951 when Dr. John Benson Grow, “the father of cardiac surgery and vascular surgery” in the Rocky Mountain region, performed my surgery, one of the earliest in the West. Two years later, he saved another Wyoming infant with the first open-heart surgery at Denver Children’s Hospital.

Sadly, Colorado Children’s Hospital, as it is now known, is not the hospital that joined with Boston Children’s Hospital in saving hundreds of thousands of PDA babies each year, one of whom was my older son whose surgery three decades after mine seemed effortless. Alas, today both hospitals offer so-called gender-affirming care that includes sterilization and genital mutilation, which a recovering liberal friend calls “unscientific, bizarre, and cruel.”

Once at the forefront of saving children’s lives, why are they now actively destroying young lives and even butchering teens for which these hospitals receive not reproachment but the full-throated support of the nation’s political elite, medical establishment, and mainstream media?

First, to paraphrase John O’Sullivan’s famous law, any entity not openly right of center becomes left of center, which is true of the medical community and the body politic. Sadly, our culture enthusiastically embraces the latest trendy, woke, politically correct psychobabble. That is especially true when it is deemed “science” and carries “expert” approval. Here, it does: the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Professional Association for Transgender Health declared those unthinkable practices the “standard of care,” triggering politicians who, not wanting to be left behind, jumped on the bandwagon.

Second, follow the money. Tennessee was shocked when Vanderbilt officials bragged of the huge sums to be made for the university by providing gender-affirming therapy, not just from the initial treatments, prescriptions, and surgeries, but also from life-long care necessitated by the initial, self-serving diagnosis. Then came related findings from Boston’s Children’s Hospital, where underage minors were being treated. No wonder an industry whose first clinic opened in 2007 now boasts over fifty across the country, valued, in 2021, at $1.9 billion, with annual growth of over 10 percent. Such sums are a persuasive palliative for physicians who abandon “first, do no harm.”

Third, the serpent’s lure in the Garden of Eden, “You will be like God,” continues to tempt. Physicians, and especially surgeons, who view themselves as all-knowing, often suffer from a personality flaw known as a god complex. How tantalizing to play God by undoing and re-forming what the Lord has “fearfully and wonderfully made."

...

Fourth, as the culture wars against God, what greater attack can it wage than to dispute that God created only “male and female” and “blessed them?" So the culture argues there are more than “male and female” and that some children are not “blessed” because He makes mistakes, putting a female soul, for example, in a male body. What God makes mistakes? What loving Father does that to His child? None worthy of worship, says the culture.

Fifth, as governments, their officials, and their schools decree our children are not entrusted to our care and safe keeping, but to the control of elites who know better, gender-affirming hospitals are emboldened to enrich and empower themselves by echoing that claim. In fact, the U.S. Department of Defense recently declared it a “human right” for seven-year-olds to take dangerous, life-altering hormone blockers.

The children’s hospitals that saved my life and the world that supports them are unrecognizable to the grandparents of today. Worse yet, like that cold, snowy, windy day seventy-two years ago, the path forward is obscured. We may never find our way to a safe and healthy place.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Colorado; US: Wyoming
KEYWORDS: bigpharma; childabuse; children; childrenshospitals; colorado; hospitals; malpractice; medicalmalpractice; mutilation

1 posted on 04/07/2023 2:29:31 PM PDT by george76
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To: george76

Jesus is coming and he’s pissed.


2 posted on 04/07/2023 2:34:06 PM PDT by HighSierra5 (The only way you know a commie is lying is when they open their pieholes.)
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To: HighSierra5

They’ve got some ‘splaining to do!


3 posted on 04/07/2023 2:44:40 PM PDT by No name given (Anonymous is who you’ll know me as.)
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To: george76

How far we have fallen.


4 posted on 04/07/2023 2:48:10 PM PDT by dynachrome (“We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” Rand Paul)
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To: dynachrome

UCHealth - University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora.. - forced a young Colorado mom : Elizabeth Reiter to die alone..

A Colorado mom hospitalized for 21 days died without seeing her husband or two children, despite the family’s repeated requests for an exception to a policy barring visitors ..

No matter how many times Reiter asked to visit his wife: Elizabeth, even when he tested negative for covid and when he told them he had never seen his wife of 19 years so depressed, and even on Mother’s Day, he was denied. Hospital officials would not make an exception.

Elizabeth tested negative for coronavirus twice in the hospital.. then, Elizabeth went into cardiac arrest and died..

The day after his wife died, Reiter was overwhelmed. His words were interrupted by heavy sighs. His sons, he said, are in “absolute shock… They are really hurt that they couldn’t see their mother at any point during the last three weeks

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3849833/posts


5 posted on 04/07/2023 2:56:49 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: HighSierra5

This godless world 🌎🌍 is getting crazier by the day


6 posted on 04/07/2023 2:57:27 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: george76

I hope her husband sues them for everything. And every doctor involved, personally!


7 posted on 04/07/2023 3:37:18 PM PDT by telescope115 (My feet are on the ground, and my head is in the stars. A Man, and proud of it!)
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To: george76

A message from the boss:

04/07/23 | Jim Robinson

Wouldn’t it be great if we could complete this FReepathon in under 60 days? Please get your donations in early and let’s get ‘er done! Thank you very much! Your support is greatly appreciated! God bless you.


8 posted on 04/07/2023 4:00:25 PM PDT by Mark (DONATE ONCE every 3 months-is that a big deal?)
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To: george76

Does everyone know how long it takes to get a Certificate of Need (CON) for a new surgery treatment center to be opened in a city, much less a full sized hospital? It takes years and years. But suddenly, these gender transition centers can be opened in just a short few months. We have gone from just having a half a dozen across this nation to dozens (even hundreds) in just a few months or a year or two. Someone is pulling strings to get these things built.

The transgender craze is being pushed from the top down. There are powerful people making sure it is pushed into our faces daily by politicians, physicians, media, educators, etc. The legalization of gay marriage was pushed from the people up to the politicians and “people in charge” and took decades. The transgender craziness is being pushed and funded from the top down and being forced upon the citizens to accept, celebrate and pay for it, in addition to having your children become a part of it.

It’s everywhere now. All in the space of three years or so!

/rant


9 posted on 04/07/2023 4:18:35 PM PDT by CFW (old and retired)
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To: george76

Now a Xhildrens Hospital is where they monkey around with their genitals, one way or another. Its either the “Joe Biden shower experience”, or hacking bits off kids.


10 posted on 04/07/2023 6:11:12 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Secret Agent Man
 
 
Sexualization of children is one of many side effects from falling into reversal of civilization by hedonistic paganism.
 
 

11 posted on 04/08/2023 9:57:52 AM PDT by lapsus calami (What's that stink? Code Pink ! ! And their buddy Murtha, too!)
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