A former
healthcare
worker said the
transgender
center she worked for was breaking the promise medical professionals make to their patients to “do no harm.”
Jamie Reed, a “queer woman … politically to the left of Bernie Sanders,” in her words,
wrote a revealing piece
in the Free Press, raising several concerns about her four years working for the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Reed said that, among other problems, the clinic didn’t have “formal protocols” for how to treat children suffering from gender dysphoria.
“The center’s physician co-directors were essentially the sole authority,” Reed wrote. “There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.”
HIGH-PROFILE BANS ON TRANSGENDER YOUTH SURGERIES CLEAR OKLAHOMA SENATE COMMITTEE
Reed, who said she worked as a case manager at the clinic, detailed how lax the process was for getting patients on hormones to alter their appearance to the opposite gender. She said doctors would recommend patients to therapists, who would give approval to begin treatment after only one or two visits, adding that “we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition.”
She also alleged that the clinic would take in children from the “inpatient psychiatric unit” who were not mentally healthy.
“The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning — there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals,” Reed wrote.
Reed also alleged that criticisms toward the policies of the center were not well received within the clinic, with her claiming they told her that she “had to stop questioning the ‘medicine and the science’ as well as their authority.”
She said the clinic was not like an experiment but rather a plane being constructed as it flew through the air.
“Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: ‘We are building the plane while we are flying it.’ No child should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft,” Reed wrote.
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The clinic was created in 2017 and touts “gender-affirming care” as the “gold standard of pediatric gender care.” The clinic also states on its website under its approach to “gender-affirming care” that it is something that “isn’t meant to influence people in any particular direction.”
Laws restricting transgender surgeries to only those at the age of majority have increased nationwide, with a showdown underway in Oklahoma over a bill that would outlaw procedures for any person under 18.
