Teaching astatine the Catholic university, Reitman besides advocates for the usage of puberty blockers, feminizing and masculinizing hormone treatments, and irreversible sex-transition surgeries that airs superior risks.
WASHINGTON — Medical students astatine Georgetown University person been taught that the lone mode to assistance patients suffering from sex dysphoria is to “fix” their bodies done cause therapies and gender-transition surgeries, a assertion that contradicts Catholic teaching connected quality sexuality, according to an investigation by The Spectator.
The quality outlet cited accusation drawn from lecture slides from a people taught past twelvemonth and a statement of a objective rotation people successful a course catalog.
Georgetown, a Catholic university, did not respond to requests for remark from either The Spectator or CNA.
In a required first-year Human Sexuality course, impermanent lecturer Dr. David S. Reitman told students that for galore “trans” patients suffering from sex dysphoria, “the lone mode to assistance them is to ‘fix’ their bodies,” according to 1 of the lecture slides obtained by The Spectator.
Reitman is simply a pediatrician for Georgetown University Hospital, wherever helium besides teaches aesculapian students arsenic an subordinate prof successful the Department of Pediatrics. He besides runs American University’s pupil wellness halfway and established the LGBT Health Initiative for George Washington University. Georgetown, American, and George Washington universities are each located successful Washington, D.C.
To “fix” children with sex dysphoria, Reitman suggested “blocking puberty” with drugs oregon utilizing what helium describes arsenic “medically necessary” hormone treatments that masculinize oregon feminize a diligent depending connected his oregon her desired sex identity, according to the lecture slides.
CNA spoke to a erstwhile Georgetown University aesculapian pupil connected the information of anonymity who took Reitman’s people and objected to immoderate of his claims.
“There are a batch of unnecessary risks added to an different physically steadfast kid if hormone treatments are started,” the erstwhile pupil said, referring to peer-reviewed studies that constituent to physiologic risks associated with hormone treatments.
“Some of the adverse effects are irreversible [and] dangerous,” the erstwhile pupil added. “The bottommost enactment is that the attack to carnal treatments is simply incongruent with the psychiatric diagnosis.”
Reitman did not respond to CNA’s petition for comment.
The Spectator report besides highlighted 1 of Georgetown’s elective courses called Sexual and Gender Minority Health, a objective rotation astatine Whitman-Walker Health successful Washington, D.C. A statement of the people successful a course catalog says that aesculapian students “will enactment with a multidisciplinary squad [and] beryllium exposed to a divers array of topics pertinent to providing high-quality attraction to LGBT individuals” including “gender affirming hormonal therapy.”
Leading Young People into ‘Falsehoods’
As The Spectator reported, Reitman besides advocates for the usage of puberty blockers, feminizing and masculinizing hormone treatments, and irreversible sex-transition surgeries that airs superior risks, including alleged “bottom surgeries.”
According to lecture slides obtained by The Spectator, Reitman admits that puberty blockers person antagonistic broadside effects including weakening bony density, reduced height, and altering secondary enactment characteristics, specified arsenic hairsbreadth and bosom development.
On 1 slide, however, the words “completely reversible” are superimposed implicit a database of pros and cons.
Such a assertion contradicts the idiosyncratic experiences of those who person been enactment connected puberty blockers, specified arsenic “former trans kid” Chloe Cole. In September, Cole told CNA that she inactive experiences the broadside effects of going connected puberty blockers.
Cole was enactment connected puberty blockers and testosterone astatine conscionable 13 years old. She continues to acquisition associated symptom from weakened bony density — a known broadside effect of puberty blockers — arsenic good arsenic definite allergies and ongoing urinary tract corruption symptoms, adjacent though she’s been disconnected of puberty blockers for respective years.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, a Catholic pediatrician and the past enforcement manager of the American College of Pediatricians, was sharply captious of the courses’ content. She said the aesculapian schoolhouse is “complicit successful the chemic castration and sterilization of children, for this is precisely what alleged transgender aesculapian and surgical interventions bash to each who acquisition them.”
Cretella is besides a committee subordinate of Advocates Protecting Children, which offers galore resources for parents and the laic nationalist to larn the information astir transgenderism.
“Chemical castration, sterilization, and bodily mutilation are not wellness care,” she added. “In fact, the bundle inserts for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones pass that — acold from preventing termination — they commonly origin the affectional distress that precedes suicidal despair.”
The exterior of Georgetown University's School of Medicine successful Washington, D.C. Shutterstock
As Reuters reported this month, “Puberty blockers and enactment hormones bash not person U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) support for children’s sex care. No objective trials person established their information for specified off-label use. The drugs’ semipermanent effects connected fertility and intersexual relation stay unclear.”
In 2016, the FDA ordered companies that marque puberty blockers to adhd informing labels astir the drugs’ imaginable to origin psychiatric problems aft receiving galore reports astir children becoming suicidal aft taking them. More warnings followed successful 2022 astir puberty blockers and the risks of encephalon disorders, impaired vision, and more.
Reuters besides reported that the National Institutes of Health states that “the grounds is limited” connected the abbreviated and semipermanent wellness risks of puberty blockers, particularly for concerns astir fertility and cognitive development.
Georgetown University was founded by Jesuits of the Loyola bid successful 1789 and remains mostly operated by members of the Society of Jesus.
Patrick Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society, a nonprofit that defends faithful Catholic education, besides criticized Georgetown.
“Georgetown has repeatedly violated its ngo arsenic a Catholic university. There is nary existent Catholic acquisition that straight opposes the quality of humans created by God arsenic antheral and female,” Reilly told CNA.
“When salient Catholic universities thatch against truth, with nary evident effect but progressively blatant dissent, and pb young radical into falsehood and horrific sins, the full Church is gravely wounded,” helium said.
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