To the editor: This week, Youngsters’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) announced a pause on the initiation of gender-affirming care for sufferers underneath the age of 19 to “absolutely perceive [the] implications” of a current presidential government 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 evident: Transgender and gender-diverse youth undergo disproportionately from despair and report larger charges of suicide than their friends. Entry to gender-affirming care decreases preventable deaths. CHLA is a pacesetter in gender-affirming medication, and the choice to pause this important care sends the unsuitable message — that the well being of youngsters may be dictated by politicians untrained in medication relatively than the medical doctors who care for youngsters day-after-day.
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 determination to cease providing gender-affirming care to sufferers youthful than 19 was compounded by The Occasions’ reporting that attributes the choice to obscure “hospital officers.”
Who made the choice? Hospital directors, not like physicians, don’t take the Hippocratic oath. We’d like public accountability. The chief government must be stepping as much as clarify this determination. Should you’re not going to permit medical doctors to physician, then get up and defend your determination.
Isn’t “management” why you command a seven-figure wage?
I perceive the concern of federal funding being minimize off, however there isn’t a precise federal rule to comply with but. This theoretical threat is being prioritized over the precise, present hurt to sufferers.
Isabella Sledge, M.D., Los Angeles
