Harvard Medical School offers course about healthcare for LGBTQIA+ ‘infants’

Harvard medical students are being taught how to care for baby patients who identify as LGBTQIA+, according to a publicly available course description.

Students at the school, considered one of the world’s leading medical schools, will receive: “Clinical exposure and education will focus on caring for people of sexual and gender minorities throughout life, from infants to older adults”. In Western medicine, a baby is considered from birth to 12 months of age.

Consistent with the Care for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sexual Development description, students will work both in hospitals and in communities with LGBTQIA+ youth.

Hospitals participating in the program include Boston Children’s Hospital, home of the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States. The directors of the program are Dr. Alex Keuroghlian and Dr. Alberto Puig.

Students will work in the areas of Adolescent Medicine, Endocrinology, Family Medicine, Infectious Diseases, OBGYN, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Primary Medical Care, and Plastic Surgery. Additionally, students learn about ‘advocacy’ regarding LGBTQIA+ issues.

Program director Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, left, who in 2022 said he did not believe those seeking gender reassignment would require a mental health evaluation, and the other director, Dr. Albert Puig, who has been assistant dean at Harvard Medical School since 2019.

Talking about the course the college arrangement, Nathanael Blake, an ethicist at the Center for Public Policy and Ethics, said: “Harvard medical students must be taught the basic scientific truth that a man cannot become a woman, or vice versa.”

It added: “Those who experience psychological distress regarding their biological sex should be treated with compassion, which does not mean subjecting them to dangerous chemical and surgical treatments to mold them into a facsimile of the opposite sex.”

In an interview with the new york times in January 2022, one of the program’s directors, Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, argued against mental health testing for transgender people.

He said: ‘I’m really not a believer in requiring that of people. Being trans is not a mental health issue.

Keuroghlian is the director of the Psychiatry Gender Identity Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Harvard course promises to ‘focus on serving people of sexual and gender minorities throughout life’

The Boston clinic sees children ages two and three, usually up to age nine. New patients come to the clinic and meet with psychologists to discuss their problems with the sex they were born into.

During the same interview, Keuroghlian said that mental health tests are not required for nose jobs, breast augmentations or hysterectomies.

Dr. Alberto Puig, a native of Spain and graduate of Baylor Medical School, has been working on the design and content of the Harvard Medical School curriculum since 2015, according to his profile on the Mass website. General.

The profile says that throughout his career, Puig has received more than 20 teaching awards and is an “avid student” of medical history. Since 2019, he has been an associate dean at Harvard Medical School.

In October 2022, Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with the Harvard program, suggested that some babies know they are transgender “from the womb.” In a now-deleted video, Boston Children’s Hospital suggested that even more children know “as soon as they can talk.”

The hospital also faces accusations that it led minors under the age of 18 to undergo life-changing sex-assignment surgery.

This map shows the proportion of children ages 13-17 who identify as transgender by state. Darker colors indicate a higher proportion of young people. In New York and New Mexico, it goes as high as three percent.

This map shows the proportion of the population that identifies as transgender by state. Those with the darkest color have almost one percent of their population in this category.

In the clip posted on the Boston hospital’s official YouTube page in August, psychologist Dr. Kerry McGregor explains the type of patients she sees.

She says: ‘So most of the patients we have in the clinic actually know their gender, usually around the age of puberty.

“But a good portion of children know it as early as, apparently, from the womb.

“And typically they will express their gender identity as very young children, some as soon as they can speak…children know that very, very early.”

It comes as several states begin to clamp down on puberty blockers being prescribed to children. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has previously compared it to “child abuse.”

While the main gathering place for students for the 2022-23 academic year is Massachusetts General Hospital, which offers “gender-affirming surgical procedures” for ages 18 and older.

The Mass General guide includes lines like: ‘Being transgender is not a phase’ and ‘Being transgender is not a disease or something that needs to be cured. It is a normal human experience.

It also states that, “A person usually knows they are transgender from an early age, especially when the feelings are persistent, consistent, and occur over a prolonged period of time.”

The guide goes on to state that a “toddler’s gender identity is very fluid” as boys like to play dress-up and girls like to play with trucks.

According to the informative page, in adolescence a person should have an idea of ​​their gender identity.