Here’s my candidate for asshat of the day. Meet Dr. Norman Spack, the nutjob who wants to give sex changes to kids — kids as young as seven-years-old!
This is just horrifying:
Boston’s Children’s Hospital bills itself as the hospital for children — and now it’s also the hospital for children who want a sex change, a procedure some critics are calling “barbaric.”
Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.
Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty. The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.
Spack also offers some teenagers hormone therapy, a drastic step that changes the way they grow and develop. While the effects of drug treatments can be stopped, long-term hormone therapy can be irreversible, causing permanent infertility in both sexes.
For some, that trade-off is worth it. Transgendered children are deeply troubled and have a “high level of suicide attempts,” Spack told the Boston Globe. “I’ve never seen any patient make [a suicide attempt] after they’ve started hormonal treatment,” he said.
Spack would not grant an interview to FOXNews.com and the Boston’s Children’s Hospital declined to respond.
But not all doctors are convinced, and some say the treatments do much more harm than good.
“Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it compounds their confusion,” said Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University. “Trying to delay puberty or change someone’s gender is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature.”
This story made me think of the parents who thought it was OK to let their little boy “become” a woman that I wrote about last year.
Except, in this case, the boy is seven. Let’s start with his parents. They have five boys, and then have a sixth Paula refers to as “George”. And his parents started dressing and referring to him as a girl at around the age of two when they “realized” that he liked pink, pretty, and feminine things — which clearly was a sign from their eighteen-month-old that he wanted to be a girl, not a boy. And the mother gushes about how she “let” her four-year-old boy dress up in a pink gown, there was sheer joy in “her” face and how “she” came out of “her” shell.
More evidence that “George” supposedly wanted to be a girl was that he wanted to go to the bathroom in public with Mommy instead of Daddy — because, you know, little boys never use public bathrooms with their moms. That’s a rare sight, right there. They say “George” became depressed and angry, and attempted to cut off his penis with scissors. And the mother states, very seriously, that if she didn’t “let” her son become a girl, he/she would take his/her own life… “whether it be tomorrow, or the next week, or the next month”.
Because, you know, five-year-olds understand what suicide is and everything.
So the parents took him/her out of school for a year, grew out his/her hair, dressed him/her in girl clothes, and re-enrolled him/her into a new school as a girl.
The parents in that video and Dr. Norman Spack have something in common, apparently. They both find it perfectly acceptable to put children through hormone-induced mutation and genital mutilation, because it makes them “feel good”.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: if someone is over the age of eighteen, and wants to become transgendered, then that’s their business. I may not understand it, I may not agree with it, but it’s their body and they can screw around with it as much as they want. It isn’t my problem. However, it is morally wrong to put a child through that process. As an adult, as a parent, it is your job to be the adult, to say no when your child makes ridiculous demands.
And as for Dr. Spack, how is it that he still has his license to practice medicine?! This is just completely wrong on so many levels. I have to wonder what kind of “counseling” he gives these children. A seven-year-old child does not have the maturity to make this kind of life-altering decision, or really understand what it is they’re getting themselves into. Who is it that is putting the idea of hormone therapy into these children’s heads? Dr. Spack? It’s just such an exploitation of his position as a doctor, and his position in these children’s lives as an authority figure that they are supposed to trust with their health and their lives.
I also can’t understand how a parent can let their child be mutilated in this way. Just because your son or daughter says they want something, it doesn’t mean they should automatically get it — and especially not something as drastic and life-altering as this! What are these parents thinking?! This story is proof that we are seeing the downfall of western civilization as we know it.
One of Ace’s commenters, Scout, had a pretty good take on the sheer insanity of this method of “parenting”:
My young son wants to be a car. If you ask him what he wants to be when he grows up, he will respond in total seriousness, “I want to be a car. I want to be Lightening McQueen from Cars.” He believes that this — becoming a talking cartoon race car — is his destiny.
So if I followed the reasoning of those who will take their little boy into a chop-shop because he likes playing dress up with his sister’s Disney princess costumes, I guess I should find a surgeon willing to graft tires onto my son’s hands and feet.
Or I could do what a sane, rational parent does, and just wait it out until he passes through this stage and moves on to dinosaurs.
The world is going insane.
I just can’t fathom how a parent hears their little boy saying, “I want to be a girl, and play with girl toys, and dress like a girl!”, and interpret it as the need for the boy to become transgendered. In cases like the family in the video above, I would say that counseling is strongly needed. Lots and lots and lots of counseling. These children are confused, and need someone to help them work through their confusion. They need someone to be an adult and actually take responsibility for the situation, rather than just caving in to whatever it is your child is demanding. A child cannot make this kind of decision for themselves. Once they’ve grown up and become adults — meaning eighteen and are responsible for their own lives — they can make that decision for themself. But until then, it’s the parents’ responsibility to be a parent and not give in to these kinds of delusions!
And as for Dr. Spack, I think someone should remind him of that oath he took. You know, that one about doing no harm… as he apparently seems to have forgotten. A seven-year-old doesn’t understand what kinds of risks he or she will be taking by going through hormone therapy — like, let’s say, permanent infertility. And the effects of these mutilations are irreversible, meaning that these children will have to live with them for the rest of their lives, even if they grow out of this phase and realize that they never really wanted to do it. Most kids can’t even decide what their favorite color is, yet we’re supposed to trust them with such a huge, irreversible, life-changing decision like this? Does Dr. Spack have no set of morals, no ethics, to guide him? It’s horrible.
What’s interesting to note is the notable doctor who loved performing sex change operations on children: Dr. Josef Mengele. He would often perform sex change operations on children. But today, far from being a horror inflicted by a monster like Dr. Mengele, this is something our society is supporting. Parents are paying this man to barbarically mutilate their children.
What have we come to?
Hat Tip: Ace
