Claim: A class at Harvard Medical School trains students to treat transgender infants.
AP Rating: Wrong. A Harvard class on health care for LGBTQ patients discusses intersex infants in the context of their physical development. Intersex is an umbrella term for people who have natural differences in their sex traits and reproductive anatomy. The infant-focused portion of the course does not cover gender identity or sexual orientation and is just one day in a month-long course, a class professor told The Associated Press.
Fact: Ivy League universities are the latest universities to undergo rigorous online scrutiny for providing health care to transgender minors. in a pattern It took hold throughout 2022.
recently, conservative website Also, online commentators distort the content of a class at Harvard Medical School. Social media users point to it as an extreme example of gender-affirming healthcare.
“Harvard teaches medical students about transgender toddlers,” wrote one Twitter user, who had nearly 10,000 likes as of Tuesday. Another commenter on Facebook shared a screenshot of a misleading blog post titled “Training Harvard medical students to treat ‘trans babies’.”
However, these claims misrepresent what the class actually teaches about infants. course – Entitled “Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sexual Developments” – Teaches only the physical development of babies born intersex. baby’s Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, according to Dr. Alex Curloglian, the associate professor who teaches the class.
the word intersex It describes people born with reproductive organs, hormones, or other characteristics that do not fit the typical definition of male or female. These conditions may or may not be noticeable at birth, explained Dr. Arlene Baratz, medical and research affairs coordinator for the intersex advocacy group Interconnect.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth, whether they feel like a girl, a boy, neither, or both. The term gender is not synonymous with intersex.
Parents and families of intersex children “have questions about the health implications of these physical changes,” Keuroghlian told AP. “Medical students need to know how to provide this care.” there is.”
One day of the month-long Harvard course is devoted to infants, Keuroghlian told the AP. Students work in Boston-area clinics that serve large numbers of LGBTQ patients, learn how to care for non-infant patients, and focus on areas such as psychiatry, endocrinology, dermatology, and infectious diseases. I’m here. The class, which she has been running since 2016, could enroll one or two students each month, Keuroghlian said.
Physical differences in the genitalia of intersex infants “are evident in newborns and usually trigger a course of medical procedures, including evaluation to discover the underlying cause,” Baratz said in an email. Stated. Some of these conditions, such as those involving the urinary tract, can be life-threatening. However, “diverse genital appearance is not itself a health risk.”
Plastic surgery may be offered to “minimize parental anxiety” about the future appearance of intersex infants, but it can have dire physical and emotional consequences for the child later on. There is potential, says Baratz.
Sean Cipher-Wall, co-founder of the Intersex Justice Project, said physical gender characteristics in infants began long before they knew what their gender was or what gender they felt they were. He said conservative critics “deliberately conflate” the two.
Older Children Experiencing Gender Dysphoria: Feelings of Distress for Their Assigned Gender May look for transition-related health care To ease those feelings once you reach puberty.However, surgery and hormones Do not give to young children Or a toddler for this purpose, despite the misleading rhetoric.
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This is part of AP’s efforts to address widely shared misinformation, including working with outside companies and organizations to add facts to misleading content circulating online. . Learn more about Fact Checking in AP.
