The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was criticized after the agency published advice on how transgender biological males can breastfeed their infants, another example of how the alternate reality of the “woke” left has taken root inside of the nation’s government institutions.
In the guidance posted on its website, the agency advises trans and non-binary individuals on “chestfeeding” which is described as “a term used by many masculine-identified trans people to describe the act of feeding their baby from their chest, regardless of whether they have had chest/top surgery (to alter or remove mammary tissue).”
The practice of “chestfeeding” appears to be endorsed by the national public health agency on several pages of its website, including one titled “Health Equity Considerations” which states that the “gender identity of nonbinary-gendered individuals does not fit neatly into either man or woman” and that “an individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed.”
Another section on Q & A about breast surgery asked “Can transgender parents who have had breast surgery breastfeed or chestfeed their infants?” The agency answered yes and stated that families could need help with “medication to induce lactation.”
According to the Daily Mail, “Biological men who transition to women can produce breastmilk by taking several hormone drugs that mimic the changes a woman’s body undergoes during the late stages of pregnancy and shortly after the birth of a child.”
“But one of the drugs used can pass into breast milk in small amounts and can sometimes give babies an irregular heartbeat as a result,” the outlet reported. “The FDA has warned against one of them; domperidone — an anti-nausea drug that ups levels of prolactin, the hormone which encourages milk production. The agency said: ‘Because of the possibility of serious adverse effects, FDA recommends that breastfeeding women not use domperidone to increase milk production.”
Some doctors have been critical of the CDC not as much for advising biological males taking hormones to grow breasts on how to “chestfeed” newborns, but for failing to consider the potential health risks associated with feeding children using milk that is produced by chemicals that are used in sex change surgery.
“We have no idea what the long-term effects on the child will be’ if a breastfeeding trans woman uses ‘all kinds of off-label hormones, Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons told the Daily Mail. “A lot of people are pushing for off-label use of a drug… it’s become so politicized that you can do all kinds of things for a politically approved purpose.”
“The CDC has a responsibility to talk about the health risks, but they have been derelict in doing that,” she said.
Internal medicine physician Dr. Stuart Fischer told the outlet that the idea that breast milk produced by transgenders is comparable to that of real women is “very hard to believe” and that “Because it’s induced. You can’t fool Mother Nature.”
“If it’s been tested a handful of times, how would we know the long-range effect?” Fischer asked. “The short-term is one thing, but the long-term in terms of physical and mental illness… who knows? It’s an emerging field, to put it mildly.”
“This is the kind of thing where politics and science are uncomfortably put together,” he added.
The CDC’s reputation took a big hit during the COVID pandemic and it’s hard to see how public confidence is going to be restored for as long as the agency is promoting left-wing politics, a cancer that has metastasized throughout the federal government.
