Joe Biden's pick for Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine, is an advocate of sex changes for kids and the drugging of children with puberty blockers.
A professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, Levine has given lectures in various settings since at least 2012 on how to perform sex changes and gender conversion therapy on children.
According to Levine, children ought to be given the latitude to choose their own gender. Levine has advised adults to "try not to force them one way or other [sic]" and instead to follow the child's lead.
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"For prepubertal children," Levine said in a 2017 speech at Franklin & Marshall College, "they might present in different ways. They might present at school in the gender they were identified at birth, or they might present as the other gender, or they might be more gender-fluid." Levine has described children as young as five or six as "knowing" which gender they wanted to be.
Once, however, the child reaches the "young adolescent" stage, Dr. Levine recommends puberty blockers, a practice which Dr. Levine apparently followed at Penn State Hershey Medical Center as Chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders. In speeches, Levine describes prescribing puberty blockers and cross-gender hormone injections to children who expressed anxiety about the natural process of puberty.
Additionally, Levine has expressed doubts about the "controversial" requirement in some standards of medical ethics that patients receive psychological evaluations before undergoing such drastic medical regimens.
The current protocols for gender-dysphoric youth, Levine stated in a 2017 speech, outline a two-step process: the prescription of puberty-blockers during the first stages of puberty, and then, after continued counselling, the introduction of cross-gender hormones between the ages of 14 and 16. Then, around age 18, the patient may undergo surgery. But, as Levine noted, there are sometimes exceptions. In certain instances, Levine has said, surgical procedures may be performed on patients under the age of 18.
Levine, however, has noted that doctors may discard the protocol and significantly "accelerate" the process when dealing with "street kids," who do not come into clinics with their parents, and who may be tempted to buy hormones off the street. In such cases, Levine said, doctors may skip the blockers altogether and go straight to cross-gender hormones, presumably at ages even younger than the 14-16 range described above. Though common in the past, the practice of foisting experimental medical treatments on vulnerable populations, especially minors, is condemned by most medical ethicists.
Joe Biden's pick for Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine, is an advocate of sex changes for kids and the drugging of children with puberty blockers.