(LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sparked criticism from doctors this week for its suggestion that men who identify as women can “chestfeed” infants if they take a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to replicate a woman’s natural production of breast milk.
Physicians said the CDC is mixing “politics and science” and must make clear the risks posed to infants subjected to the experimental practice.
In an exclusive report published Wednesday, The Daily Mail cited doctors who sharply criticized the CDC for claiming that so-called “transgender” or “non-binary” people can safely “chestfeed” the babies in their care.
The CDC claims on its “health equity considerations” webpage last updated in January 2022 that “[t]ransgender and nonbinary-gendered individuals may give birth and breastfeed or feed at the chest.”
“An individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed,” the CDC continued, adding that “families may have other preferred terminology for how they feed their babies, such as nursing, chestfeeding, or bodyfeeding.”
On another webpage last updated in April 2023 addressing questions regarding breast surgery, the CDC said that “transgender parents who have had breast surgery” can “breastfeed or chestfeed their infants.”
“Some transgender parents who have had breast/top surgery may wish to breastfeed, or chestfeed,” the federal agency stated.
According to the CDC, “families” that want to subject their babies to such a practice “may need help” with things like “maximizing milk production,” “supplementing with pasteurized donor human milk or formula,” and using “medication to induce lactation or avoiding medications that inhibit lactation.”
Doctors have condemned the advice, explaining that existing research does not support the artificial practice of feeding a baby via fake breasts and hormonally induced lactation, and warning that infants subjecting to the practice could face health risks, including heart problems.
“As a physician who has delivered over 5,000 babies and encouraged every mom to breastfeed, it is evident the CDC has placed politics and its social agenda ahead of science and the health of newborns,” reacted Dr. Roger Marshall, a pro-life physician and Republican state senator in Kansas.
“This is the kind of thing where politics and science are uncomfortably put together,” said Dr. Stuart Fischer, a board-certified medical doctor with decades of experience, in comments to The Daily Mail. He argued that the assertion of any equivalency between natural breastmilk and the liquid produced through pharmaceutical intervention in a biological male is “very hard to believe.”
“You can’t fool Mother Nature,” Dr. Fischer said, adding that a lack of sufficient research makes it difficult to ascertain what potential risks a baby fed with the artificially produced substance might face.
“If it’s been tested a handful of times, how would we know the long-range effect?” he said. “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.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told The Daily Mail that “we have no idea what the long-term effects on the child will be” if a man tries to “chestfeed” an infant and employs “all kinds of off-label hormones” to do so.
“[t]t’s become so politicized that you can do all kinds of things for a politically approved purpose,” she said, adding that the “CDC has a responsibility to talk about the health risks, but they have been derelict in doing that.”
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While some have pointed to recent research promoting the idea that the substance produced through induced lactation by transgender individuals is a suitable alternative to natural breastmilk, The Daily Mail noted that it’s “unclear how many other trans women have been able to breastfeed since the first recorded case in 2018,” and noted that there are “very few studies and no scientific consensus about the nutritional quality of the breast milk produced.”
The outlet noted that men who claim to be women can make themselves produce milk by taking a cocktail of drugs including a contraceptive pill, metoclopramide, digitalis, chlorpromazine, sedatives, and the anti-nausea drug domperidone.
However, the FDA has warned against the off-label use of domperidone to stimulate lactation, citing “the possibility of serious adverse effects.”
“There have been several published reports and case studies of cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, and sudden death in patients receiving an intravenous form of domperidone that has been withdrawn from marketing in a number of countries,” the FDA noted in 2004.
“Because of the possibility of serious adverse effects, FDA recommends that breastfeeding women not use domperidone to increase milk production,” the agency said.
The Daily Mail said it reached out to the CDC for comment before publishing its article but did not hear back.
In his July 6 Twitter thread, Dr. Marshall argued that “the CDC has lost all its credibility.”
“A biological male filled with hormones and a concoction of other drugs that could harm a baby should NEVER try to naturally feed a newborn,” he said. “When will the Left wake up and realize what they are doing to our country?”
Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, said during a Thursday podcast episode that society is “putting a brand new baby … at risk of having heart palpitations and various difficulties so that we can encourage this woke culture.”
Szoch also slammed so-called “chestfeeding” as “a perversion of a beautiful act that is intended to nourish a child.”
“It is 100% focused on the man who is masquerading as a woman and who has this perverted desire to feed a child or to pretend to feed a child,” she said.