(LifeSiteNews) – The American political left are hypocrites on the issues of sound treatment and medical freedom, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida argues this week in a Federalist op-ed contrasting their stances on ivermectin for COVID-19 and hormone drugs for child “gender transitions.”
Rubio notes that Democrats and like-minded “experts” such as White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci have claimed it’s “dangerous” to use ivermectin to treat COVID when it isn’t formally used for that purpose, but “take a completely different view about giving puberty-blocking drugs to children. Puberty blockers are federally approved for treating different cancers and the very early onset of puberty. They are not approved for delaying puberty in children experiencing gender dysphoria.”
The Biden administration claims “every major medical association agrees that gender-affirming health care for transgender kids is the best practice and potentially life-saving.” Rubio recounts asking acting National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Dr. Lawrence Tabak for the safety and effectiveness data on these treatments; Tabak answered merely that “we will be able to better answer the types of questions that you’re posing” after results are in from NIH-funded observational studies – meaning there is no such data yet.
The lack of such data, Rubio says, makes the administration’s position “irresponsible and dangerous.”
“For example, what happens to an 11-year-old girl who starts taking puberty blockers and then decides at age 16 that she wants to live as a woman?” the senator asks. “The Biden administration claims the effects of puberty blockers are ‘reversible.’ Based on Tabak’s sworn testimony, that claim is misleading — at best. A major Swedish health institution acknowledged puberty blockers could result in ‘extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis.’”
READ: The ‘transgender’ experiment is the biggest child abuse scandal of our lifetimes
A range of scientific literature and firsthand accounts indicate that while reinforcing gender confusion may give a patient short-term satisfaction, over the long term it often fails to prevent, or actually exacerbates, significant emotional harm up to and including attempted suicide (with or without surgery), including by tending to distract from exploring other issues that may be the actual root of a patient’s mental or emotional unrest.
On top of those issues, a growing number of experts warn that surgically or chemically reinforcing gender confusion imposes irreversible harm on children such as infertility, impairment of adult sex function, and reduced life expectancy, as well as the psychological toll of being “locked into” physical alterations regardless of whether they change their minds when they mature. Studies indicate that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, unless their confusion is reinforced by adults.
Meanwhile, despite being misrepresented in the mainstream media as horse dewormer, ivermectin is an FDA-approved medication with a range of human applications, such that it is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines. Like many medications, ivermectin is also used for horses, but human dosages of the drug for human ailments were not controversial until IVM started gaining notice in the context of COVID-19.
While experts continue to debate the drug’s effectiveness at treating COVID-19, promising studies as well as reports of positive results have generated significant interest in it, as has the fact that it have been used and studied for far longer than the COVID vaccines, which were developed and released in record time by the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative. Many believe the long-established drug is safer than relatively new vaccines they believe have been rushed and politicized.
READ: Neurosurgeon dismantles ‘official lies’ and deadly abuses of officials directing COVID response
Despite the established safety of IVM, and the evolving nature of COVID knowledge, families across the country have had to go to court to force hospitals to let them try it for their loved ones, while doctors have seen their medical licenses threatened for prescribing it – a scenario that states such as Oklahoma have indicated would not be tolerated in their borders.
The University of Minnesota, Emory University School of Medicine, Northwestern Medicine, and other medical institutions have been conducting a major at-home clinical trial to assess ivermectin’s effectiveness at treating COVID-19, as well as that of the drugs metformin and fluvoxamine or any combination of the three.
In the meantime, “it is time we start holding woke public health officials responsible for their dangerous advocacy,” Rubio says. “It is the only way we’ll be able to protect our children from this extreme, irresponsible zealotry.”