(LifeSiteNews) — A prominent Virginia university hosted a seminar last year in which medical students were taught how to form so-called gender clinics in line with the LGBT agenda, according to recent reports.
A resurfaced video of the April 13, 2022, installment of a program called the Medical Center Hour – part of the Center for Health, Humanities and Ethics group at the University of Virginia (UVA) – reveals the promotion of left-wing ideologies in a seminar titled “Starting a Gender Affirming Surgery Program.”
The seminar was hosted in-person at the university’s campus in Charlottesville, Virginia as well as livestreamed via Zoom. While put on by the Center for Health, Humanities and Ethics, the lecture was co-sponsored by the UVA Department of Plastic and Maxillofacial Surgery, the UVA Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement — both of which are affiliated with UVA Health, the university hospital and associated medical centers.
The featured speaker at the event, Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langner, is a professor of reconstructive plastic surgery at New York University (NYU) Langone Health and co-director of its “Transgender Surgery Services” program. She, too, commits to “the full spectrum” of chest and genital surgeries on gender-confused patients.
Other participants included additional medical professionals and two patients who obtained medical intervention for their respective gender confusion.
During the presentation, Bluebond-Langner cited Dr. Milton Edgerton, the founder of numerous gender programs, including UVA’s, in saying that “surgery is an effective treatment for gender dysphoria.” However, data as well as medical experts back the contradictory claim that surgery leads to greater mental anguish and adverse physical side effects.
The surgeon went on to explain, with a case study of her own experience when she was “recruited” to start the gender surgery program at NYU in 2017, some of the ways in which medical professionals can launch similar facilities. She made note that NYU Langone intentionally partners with “advocacy groups” and has worked to influence the university to make the gender program “a priority.”
Bluebond-Langner detailed how to “navigate the system” when moving gender-confused patients along the path to “transition.” Specifically, the process includes a patient navigator doing an initial intake and referring patients to specific physicians who can provide whichever “treatment” is being sought. In the case of desired surgery, “the navigator discusses the next steps necessary to prepare for surgery, like letters of support, hair removal, fertility preservation [and] possibly hysterectomy” are discussed.
To encourage that the affiliated institution – a university – “will create [an] affirming [sic] environment,” Bluebond-Langner gave the example of her own efforts when setting up the NYU clinic, at which time she helped change the requirement of having legal names on medical documents – hence, allowing patients to use their “chosen names” and pronouns instead to allegedly prevent “harmful misgendering.”
The surgeon went on to explain that hospital staff “misgendering” patients “was another huge issue for us.” She emphasized the need for a “true culture shift” to “effective[ly]” create a so-called affirming environment. Her efforts to establish such a shift in culture reportedly included the implementation of “weekly huddles” that taught nurses “how to sensitively ask” about preferred pronouns, in addition to medical staff volunteering their own pronouns. This initiative also shared testimony videos from gender confused patients to show the “devastating impact” of “misgendering.”
Additionally, she claimed that IT systems had “inaccurate health screening alerts,” ironically describing how male patients who underwent a vaginoplasty (creation of neo-vagina from penile tissue) were receiving alerts for pregnancy and cervical cancer screening while female patients with “a male gender marker” did not receive the screening alerts related to their biological sex.
This led Bluebond-Langner and her team to adjust the systems to “bury things like legal name and feature chosen name” on files. During a question-and-answer segment of the event, the surgeon claimed that “good data” supports the “value” of the “lifesaving… medical necessity of all aspects of medical transition [sic] that we provide.” She also described the growing number of laws protecting gender-confused youth from such procedures as “dangerous.”
Contrary to Bluebond-Langner’s claims, medical intervention for gender confusion has proved to cause a wide array of mental and physical health problems. Puberty blockers for minors are believed to cause infertility and impaired bone growth while the use of cross sex hormones are documented to result in higher risks of heart attack and stroke as well as increased rates of suicidality.
Additionally, the rushed path in which medical professionals push gender-confused patients along the road to “transition” has led to a growing number of lawsuits filed by people who have come to regret their so-called sex change procedures.
RELATED
Loudon County high school students walk out of class in protest of ‘trans’ bathroom policy
Medical advocacy group releases ‘Detransitioner Bill of Rights’ for states to resist gender ideology