When trans rights trump babies’ rights | The Spectator

Over the weekend a letter came to light written recently by a Dr Rachael James in her role as medical director of Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. In this letter, Dr James insisted that the milk a man can sometimes induce is just as good for babies as their biological mother’s breast milk. They’re both ‘human milk’, says Dr James, and therefore ‘ideal food for infants’. She includes in her letter, by way of proof, a link to the WHO page on the subject of breastfeeding.

Dr James is engaging here in a truly ballsy bit of subterfuge. Yes, the WHO says that breast milk is best, but it’s referring only to ordinary breast milk produced by actual women. It makes no mention of man milk. But Dr James knows that. She’s a senior consultant in the NHS and there’s not a chance she doesn’t also know that the milk produced by a baby’s biological mother is by far its best bet. Unlike man milk, a mother’s milk at first contains colostrum, which has all the antibodies, antioxidants and nutrients a newborn needs and it changes magically, in response to the needs of a child. No man has ever produced colostrum, hard as he pumps, nor anything like enough milk to feed a baby.

But Dr James’s really unforgivable omission is not to mention that domperidone, the drug used to induce lactation, might well be unsafe for a child. Domperidone has not been licensed for use in America because of concerns that it causes heart problems. Trans activists can insist till they’re blue in the hair that the small amounts of domperidone in chest milk are unlikely to harm a baby, but they just don’t know.

In all studies cited, much is made of the ‘affirmation’ a trans woman (man) feels when he’s allowed to breastfeed. It helps with his dysphoria, we’re told. There must be some official NHS document that shows how to weigh the brief satisfaction of a trans woman against the possibility of lifelong harm to an infant. I’d love to see it.

On Monday night, the BBC chose to discuss the man-milk affair with a young woman called Kate Luxion, an unqualified ‘trainee lactation consultant’ and a researcher at UCL. With a composed and serious expression, Luxion insisted that not only was man milk safe, but ‘studies’ had actually found that a trans woman’s milk contained more nutrients than the milk of a baby’s mother.
The BBC didn’t think it necessary to quiz the trainee consultant, to examine the study she cited or to ask how it could possibly be true that trans milk is actually suddenly more nutritious than the milk from a biological mother. Neither the babies nor the truth matter any more.

Source: When trans rights trump babies’ rights | The Spectator

One thought on “When trans rights trump babies’ rights | The Spectator”

  1. The BBC should have done a bit of research *before* putting an unqualified person on as an ‘expert’ (sic). To broadcast false medical (sic) and physiological (sic) information (sic) which endangers – yes endangers – babies and the children they have a right to become – should be actionable. The BBC should not have to apologise because this ought not to have happened in the first place. What sort of ‘research’ does the BBC undertake for its programmes, and what sort of ‘researchers’ does the BBC employ? Ideological nonsense should not be promulgated and particularly where it puts babies at risk and where it privileges ideological nonsense above physiological and medical reality. The BBC stands more than shamed in this. See Isador Sanger, Born in the Right Body, https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9798364867902/born-in-the-right-body

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