Harvard Medical School offers course about healthcare for LGBTQIA+ 'infants' trends now
Medical students at Harvard are being taught how to care for infant patients who identify as LGBTQIA+, according to a publicly available course description.
Students at the school, considered one of the foremost medical schools in the world, will be given: 'Clinical exposure and education will focus on serving gender and sexual minority people across the lifespan, from infants to older adults.' In Western medicine, an infant is considered from birth to 12 months old.
According to the description for Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development, students will work in both hospitals and communities with LGBTQIA+ youth.
Among the hospitals involved in the program is Boston Children's Hospital, home to the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States. The directors of the program are Dr. Alex Keuroghlian and Dr. Alberto Puig.
Students will work in the areas of Adolescent Medicine, Endocrinology, Family Practice, Infectious Disease, OBGYN, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Psychology, Primary Medical Care and Plastic Surgery. In addition, students learn about 'advocacy' with regard to LGBTQIA+ issues.
Program director Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, left, who in 2022 said that he did not believe those seeking gender reassignment required a mental health screening, and the other director, Dr. Albert Puig, who has been assistant Dean at Harvard Medical School since 2019
Speaking about the course to The College Fix, an ethicist at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Nathanael Blake said: 'Harvard medical students should be taught the basic scientific truth that a man cannot become a woman, or vice versa.'
He added: 'Those experiencing psychological distress regarding their biological sex need to be treated with compassion, which does not mean subjecting them to dangerous chemical and surgical treatments to mold them into a facsimile of the opposite sex.'
In an interview with the New York Times in January 2022, one of the program's directors Dr. Alex Keuroghlian argued against mental health screening for transgender people.
He said: 'I’m really not a believer in requiring that for people. Being trans isn’t a mental health problem.'
Keuroghlian is the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program.
The Harvard course promises to 'focus on serving gender and sexual minority people across the lifespan'
