Doctors are reacting with shock and horror at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) “guidance” on how biological men who identify as women can “chestfeed” their babies.
Internationally-known physician Peter McCullough, M.D., wrote in his Substack column Courageous Discourse Tuesday that CDC has become a “laughing stock” over its “chestfeeding” guidance, “plunging to new lows” with its “ridiculous” statement.
On Sunday, the Biden CDC released a “Health Equity Considerations” document on its website page regarding its “Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies Toolkit.”
The social justice-inspired “guidance” states:
- Transgender and nonbinary-gendered individuals may give birth and breastfeed or feed at the chest (chestfeed). The gender identity or expression of transgender individuals is different from their sex at birth. The gender identity of nonbinary-gendered individuals does not fit neatly into either man or woman.
- An individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed.
- Some families may have other preferred terminology for how they feed their babies, such as nursing, chestfeeding, or bodyfeeding.
McCullough, who worked to develop a protocol for early treatment for COVID-19, said about the CDC:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is imploding with turnover of two directors over the pandemic, admissions of “large mistakes” during the course of COVID-19, and a vaccine safety debacle that is the worst on record with CDC-favored but clinically ill-advised mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
“Now the agency is plunging to new lows with this ridiculous statement on their website,” he continued, citing CDC’s specific guidance on how transgender parents who have had breast surgery can “breastfeed or chestfeed” their infants.
CDC claimed:
Some transgender parents who have had breast/top surgery may wish to breastfeed, or chestfeed (a term used by some transgender and non-binary parents), their infants. Healthcare providers working with these families should be familiar with medical, emotional, and social aspects of gender transitions to provide optimal family-centered care and meet the nutritional needs of the infant. These families may need help with the following:
- Maximizing milk production
- Supplementing with pasteurized donor human milk or formula
- Medication to induce lactation or avoiding medications that inhibit lactation
- Suppressing lactation (for those choosing not to breastfeed or chestfeed)
- Finding appropriate lactation management support, peer support, and/or emotional support
During an interview Monday with Dan Ball on Real America, McCullough responded to a question about the CDC’s statement:
Don’t forget that the baby is born to a normal mother, and the normal mother has the breasts that are ready to do the breastfeeding, so the man has nothing to do with breastfeeding. The male breast shouldn’t be forced hormonally to try to produce milk. It’s very unnatural. Chances are the milk, you know, won’t be normal human breast milk. It won’t have the right components to it and there’s no reason to do it, because the mother who delivered the child should do the breastfeeding. So, the CDC stepping into this is completely not needed. It’s, I think, really a shame that our CDC is getting caught up in this transgender narrative.
McCullough added that “transgender medicine is bad medicine” and “is being banned across the country.”
“In the UK, they just dropped puberty blockers altogether,” he noted. “You’re gonna see transgender medicine go out quickly worldwide. It’s bad medicine. No doctor should prescribe these hormones or do these surgeries, and the states are banning it anyway.”
Similarly, Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS), an OB/GYN, alerted WMAL’s O’Connor & Company to the dangers of CDC’s “chestfeeding” guidance, claiming the health agency is “bastardizing” breastfeeding with its statement.
“When will the woke Left wake up and realize what they’ve done to America here?” Marshall asked, explaining:
I’m an obstetrician. I delivered a baby every day in my life – most every day – for some 25-30 years if you include residency. And breastfeeding was a very important part of that, delivering obstetrical care. It is the healthiest nutrition there is for a baby. And to see this be bastardized by the CDC and actually putting babies at risk … I’m almost speechless, to describe how upsetting this is.
“The CDC is recommending a drug, that’s been taken off the market by the FDA – Domperidone is what it’s called – it was taken off the market in 2004, because it caused life threatening heart arrhythmias,” Marshall observed, noting in his office’s press statement CDC is “encouraging these individuals to use Domperidone, a risky drug not legally approved or sold in the U.S.”
“This dangerous medication has serious side effects that could pose life-threatening complications for adults and more so the infant,” the press statement emphasized.
“Look, if any one of my moms would have come to me and said, Doctor, is it okay if I take this medicine and breastfeed? I would have said, well, of course not,” the senator noted during the interview. “This medicine is going to do who knows what for what goes through the breast milk. It can cause arrhythmias for this baby.”
Marshall said the Biden CDC is placing its “woke agenda” ahead of “science.”
“I’m just beside myself,” the senator said. “Why would you subject newborn babies to the threats of the side effects of these medicines, let alone inadequate nutrition? Why are we putting our woke agenda ahead of science?”
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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
