The NHS has put appeasing the trans cult ahead of children’s health

Trans rights demo

Long gone are the days when nurses poured out Guinness on maternity wards in the belief it boosted breastmilk production. Now medics give breastfeeding mothers a suspicious side-eye if they dare to lift a second cup of coffee to their lips. Yet it seems the rules on what is safe for an infant to ingest are relaxed when the person feeding is male.

A leaked letter from University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (USHT) claims men who identify as trans women can take a combination of drugs to produce milk which is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.

It is true that men can take medicine which causes them to lactate. This depends upon them first developing milk-producing glands by taking the hormone progestin and then taking high doses of prescription drugs such as domperidone for their off-label effect of stimulating milk production.

With Women, a campaign group of midwives and breastfeeding experts, says male and female lactation are different. Maternal milk is unique to the mother-child dyad, it even changes according to the needs of the infant.

“The physiological link between the baby’s needs and her supply depends on frequent feeding without interference from another source. Any service caring for the well-being of the baby and mother knows this – to put it aside for the sake of indulging a man’s wish to breastfeed is inexcusable.”

Despite such criticism, USHT continues to argue that babies will not be harmed by drinking the drug-induced discharge from male nipples. In response to news coverage the trust said: “We stand by the facts of the letter and the cited evidence supporting them.” Tellingly, the manufacturers of the drugs used to induce male lactation are more circumspect.

Janssen, producers of domperidone, warns that use “may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby. [It] should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.”

There are, of course, no circumstances in which it is medically necessary for a man to breastfeed. But this is not the first time that clinical need has been shelved in deference to trans ideology at the hands of ideologues within the NHS.

At the now-closed Gender Identity Services (GIDS) at the Tavistock clinic thousands of children who were confused about their gender identity were given the prostate cancer drug Lupron to halt their puberty. For over a decade the hormone blocking medication was given off-label as part of a clinical trial.

More disturbingly still, despite GIDS’ closure recent figures suggest more children than ever are being given this drug through private and new NHS clinics. It seems even within medicine, the cult of identity is now deemed more important than clinical evidence.

The NHS remains a trusted institution which holds the hand of every British citizen from our first to last breath. As such, decision makers within it should be mindful that their purpose is not to refashion society, but to work within its bounds. And they should know that maternal relationships are central to this.

Even today, if you walk into any church or art gallery you will see images of breastfeeding. This is because our ancestors understood that the act of nursing a child is fundamental to what it is to be a mother, and that this first bond we share is symbolic of what brings us together as a society. To deny this, as USHT has done, is not only to show disregard for the purpose of medicine and scientific rigour, it is to tear apart what makes us human.

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