Misdiagnosing male or female health issues can have dire consequences, doctors say
Today, some people who identify as transgender expect their doctors to pick up on the unspoken fact that sometimes “men” complaining of stomach pain are actually women who identify as men.
For doctors to be oblivious to—or ignore—basic human biology, such as the differences between male and female, already has caused great harm, including death, said Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, senior vice president of bioethics and public policy for the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA).
“Fortunately, those very tragic cases are rare; but they’re likely to become more common,” Dr. Barrows said. “So it gets to the point that we in the health care profession must keep track of the true biologic sex of the patient.”
But if in the process of trying to assess and provide life-saving care, a doctor notes the biological sex of a patient—on a chart, for example—he or she can be at risk of being fired, Dr. Barrows said.
The medical field largely has accepted radical gender ideology as science, doctors told The Epoch Times.
Doctors who speak against it risk losing their jobs, Dr. Barrows said.
Differing Health Issues
In 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine described the case of a woman who had undergone procedures to look like a man. She lost her baby because doctors failed to diagnose her as pregnant.
That’s just one example that illustrates how knowing and acknowledging a patient’s biological sex matters.
Sometimes, the true biological sex of a person who identifies as transgender or nonbinary is not immediately obvious, even to a physician, Dr. Barrows said.
Yet “one of our members was recently fired from his position because he wrote the biologic sex [of a transgender-identifying individual] in the medical record” of the patient.
Some health issues affect men and women differently, and those issues often require very different treatments, Dr. Barrows said.
Heart attack symptoms in men, for example, most often include chest pain. Women, however, might experience nausea or heartburn.
By Jackson Elliott
