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US Military Transgender Ban In Effect Today; Medical Assoc. Denounces It As Scientifically “Deficient”
April 12, 2019
The Pentagon’s policy precluding transgender people from either enlisting or serving in the military goes into effect today. According to the Associated Press, the American Medical Association has denounced the policy, saying it “defies science.”
The Trump Administration supports the policy, despite legal challenges to it. In January, in light of those legal challenges, the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, still allowed the new policy to move forward.
What particularly irks the AMA is the Department of Defense’s use of the word “deficiency.”
According to the AP, the DOD’s position is that transgender military personnel are allowed to serve, provided they “remain in their biological sex.”
The AP reports that the AMA believes the “policy and its wording mischaracterize transgender people as having a ‘deficiency.'”
The AMA believes such language is “unfair” and “defies science,” the AP reports. The AMA further objects to the DOD’s policy that gender transition is “among ‘administratively disqualifying conditions’ that […] the Pentagon has labeled as ‘congenital or developmental defects.'”
“The only thing deficient is any medical science behind this decision,” AMA President Dr. Barbara L. McAneny told the AP.
According to the AP, Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said the Pentagon’s use of “deficiencies” is meant to describe any “individual [who] fails to meet standards to maintain a lethal force” and not a “reference to gender dysphoria.”
Meanwhile, the “science” behind transgender theory is not universally accepted. For instance, both the American College of Pediatricians, and a report by Dr. Paul McHugh (et al), the Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, find there to be no medical or scientific basis for the diagnosis or treatment of gender dysphoria.