Penna Dexter

It would be nice if we could count on the medical community to emphasize excellence and evidence over woke ideology. When we learn of transgender interventions, including life-altering surgery, being prescribed as standard protocol for young people struggling with mental health conditions, we’re wondering where the sane doctors are.

Thankfully, there are still doctors making the case for protecting children against radical transgender ideology. In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, physician Travis Morrell filed a resolution with the Colorado Medical Society “based on the rise of transgender medical interventions both in Colorado and around the nation.”

In doing so, Dr. Morrell is drawing upon the Colorado Medical Society’s policy opposing genital mutilation. He points out that “transgender surgeries often involve mutilation.” Dr. Morrell began his medical career in gynecology and says that transgender treatments “can ruin healthy sexual function and damage reproductive ability, potentially leading to a lifetime of physical and mental ailments.” His fellow members of the society overwhelmingly stood with him.

Dr. Morrell’s resolution came before the general membership in mid-May. Members were given four weeks to vote on it and as the votes came in, passage looked likely. “But,” Dr. Morrell wrote, “by June 12 — the day before voting ended — the tide had dramatically turned, thanks to a sudden influx of votes by medical students.”

It turns out that an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine asked the medical students to quickly join the Colorado Medical Society and vote against Dr. Morrell’s resolution. One hundred fifty of them did, resulting in its rejection.

Dr. Morrell is disappointed that the students so easily switched away from supporting his protective referendum, instead siding with “unproven, unethical and unscientific medical interventions.”

He’s right to conclude that “Americans should worry that when today’s trainees become tomorrow’s doctors, they’ll put political activism ahead of patient health.”