The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is being criticized for making absurd claims that transgender people can "chestfeed" their babies.
Several information pages on the CDC's website instruct how individuals who have had their breasts removed in gender-reassignment surgeries, or biological men taking hormones to grow breasts, how to feed their babies.
One section titled "Health Equity Consideration" claims people do not need to have given birth to breastfeeding or "chest feed."
"Some transgender parents who have had breast/top surgery may wish to breastfeed, or chestfeeding their infants," the CDC website states. "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."
The CDC acknowledged that transgender people will need medication to help them produce milk. However, critics warn of risks posed to children who drink "hormone" milk produced by chemicals from drugs.
"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 chestfeeding)" and "Finding appropriate lactation management support, peer support, and/or emotional support," the sites continues.
The Daily Mail noted that the FDA warns that such drugs, like domperidone—an anti-nausea drug that ups levels of prolactin— "can pass into breast milk in small amounts and sometimes give babies an irregular heartbeat as a result."
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They claimed the CDC blurred the lines between "politics and science."
Executive director of the Conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Jane Orient, said that doctors do not know the long-term side effects if a breastfeeding trans woman uses "all kinds of off-label hormones."
"A lot of people are pushing for off-label use of a drug... it's become so politicized that you can do all kinds of things for a politically approved purpose," she continued.
The CDC said that medically produced milk contains the same nutrients as breast milk naturally occurring in a biological female. However, doctors said that is "very hard to believe."
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