Our children are not experimental subjects. . .

Dr. Susan Bradley, the Canadian psychiatrist who pioneered child gender dysphoria treatment, came out against the popular model of affirming children’s transgender identities through the use of puberty blockers.  Though she once advocated for just that, she now thinks this was a mistake -- according to an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.  Now in her 80s, Dr. Bradley's clinic began in 1975 and experimented with such radical therapies but has now backed away from something that became a standard method of treating gender dysphoria in children.  She now believes this treatment can cement the child’s sense of confusion -- confusion that they would likely otherwise outgrow if left alone.  “We were wrong,” she said. “They’re not as reversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth.”  The damage, however, has been done.  “Blocking the sexual development of children is a highly authoritarian intervention. Children are asexual, and so they can’t understand the impact of impaired sexual functioning, she said. “We are roughly 10 years into this large-scale experiment and already we have reports on issues with cognitive development, bone mineral density, and fertility. All the up-to-date evidence shows that puberty blockers are neither safe nor reversible.”

Again, one more egregious example of how we are using our children as experimental subjects.  In gender identity to educational methodology to the prescription of drugs, our children have become guinea pigs and we have violated the most sacred rule to do no harm to those in our care.  Everything about children and their childhood has become a problem to be resolved, a mystery to be cracked, and a riddle to be solved.  The reality is that what our children want and need from adults is the same as it has always been -- protection, provision, and care.  They need our protection because they are vulnerable to the whims and pursuits of adults who think it is their job and calling to tinker with children as one might do for some sort of machinery.  They need our provision because they cannot supply themselves with food or shelter or informed decision making or values.  It is our primary job to provide for them what they need -- refuges in which they may be kids, the basic needs of life always, and how to discern the path forward insulated from the burdens of an adult world of choices and changes.  It is our duty to care for them because they cannot care for themselves nor can they establish a pattern of values apart from Him who is right and who alone rights their wrongs.

While I could focus this more narrowly upon the responsibilities and duties resting upon Christians, the guilt and the obligations fall upon all people.  Those who know that children are a gift and heritage from the Lord feel this more acutely and bear an even greater burden even without personal accountability for the harm that has been done by viewing children as experimental subjects for our curiosity.  The Christ who lifted them into His arms and blessed them rather than sending them away as those either unintended or not yet able for the Kingdom would undoubtedly remind us of the millstone that would prove a better end than the punishment He has in store.  If for this reason alone we Christians need to expose the wrongs and hold the leaders responsible for the consequences of the woke perspective built upon no facts and the most horrid of fancies.  The fact that one of the most early and vocal proponents of the more radical forms of treatment for the confusion of children with the categories of adult dysphoria has now recanted should give pause to those who continue to advocate for the abuse of children in the name of progress.  While I am personally encouraged by this regret, I am not encouraged by our ability as a culture and by the community of experts to stop this kind of abuse and even worse being fomented upon the children among us in the name of advancement.  Children were better off barefoot and left to their own devices than by the heap of wrong foisted upon them by those who claim the cover of education and improvement.  Even the greatest regret cannot restore their wholeness to those who have been left broken by our social engineering experiments.  Is there so little common sense left that even this must be left to debate?