Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), which has been performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors, has announced that it will suspend transgender surgeries after a video was released of a doctor talking about how they are “huge money makers.”
Last month, conservative activist, Matt Walsh, released a video from 2018 in which the hospital’s LGBTQ specialist, Dr. Shayne Taylor, spoke about how transgender surgeries are “huge money makers” for the hospital.
Walsh posted another video of Vanderbilt’s Dr. Ellen Clayton warning that anyone on the hospital’s staff who voices “conscientious objections” due to “religious beliefs” will face “consequences.” Clayton makes it very clear that if someone doesn’t want to perform transgender surgeries on minors, they shouldn’t work at Vanderbilt.
Walsh also released content from VUMC’s YouTube channel which reveals that the hospital “drugs, chemically castrates, and performs double mastectomies on minors.”
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have been trying to end transgender surgery at VUMC, especially after the videos released by Walsh went viral. Republican Tennessee Governor, Bill Lee, spoke out against the hospital’s financially motivated decisions and procedures, saying “The pediatric transgender clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center raises serious moral, ethical and legal concerns.”
“We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain. We have to protect Tennessee children, and this warrants a thorough investigation,” added Lee.
On Friday, VUMC announced that it is suspending all permanent “gender affirmation surgery” for minors until further notice.
The international medical center will forgo performing any transgender surgeries for children that cannot be undone or reverted later in life, pending an internal review.
In a letter to state lawmakers, VUMC’s CEO and Chief Health System Officer C. Wright Pinson wrote:
On September 2, 2022, WPATH published a new version of its recommendations to health care professionals for treatment of transgender persons, known as SOC-8. In light of these new recommendations, and as part of completing our internal clinical review of the SOC-8 guidance in patients under 18, we will be seeking advice from local and national clinical experts. We are pausing gender affirmation surgeries on patients under age 18 while we complete this review, which may take several months.
