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The American Academy of Pediatrics should be disbanded. Immediately.

On Monday I wrote about how they blamed parents for their kids getting fat during the COVID lockdowns. Today I bring you the news that at their annual conference they presented a speaker who celebrated the suicide of a 16 year-old girl.

No, this is not a hoax. It happened. On a colorful stage with a room filled with pediatricians who not only failed to tar and feather the speaker, but who clapped at the end of her talk. And it was not in some small breakout group. It was a plenary session with all the participants in the conference there:

The speaker, Dr Morissa Ladinsky, is a pediatrician at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. She was just given an award for “Diversity Enhancement.”

The Dean praised Ladinsky for her tireless advocacy for transgender youth. Exploiting youth suicide must be part of that advocacy:

“Dr. Ladinsky is a tireless advocate for transgender youth in Alabama and across the nation,” said Tina Simpson, M.D., MPH, vice chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Pediatrics. “With her leadership, the Pediatric Gender Health Clinic team has helped more than 200 youth and their families receive evidence-based, gender-affirming care. I deeply admire the passion and compassion that Dr. Ladinsky brings to her clinical and advocacy work. This award is well-deserved recognition for her hard work and commitment.”

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It is impossible to emphasize too much how dangerous it is to in any way praise suicide for anybody, no less the suicide of a suffering teenager in desperate need of mental health. The circumstances of the suicide are irrelevant, although in this case Ladinsky exploits it because it benefits the narrative that transgender youth who are not mutilated are at greater risk of suicide than those whom doctors can sterilize and put under the knife.

This claim is, by the way, hotly disputed, and studies “showing” this are fatally flawed.

The teen in question sparked a controversy a few years back.

…A transgender Ohio girl killed herself by walking into a truck. In a suicide note posted online, the teen, who was born Joshua Alcorn but identified as female and called herself Leelah, described being sent to conversion therapy and expressed her hopelessness in the face of her parents’ refusal to accept her identity.

“My death needs to mean something,” she wrote.

Within hours, Leelah’s suicide on Dec. 28 became a trending topic on Twitter and a cri de coeur in the LGBT community. A few weeks later on a stage in Los Angeles, “Transparent” creator Jill Soloway dedicated her award to “the memory of Leelah Alcorn and too many trans people who die too young.”

…

Doug and Carla Alcorn are conservative Christians who are not only mourning their child’s death but being blamed for it in some quarters. Activist and columnist Dan Savage was an early participant in the pile-on, tweeting that Leelah’s “parents threw her in front of that truck” and calling for them to be charged with child abuse or even manslaughter. He wasn’t alone. Funeral services had to be moved to an undisclosed location because of threats to the family.

Eight years later this poor child’s death is still being used as a political cudgel. This time by a pediatrician. Appalling.

Doctors have an unconditional duty to help their patients thrive, and to discourage “bold” acts such as stepping out in front of a tractor trailer. Using this child’s pain and suicide–calling it “bold” in fact–for political purposes is utterly despicable. And she seems to like bringing up this poor child’s suicide quite a bit.

A room filled with pediatricians should have audibly gasped and rushed the stage, and somebody there definitely should report her to the medical board in Alabama. I can conceive of no circumstances where a doctor praising the suicide of a child would be acceptable.

Yet apparently it is.

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