From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— LGBTQ+ advocates are slamming Wisconsin hospitals for deciding to stop providing gender-affirming care amid federal efforts to discourage such treatment.
The Milwaukee LGBT Community Center calls the move a “profound abdication of responsibility” and says it will have serious consequences for young people in Wisconsin.
UW Health and Children’s Wisconsin, both of which are named in the center’s statement, confirmed today they are pausing gender-affirming care.
A spokesperson for UW Health today said the hospital has stopped prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy for patients under 18 years old “due to recent federal actions.” The statement acknowledges the uncertainty facing impacted patients and their families.
“UW Health is committed to providing high-quality, compassionate and patient-centered care to our patients and families, including LGBTQ+ patients,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Children’s Wisconsin pointed to “escalating legal and federal regulatory risk” as a driving factor for the decision, saying it’s “unable” to provide gender-affirming pharmacological care. The email notes mental and behavioral health services will continue.
“At Children’s Wisconsin, we strongly believe everyone, including LGBTQ+ kids, should be treated with the support, respect, dignity and compassion they deserve,” the spokesperson said.
In response to the hospitals’ decision, the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center today issued a statement saying gender-affirming care is evidence-based, medically recognized health care, arguing it’s not reckless or ideologically driven. Ritchie Martin, Jr., the center’s executive director, says taking away gender-affirming care places transgender youth in harm’s way.
“Our community’s young people are not abstractions or bargaining chips. They are real, they are vulnerable, and they deserve safety, dignity, and care rooted in science and compassion,” he said in a statement. “Wisconsin cannot credibly claim a commitment to health equity while allowing fear driven policies to strip trans youth of the care that helps them survive and thrive.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last month announced new regulatory measures under President Donald Trump’s recent executive order targeting gender-affirming care. The federal agency rolled out plans to bar hospitals from performing “sex-rejecting procedures” on children in order to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
HHS says the rules are meant to “ensure that the U.S. government will not be in business with organizations that intentionally or unintentionally inflict permanent harm on children.”
Meanwhile, Fair Wisconsin Executive Director Abigail Swetz today derided the federal government’s “all-out assault on trans people” and effort to hold funding “hostage.”
While her statement doesn’t name UW Health or Children’s Wisconsin specifically, she noted “our state’s own hospital systems give into threats of investigation and choose to pause care” for transgender youth.
See more in press releases below.
— Marquette University researchers have developed a new method for analyzing rare genetic variants that “significantly outperforms” the current approach.
Shengtong Han, an assistant professor of biostatistics with the Milwaukee-based university’s School of Dentistry, recently wrote a scientific paper on the MIRAGE method, which stands for mixture-model-based rare-variant analysis on genes. The article was published last week in The American Journal of Human Genetics.
“Rare genetic variant association test is challenging due to sparse number of variants and the heterogeneity of variant effects,” Han said in the release.
The method was tested using genetic sequencing data related to autism, gleaning “new insights” into related genetic risks, according to yesterday’s release. The MIRAGE method performed better than the standard, the university says.
Rare-variant analysis is widely used in genome sequencing studies, study authors wrote, noting these rare genetic variants often have a greater impact and “directly point out” causal genes.
“These potential benefits make association analysis with rare variants a priority for human genetics researchers,” they wrote, adding current methods are “often underpowered” compared to their proposed approach.
See more in the release below.
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