渴望变性的儿童数量呈增长趋势_BEC初级作文

渴望变性的儿童数量呈增长趋势

Pediatricians need to know these kids exist and deserve treatment, said Dr Norman Spack, author of one of three reports published Monday and director of one of the nation's first gender identity medical clinics, at Children's Hospital Boston。

"If you open the doors, these are the kids who come. They're out there. They're in your practices," Spack said in an interview。

Switching gender roles and occasionally pretending to be the opposite sex is common in young children. But these kids are different. They feel certain they were born with the wrong bodies。

Some are labeled with "gender identity disorder," a psychiatric diagnosis. But Spack is among doctors who think that's a misnomer. Emerging research suggests they may have brain differences more similar to the opposite sex。

Spack said by some estimates, 1 in 10,000 children have the condition。

Offering sex-changing treatment to kids younger than 18 raises ethical concerns, and their parents' motives need to be closely examined, said Dr Margaret Moon, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' bioethics committee. She was not involved in any of the reports。

Some kids may get a psychiatric diagnosis when they are just hugely uncomfortable with narrowly defined gender roles; or some may be gay and are coerced into treatment by parents more comfortable with a sex change than having a homosexual child, said Moon, who teaches at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics。