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I think the key is I don't think there is a real difference you are drawing. What or why people hold these beliefs is irrelevant. They do. Whether there is some counter-factual world in which a Christian informed that their beliefs are made up would become an atheist and therefore would have allowed medical treatment for their child instead of prayer doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they were brainwashed as a child, sent to a religious school or handed a pamphlet, it doesn't matter if a trusted pastor converted them, or an online message board. It doesn't matter if their beliefs are true or not.
Either you have to treat the belief as enough or not. Once you start getting into judging whether the belief is well founded, or what tactics you can use to spread your beliefs then we're back while we started.
Guilt tripping is one of the fundamental methods of ensuring compliance to religion (cf. Catholicism) so just because Trans ideology is a religion doesn't mean they can't guilt trip or browbeat people. Likewise people have been taken into care for not being raised in the correct religious beliefs and so on. Faith healers are allowed to advertise. You are drawing (or trying to draw) a bright line between faith and medicine that is actually very blurry.
Either these are reasonable tactics for both trans ideology and religions or they are not.
Are people allowed to morally browbeat people into doing X? Clearly yes. Therefore trans activists should be allowed to as well. Most health insurance covers elective circumcisions at least partially, and even government healthcare does in the majority of states. As for separation of church and state the whole Intelligent Design issues shows that religion will certainly attempt to get their beliefs taught in schools by hook or by crook, so again Trans ideology gets the same treatment. They can try and may fail or succeed.
There is nothing to say a medical organization can't have its advice based upon its beliefs. And in fact plenty to say they can. Jehovah's Witnesses have networks of doctors who specialise in Bloodless Medicine and Surgery, which recommend not using blood products and crucially launder their beliefs by claiming this is better. (or more charitably because they really believe it is better, because their beliefs inform their medical thinking), so a trans-activist doctor can certainly tell a family transitioning their kid is better whether it is or isn't.
The below text at the bottom is from Penn Medicine for reference. Now substitute in "People who choose transition surgery often experience positive outcomes through..." Also note they don't mention anything about the downsides or risks of not using blood products. Interesting isn't it? Like the people writing it have their medical preferences informed by their beliefs and are allowed to simply just tell people that.
I am sure you see my point. If you asked one of these bloodless doctors about whether you should get surgery with a transfusion or without what do you think they would tell you? If you ask a trans activist doctor whether transition is a good treatment for your dysphoric kid what would they tell you?
You're drawing a line for trans treatment that is not drawn in other places. Doctors can just tell you bloodless surgery is better, because their beliefs inform it. Even if you can find other doctors who will say the opposite. Your insurance will just pay for you to have bloodless surgery because it is part of your religious beliefs. Even though it might be riskier. and so on and so forth.
Let me be clear, I think trans treatments much like bloodless treatments are likely to be a mistake and that the children going through each will be harmed more than the alternative. I think both are stupid almost certainly false beliefs. But I think they should be treated the same way. Either activist doctors are allowed or not. Currently if there is a religion that believes blood transfusions are wrong they are allowed to have doctors that also believe this and will (literally) evangelise it. So the trans ideology should get the same treatment. People and parents get to decide which nonsense they want to believe. They remain the final arbiter. Whether they are brainwashed by a pastor, a bloodless doctor or a trans-activist doctor doesn't matter. Either they get to act on their beliefs or not.
I do certainly agree if a trans treatment results in death or the high risk of it, then the state should intervene. But as in Idaho and 33 other states, apparently the religious do not agree with me. So again "their rules fairly enforced". If belief is enough for them to allow a child to die then belief is enough for me to allow parents to transition children. It's isolated demands for rigor and hypocrisy all the way down.
Not from you to be clear, I don't imagine you have much say over Idaho laws or the extensive lobbying thereof. You seem to have a much more structurally coherent position.
"Advantages of bloodless medicine for patients and providers Blood-conservation techniques improve the management of a patient's blood and reduce strain and costs on regional and national blood supplies.
People who choose bloodless surgery often experience positive outcomes through:
Faster healing and recovery Fewer reactions from stored blood Lower chance of infections No chance of receiving the wrong blood in error Hospitals and health-care organizations benefit from reduced:
Blood storage-related issues Costs related to maintaining blood inventory Demand for blood and blood products Risk of blood transfusion errors"
I wrote a very long comment comparing a rabbi urging a Jewish couple to circumcise their son for religious reasons (without presenting himself as a qualified physician) vs. a doctor urging a couple to circumcise their son to treat his phimosis vs. a doctor using his platform as a physician to urge a couple to circumcise their son for religious reasons. I said that, while the first two are fine in my eyes, the third one is not. But that was before I read the rest of your comment, in which you point out that there are qualified doctors who advocate for subpar treatments clearly informed by their religious beliefs. To me, this strikes me as a massive derelection of duty, and I'm surprised they haven't been struck off the register, but evidently the medical occupational licensing boards don't agree with me.
In my ideal world, doctors' sole duty of care would be to their patients, and they would be professionally obliged to leave their personal beliefs at the door. They would keep up to date with the latest standard of medical evidence and dispassionately advise the patient of whatever they thought the best course of action was, irrespective of whether it clashed with their personal religious/political beliefs. A doctor can't just decline to treat a gay man, a racist or a drug addict just because he disapproves of his lifestyle.
But of course, it's more complicated than that. No doctor has the time to read every single journal article that gets published (not even just those in their narrow specialty), and their choice about which articles to read and which not will inevitably be informed (to a greater or lesser extent) by their personal beliefs, which will in turn inform the types of medical interventions he recommends. If an expectant mother is experiencing complications which might require her to terminate the pregnancy to protect her life, of course a pro-abortion doctor will suggest this intervention earlier than an anti-abortion would, even if both doctors are exactly as qualified, experienced and concerned for their respective patients' welfare. While there are many medical interventions with no political or religious valence, and some interventions that no medic could ever professionally recommend without fear of a malpractice suit or losing his license, in the middle there's a whole mess of grey, and it's impossible to draw a bright line in the sand.
In a society where elective circumcision of infants is legal, probably there's no way to outright ban elective mastectomies and vaginoplasties. But I want doctors to be a lot more upfront than they currently are that these are elective procedures and that the evidence base for their efficacy is mixed. That thing of "you have to cut your son's dick off or he will definitely kill himself" has to stop, immediately.
So I think we're quite close in ideals maybe. I agree that I would prefer a world with doctors as you describe.
I just don't think its possible. A doctor may earnestly believe that a trans surgery will save the life of a child, just as a Jehovahs Witness doctor believes giving the child blood is worse for them medically because they've both rationalized their belief set through their medical training.
For many medical decisions the outcomes are grey. As you point out fundamentally your medical ethos is buttressed by your belief set. You may not even know you are biased. So how do you ban that?
You see the same with dentists in much less culture war ways. I have a really old NHS filling in a tooth. My last US dentist said it was old but ok and if it started crumbling he would crown it. My new dentist says I must remove it and replace it with a crown because he expects it to start crumbling and that will make crowning it harder and more painful for me.
Presumably this difference is to do with their risk tolerances or experiences with fillings or because they read it in a book. Or maybe my new dentist is a sadist or wants the extra money from my insurance company. I heavily suspect though its not a conscious choice. They are different people, one a shy, almost reserved Indian chap, while the new dentist is a mile a minute talker with shoulders like a prop forward from Iowa. I have no idea which one is objectively right. They may well both believe they are right.
As for bloodless doctors..wait until you find out about Doctors of Osteopathy (D.O.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Osteopathic_Medicine
"One notable difference between DO and MD training is that D.O.s spend an additional 300–500 hours to study pseudoscientific hands-on manipulation of the human musculoskeletal system (osteopathic manipulative technique) alongside conventional evidence-based medicine and surgery like their MD peers"
Currently about 1/3 of student doctors in the US are D.O., not M.D. in theory they have to study the same conventional medicine. But being taught a whole non-scientific process seems like its likely to influence your decision making. Or maybe just being the kind of person who would choose that route does. There are practices and programs that don't hire D.O.s but they are fully licensed physicians.
Anyway, the US at least has no grounds to complain about activist doctors pushing treatments with little or no scientific backing. They've been accepting that for a long time. Maybe make a Doctor of Trans (D.T.) school so you can tell them apart and call it a day.
Ugh, don't get me started. My cousin used to run a chiropracty clinic in the UK. Every time he talked to me about it, I had to bite my tongue.
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