A 15-year-old cannot vote, sign a contract, drink, or get a tattoo. You can’t rent a car until you’re 25 years old. And in the US, the FDA has just proposed regulations to prevent minors from even using tanning beds.
Why all the restrictions? Well, last I checked, developmental psychologists, cognitive scientists, and informed members of the general public were aware that adolescents don’t have the cognitive wherewithal—the judgment, foresight, or awareness of future consequences–to make major, life-changing decisions, let alone suffer a bad sunburn. There has been so much replicated behavioral and neuroscientific research done on the subject of executive function in young people that it’s now considered settled science.
So the changes that happen between 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. That’s the part of the brain that helps you to inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to reach a goal.
And the other part of the brain that is different in adolescence is that the brain’s reward system becomes highly active right around the time of puberty and then gradually goes back to an adult level, which it reaches around age 25 and that makes adolescents and young adults more interested in entering uncertain situations to seek out and try to find whether there might be a possibility of gaining something from those situations…one of the side effects of these changes in the reward system is that adolescents and young adults become much more sensitive to peer pressure than they they were earlier or will be as adults.
Another very readable (and amusing) article, “Dude, where’s my frontal cortex?,” sums it up thusly:
The frontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. It’s where the sensible mature stuff happens: long-term planning, executive function, impulse control, and emotional regulation. It’s what makes you do the right thing when it’s the harder thing to do. But its neurons are not fully wired up until your mid-20s.
But the gender specialists at the helm of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) apparently never received the decades-old bulletin on adolescent brain development (or lack thereof), or so it seems. In the Brave New World of transgender “health care,” a 15-year-old can ask for and receive a double mastectomy, with mom’s blessing and collaboration. (In Oregon, a kid can decide to have her breasts removed whether mom approves or not, thanks to trans activists like Jenn Burleton and TransActive).
Last July, a mom posted to the WPATH public Facebook page, looking for advice on how to get “chest reconstruction” for her 15-year-old (i.e., double mastectomy. Why can’t these people use actual medical terminology, even amongst themselves? Do the providers and parents also get “triggered” by seeing a reference to female anatomy?)
[Note: For privacy reasons, I have chosen not to directly link to the (nevertheless) publicly viewable thread on the WPATH Facebook page.]
Seems mom’s insurance company balked at covering elective removal of breast tissue in people under 18.
Psychiatrist Dan Karasic, one of the key contributors to the WPATH Standards of Care (SOC), and provider at the San Francisco Center for Excellence in Transgender Health, is happy to help, citing the SOC chapter and verse (page 21 to be exact) that WPATH fully supports “chest surgery” for minors, although it’s apparently still “too limiting” for his taste:
Mom has already picked out the surgeon for her child, and another commenter, former Transgender Law Center employee Jason Tescher, recommends she try to “force” her insurance company to cover the cost (per the doctor’s website, $8500):
The WPATH thread went dark until today (more on that in a minute). But who is Dr. Mangubat?
In addition to being a popular presenter at Gender Odyssey, the yearly shindig for all things transgender, Dr. Mangubat is apparently well known as a surgeon who’s an easy touch for those looking for double mastectomies. As recently as six days ago, underage top surgery seekers on Reddit were recommending him:
Also, the surgeon I went to (Dr. Mangubat) did not require any kind of letter and I don’t think he requires patients to be on T either, but I could be wrong on that. It was as easy as emailing his office to set up a consultation and then I was immediately able to schedule the surgery.
As to the mom’s efforts to get insurance to cover the removal of her child’s breasts, an update appeared moments ago on the WPATH thread. Mom shares her good news: the insurance company has agreed to reimburse her for the double mastectomy that they “couldn’t wait for” and had done in August.
Dr. Karasic couldn’t be happier.
It’s likely only a matter of time before insurance coverage for teen surgery will be the norm. The Obama administration recently proposed new rules that will require all insurance companies to pay for “transition” services. One wonders just how many “identities” the transgender umbrella will cover when it comes to federally mandated health care services?
The entire Reddit thread that references Dr. Mangubat (as well as two other surgeons I’ve previously written about–Dr. Curtis Crane in San Francisco, and Dr. McLean in Ontario) is worth reading in this regard, because it’s primarily about “nonbinary” people who don’t identify as FTM getting access to “top surgery” on demand–exactly what providers like Dan Karasic promote and what is already happening, apparently, in San Francisco at taxpayer expense, as I detailed in a recent post.
As I also discussed in that post, Karasic is a major WPATH player pushing for the elimination of “gender dysphoria” as a requirement for “transition” services; he wants to replace GD with a new diagnostic code, “gender incongruence,” which would do away with the need for any distress, dysphoria, or disorder but still allow for billing for what amounts to a lifestyle choice–for anyone who claims “gender incongruence,” on demand.
So we know Karasic and WPATH are OK with 15-year-olds who ID as FTM undergoing irreversible surgeries. Does he also believe, as he does for adult patients, that a 15-year-old (or 13-year old?) who identifies as genderqueer, gender fluid, or non-binary should ALSO get insurance-funded double mastectomies?
