MSNBC Repeats Debunked Lie That Not Getting Transgender Hormones Can Kill You
In an article griping about President Trump’s plan to keep Medicaid from paying for transgender hormone injections, MSNBC repeated the debunked falsehood that lack of access to so-called “gender-affirming care” will cause people to die.
The “one big, beautiful bill,” which passed the House and is making its way through the Senate, would prevent taxpayer dollars from funding opposite-sex hormones for adults and minors. But MSNBC’s Katelyn Burns, a freelance columnist who proclaims the title “the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history,” took to dramatic fearmongering on Wednesday that this would kill trans-identifying individuals.
“For those who have already had bottom surgery and depend on hormone replacement therapy to produce the sex hormones they need to survive, the situation would literally be life or death, because no one can live without a dominant sex hormone,” Burns says.
The 2005 study Burns cites to back up his claim that the situation is “life or death” assesses the association of sex hormone levels with poor mobility in people aged 65-88. While the study’s introduction notes how “mobility limitations and fractures can lead to disability, institutionalization and death,” it has nothing to do with cross-sex hormone usage at all.
Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic‘s pages on “gender-affirming hormone therapy” give no indication that an individual will die if they stop taking opposite-sex hormones. Although there may be symptoms of withdrawal, people are not going to die because they stop taking hormones that alter their biological makeup. (Read more from “MSNBC Repeats Debunked Lie That Not Getting Transgender Hormones Can Kill You” HERE)
