- Doctors told DailyMail.com the CDC has a ‘responsibility’ to disclose health risks
- There is no scientific consensus about the nutritional quality of the breastmilk
- READ MORE: NYC Mayor signs executive order protecting gender-affirming care
US health officials were criticized today for advocating that trans women can breastfeed — without highlighting the health risks to the baby.
Several information pages on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website appear to endorse ‘chestfeeding’ — a term used to describe feeding an infant milk directly from the breast by trans and non-binary parents.
One section, titled ‘Health Equity Considerations’, claims ‘an individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed.’
Another section in a Q&A about breast surgery, titled ‘Can transgender parents who have had breast surgery breastfeed or chestfeed their infants?’, says families may need help with ‘medication to induce lactation.’
But doctors told DailyMail.com the CDC has a ‘responsibility’ to disclose the lack of research and potential risks. One of the medications used to produce milk in biological men has been linked to heart problems in babies. They claimed the agency was blurring lines between ‘politics and science’.
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.
Biological men who transition to women can produce breastmilk by taking several hormone drugs that mimic the changes a woman’s body undergoes during the late stages of pregnancy and shortly after the birth of a child.
But one of the drugs used can pass into breast milk in small amounts and can sometimes give babies an irregular heartbeat as a result.
The FDA has warned against one of them; domperidone — an anti-nausea drug that ups levels of prolactin, the hormone which encourages milk production.
The agency said: ‘Because of the possibility of serious adverse effects, FDA recommends that breastfeeding women not use domperidone to increase milk production.’
Dr Jane Orient, executive director of the conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told DailyMail.com that ‘we have no idea what the long-term effects on the child will be’ if a breastfeeding trans woman uses ‘all kinds of off-label hormones.’
