Researchers at Duke University used experimental hormone drugs to help a transgender mother-of-five breastfeed her grandchild, in a study that has been panned as “frankly disturbing.”
The unidentified 50-year-old was “lactating spontaneously” and able to produce up to 30 ml of milk at a time after a four-week course of hormone treatments, researchers recently wrote in the Breastfeeding Medicine journal.
She was then able to feed her four-month-old grandchild without any side effects to herself, they wrote in the study, according to the Daily Mail.
The researchers said they were moved to help the biological male create a “bond from breastfeeding that she has not been able to experience with her own five children” after she reached out to the North Carolina university in the spring of 2022.
Scientists around the world had already been able to help four other transgender women induce lactation for breastfeeding, but the researchers at Duke needed to use different treatment protocols because the drugs used in the previous four studies have not yet been approved for use in the US by the Food and Drug Administration, they wrote.
In the end, the grandmother was moved to tears as she was able to help her daughter feed the newborn.
“The patient tearfully reported this was a significant and emotional experience for her that felt very different from formula feeding her other children,” the scientists wrote in the journal, according to the Mail.
“She states that she has a special bond with this baby, for which she is grateful.”
“She regrets that she had not known about the possibility sooner and wished that other transgender women could know that breastfeeding a baby can be a reality.”
They added that “conversations with the subject before, during and after treatment revealed important insights for the ongoing discussions about the role of lactation induction and breastfeeding in gender-affirming care.”
But Heather Welford, of With Women — a group of midwives and breastfeeding experts — slammed the study as “disturbing.”
“Most people would find the idea absolutely shocking,” she told the Mail.
“Babies come into this world ready to continue their relationship with their mother, and breastfeeding helps with this,” she said.
“Disrupting this with attempts at breastfeeding by anyone else is frankly disturbing.”
Maya Forstater, the executive director of Sex Matters, also noted that “babies cannot consent to being patients in a study which sets aside biological reality to define treatment protocols relating to so-called ‘gender medicine.’”
“Men should not be permitted, still less supported, to get between babies and their mothers or to use babies as props to validate their beliefs that they are women,” she said.
The study comes less than one year after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found itself in hot water for publishing advice for transgender women to “chestfeed” their children.
“Some transgender parents who have had breast/top surgery may wish to breastfeed, or chestfeed (a term used by some transgender and non-binary parents), their infants,” the CDC’s website said.
It suggested that “healthcare providers working with these families should be familiar with medical, emotional, and social aspects of gender transitions to provide optimal family-centered care and meet the nutritional needs of the infant.”
But it failed to mention the health risks to the baby, including that one of the drugs used to induce lactation in biological males can give a child an irregular heartbeat.
