Breaking: Florida's Medical Boards Disagree on Gender-Affirming Care
The Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine held a joint meeting Friday afternoon that devolved into chaos after the two regulatory bodies failed to agree on language regarding access to gender-affirming treatment.
Florida regulators have been considering rules to ban such treatment for minors.A provision allowing minors access to gender-affirming care in research settings was at issue.The rule in the Standards of Practice for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria in Minors states, "Nonsurgical treatments for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors may continue to be performed under the auspices of Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved, investigator-initiated clinical trials conducted at any of the Florida medical schools set forth in Section 458.3145(1)(i), Florida Statutes.
Such clinical trials must include long term longitudinal assessments of the patients' physiologic and psychologic outcomes."Hector Vila Jr., an anesthesiologist from Tampa, moved to strike that exception from the rules.
Patrick Hunter, a pediatrician from Pensacola, seconded the motion.Upon receiving the question from board chairperson David Diamond, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to strike the language, but in a surprising turn of events, the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine voted against it.The dissonance between the two governing bodies is unprecedented and poses a chaotic challenge, says board attorney Ed Tellechea.Tellechea concludes that medical doctors, or MDs, will be regulated one way, and osteopathic doctors, or DOs, will be regulated another.In essence, DOs will be able to provide gender-affirming care in the name of research, while MDs will not.There are now public comments, which have been met with contentious.
