Harvard Medical School offers course on caring for LGBTQIA+ ‘infants’

Harvard Medical School is offering a course that aims to teach students how to provide healthcare to LGBTQIA+ infants and patients across the lifespan. The inclusion of so-called transgender infants raised concerns on social media. 

The course is called "Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development" and is regularly available at the school, the College Fix reported.

According to the course catalog description, the course allows students to work with patients who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or asexual. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for students to engage in a mentored scholarly endeavor such as advocacy, quality improvement, medical education, original research or public health projects.

The course is being taught in conjunction with Massachusetts General Hospital, which serves as the primary meeting location for the medical school's 2022-23 academic year.

The hospital offers a variety of transgender surgical procedures for individuals 18 and older, as well as resources for transgender youth such as referrals to LGBTQ support groups.

Also involved in the course is Boston Children's Hospital, which generated controversy last year over a video claiming that some children know their gender identity before they are born.

The hospital created the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the US, according to its Center for Gender Surgery website.

Harvard Medical School did not respond to requests for comment on the course.

"Harvard medical students should be taught the basic scientific truth that a man cannot become a woman, or vice versa," Nathanael Blake, an ethicist at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said in a comment to The College Fix.