Re: Whitman County Hospital

I am really disappointed to write this letter but feel our community needs to know our hospital’s acquiesce to a rather vile surgical practice. Let me say that the outset I have always supported the hospital, it has made our community a desirable place to live and work. The doctors, professional staff, aides and schedulers are dedicated to their patients and deliver the highest quality of care.

How, then, would such a highly professional and caring institution grant the use of their surgical facilities to a surgeon who intends to conduct (and profit from) above-the-waist sex change operations on under-age youth. Some transported from out of the area. These procedures are not reversible, and conducted on children who can’t possibly understand the long term implications according to the vast majority of brain research. Following the logic of, “First Do No Harm,” you would think this would be obvious to the board and administration. But one wonders, “why are our principled professionals silent on this issue.” The doctors I know would never tolerate any form of child mutilation in their clinics, but that is an outcome in our hospital.

When I talk with my former colleagues in the legislature, they tell me there is nothing in the recent RCW’s that prevents a local community hospital district from determining how their hospital is to be used and what operations are to be conducted. In the words of one Senator, “It’s time you guys got some backbone.”

Don Cox,

Colfax