Telehealth has expanded into the “gender-affirming” care market to provide vulnerable people with cross-sex hormones at the touch of a screen.
Plume, a “gender-affirming” care app has revolutionized the way transgender-identifying people receive hormones. Now, rather than visiting a doctor’s office and receiving an assessment, diagnosis, and prescription, Plume will schedule a telehealth appointment and get patients access to hormones in a matter of days.
This is a mobile transitioning platform, where any individual can log on and talk to a “gender specialist” to go over “goals and desires to create a treatment plan,” and will be prescribed hormones the same day — after a single online appointment.
“Previously, in what is sometimes called the ‘standard model’ of care, medical providers would require a letter of assessment and support from a mental health professional before prescribing hormones to trans individuals,” the company explains. “In other words, you couldn’t consent to getting hormones by yourself – a mental health provider had to ‘okay’ the hormone prescription.” Plume continued by arguing that a patient wouldn’t “need a mental health provider’s permission” to get “diabetes treatment, or to get your appendix removed,” but omits that for either treatment regimen, the patient would need to be diagnosed with diabetes, or appendicitis.
In other words, a healthcare professional would have to accurately diagnose the patient with gender dysphoria, rather than allowing them to self-diagnose and simply take their word for it.
In an effort to expand its customer base, Plume’s website also claims that a person wouldn’t necessarily need to be experiencing feelings of gender dysphoria to qualify for a hormone prescription plan. Now, anyone who identifies as transgender, non-binary, or even “cis” can receive cross-sex hormones, and Plume even recommends micro-dosing for those who are not looking for a total transition.
“Not everyone who pursues gender-affirming hormones experiences dysphoria nor is dysphoria a prerequisite to obtaining hormones.”
“. . . one does not have to have gender dysphoria to be trans or gender non-conforming.”
Plume
Plume claims that informed consent “in the gender-affirming care setting” means that a medical professional can assess a person’s desire to receive hormone therapy without prior approval from a mental health professional or psychoeducational assessment. Plume’s belief is that the patient is the “one best positioned to judge if a given medical intervention is right,” which essentially means the company believes in self-diagnosis, making doctors relatively unnecessary middleman drug dealers.
This company’s version of informed consent is a disingenuous attempt to claim that patients are fully aware of the consequences associated with a medical “transition.” The app also offers a one-time letter of recommendation for a sex-change surgical procedure, after a single online appointment with one of the trans-advocate mental health specialists. Surgical procedures are irreversible and can be life-threatening. Many sex-change surgeries require lifelong follow-up care which is not only invasive and painful but also costly.
What little information is available to the public also suggests that sex-change surgeries and medical transitions increase the risk of suicidality among adults. Stats for Gender, explaining one study’s findings, writes, “After sex reassignment surgery, one study showed that adult transsexual clients were 4.9 times more likely to have made a suicide attempt and 19.1 times more likely to have died from suicide, after adjusting for prior psychiatric comorbidity.”
These numbers are not often presented to the individual seeking transition drugs, treatments, or surgeries. Contrary to Plume’s definition, informed consent means making the patient fully aware of the lifelong consequences that may arise from a medical procedure, even if it means the doctor or drug manufacturer loses out on a repeat customer.
