Los Angeles Juvenile Hall Forced Estrogen Shots on Teen Boy for His Behavior
July 20, 2020 in News by RBN Staff
Source: Need To Know | Sacramento Bee
A 16-year-old boy was detained at Eastlake Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles and given estrogen for a behavioral disorder, causing him to develop breasts, according to a lawsuit.
The suit was filed against doctors Danny Wang and David Oh and the County of Los Angeles on behalf of the boy, who was diagnosed in June 2019 with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) two days after he was detained at Eastlake Juvenile Hall. Samples showed that he had “elevated levels of testosterone.”
The boy was prescribed 30 doses of estrogen “without obtaining his or his parents’ informed consent,” according to the lawsuit.
Estrogen are hormones that aid in sexual and reproductive development in women and are found in lower levels in men, according to Live Science.
The boy was given 13 doses of estrogen and developed gynecomastia, which is enlarged breast issue, according to the suit. The lawsuit says his parents had not been informed about his ODD or notified that he would be receiving treatment. The boy tried to refuse to take the estrogen due to feeling “increasingly terrible, miserable, and ill” and was eventually taken off the medication.
“Estrogen is not a treatment for ODD. I can’t be more emphatic about that,” James McGough, a professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA told The Los Angeles Times. “You won’t find a reference anywhere that supports the use of estrogen for ODD.”