Whistleblower exposes the harms of transgender clinics
One of the disturbing aspects around the whole gender identity debate and the push for gender affirming treatment – i.e. puberty blockers, wrong sex hormones and the castration of healthy body parts in young people – is that no dissent is allowed. Even medical professionals are scared to speak up. And that was admitted in an article in the NZ Listener last September by Charlotte Paul emeritus professor in the Department of Preventative and Social Medicine at the University of Otago.
She opened this article with this statement
I am writing this article because my colleagues pleaded with me to do so. My younger colleagues, in particular, know they can’t speak out because it could potentially damage their reputations.
I’m a medical epidemiologist and my relevant background is in research on sexual and reproductive health, the safety of medicines, and the ethics of research. My colleagues approached me because they’re concerned about the rapid increase in the use of hormones to suppress normal puberty in children and young people who express discomfort with their biological sex. They’re especially concerned that the grounds for accessing these hormones have widened greatly. How do we know this is doing more good than harm?
My colleagues are seeing in their clinics young people who have changed their minds about wanting to transition away from their biological sex and who also have serious mental health problems that have been left unaddressed. They doubt whether there is sufficient psychological assessment for children with gender dysphoria before they are prescribed puberty blockers – to help distinguish those who will remain transgender from those for whom it is a phase. They also question the capacity of children to consent to the intervention. They are worried about the lack of knowledge of long-term harms and benefits.
And so are we.
There was also this article a month before the Listener one – and it was on the Newsroom site – not exactly a bastion of conservative viewpoints.
But a whistle blower in the US has also now spoken out, It’s an article which I highly doubt will be reprinted in our mainstream media – so we will.
In a report by our friends at Daily Citizen which is a news service of Focus on the family, they write:
A former worker at a “transgender clinic” is speaking out against “transitioning” minors, revealing what really goes on at these clinics. This appears to be the first instance of a “transgender center” whistleblower in history.
Jamie Reed worked for four years as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center (WUTC) at St. Lewis Children’s Hospital from 2018 until 2022. And she’s not a conservative; not even close.
She describes herself in her recent article at The Free Press as a “42-year-old … queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” She’s currently married to a “transman,” i.e., a woman.
In other words, she’s not from the conservative camp by any stretch of the imagination. But she’s speaking out, and in a big way.
Reed says that when she began working at WUTC, the centre’s “working assumption” was that the sooner you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the better. Treatment commonly involves prescribing kids with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to prevent their normal sexual development, and then begin the development of the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite sex.
She writes:
I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.
Reed adds that most of the patients that visited WUTC did not have actual gender dysphoria, a psychological feeling of being uneasy with their biological sex. Instead, most of the individuals WUTC treated were there because of social and culture influences, i.e., because of a “social contagion.”
One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school.
This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.
The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.
Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t).
The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.
There are numerous heartbreaking stories that Reed shares, including the case of one of WUTC’s doctors testifying in a custody battle against a father who opposed his child’s mother’s wish to “start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers” (emphasis in original).
Reed writes:
I had done the original intake call, and I found the mother quite disturbing. She and the father were getting divorced, and the mother described the daughter as “kind of a tomboy.” So now the mother was convinced her child was trans. But when I asked if her daughter had adopted a boy’s name, if she was distressed about her body, if she was saying she felt like a boy, the mother said no. I explained the girl just didn’t meet the criteria for an evaluation.
Then a month later, the mother called back and said her daughter now used a boy’s name, was in distress over her body, and wanted to transition. This time the mom and daughter were given an appointment. Our providers decided the girl was trans and prescribed a puberty blocker to prevent her normal development.
The father adamantly disagreed, said this was all coming from the mother, and a custody battle ensued. After the hearing where our doctor testified in favor of transition, the judge sided with the mother.
And you can see the email evidence there
Reed noted that she was motivated to speak out after seeing comments from Dr. Rachel Levine, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health, who is a man who believes he is a woman. Levine had said that “clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t.”
Reed writes:
I felt stunned and sickened. It wasn’t true. And I know that from deep first-hand experience.
Jamie Reed concludes her article by suggesting what she wants to see done. She has since brought her concerns and documents to the attention of Missouri’s attorney general. She says:
He is a Republican. I am a progressive. But the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars.
Finishing her article, Reed writes:
Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.
In the past 15 years, according to Reuters, the U.S. has gone from having no pediatric gender clinics to more than 100. A thorough analysis should be undertaken to find out what has been done to their patients and why—and what the long-term consequences are…
Some critics describe the kind of treatment offered at places like the Transgender Center where I worked as a kind of national experiment. But that’s wrong.
Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: “We are building the plane while we are flying it.” No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft.
Reed detailed the stories of several patients, including correspondence with other medical practitioners. She noted that young patients were often not fully aware of the potential negative consequences of treatments and doctors at the clinic were quick to blame various symptoms on gender dysphoria.
In one instance, a patient was put on Bicalutamide, a medication used to treat metastatic prostate cancer. One side effect is that it gives feminine features, such as breasts, to the men who take it. However, the patient experienced liver toxicity and was taken off the drug. The patient’s mother threatened to sue.
In another case, a 17-year-old biological female was rushed to the hospital after the patient bled through her pad, jeans and a towel. It was later revealed that the girl had intercourse while taking testosterone, which thins vaginal tissue. Her vaginal canal had ripped open, and she was admitted for emergency surgery.
Other stories in Reed’s account included that of a young Black girl with a history of drug use and an unstable living situation. When she was 18, she went for a double mastectomy. Three months later, she called the surgeon’s office and said, “I want my breasts back.”
“The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child,” Reed wrote.
Here’s the disturbing bit but not really surprising
When she attempted to speak out at the hospital and push back on protocols and medical diagnoses, Reed was given below-average performance reviews and reprimanded by higher-ups. During a company retreat, the doctors scolded Reed and her colleague, telling them to stop questioning the science and their authority.
An administrator later told them to “get on board or get out.”
While Reed revealed that nearly everyone advised her against speaking out, she chose to anyway.
“What is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort,” she wrote.
Jamie Reed’s decision to share her story is significant; and she has modelled true courage in speaking out. She has become the first whistle blower exposing the inside of “transgender clinics,” able to give the inside scoop of what really goes on.
Jamie Reed is the first to speak out. But she won’t be the last. The good news is that according to the Washington Post, Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey on Friday called for doctors to pause giving puberty blockers and hormones to new patients at a transgender youth clinic. The call comes a day after he announced an investigation into claims that the facility rushed to give children gender-affirming care without informed consent.
We are currently awaiting responses to some Official Information Act requests that we have submitted.
It’s time we focused on New Zealand’s facilities pushing and enabling the medical abuse of our young people – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. I’ll put the link to the full article in the description section.
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