Posted on 06/25/2023 6:11:50 AM PDT by MtnClimber
I have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with a physician who works in a major children’s hospital in a blue city. This physician has witnessed firsthand how transgender ideology has captured the medical profession and jeopardized the first commandment of the healing sciences: do no harm.
He has now chosen to speak out, on condition of anonymity, because he is alarmed by the sudden corruption of the medical community. His colleagues, many of whom oppose transgender interventions, have so far chosen to stay silent. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Christopher Rufo: Please begin by setting the scene. What’s it like in a major children’s hospital in the United States regarding transgender interventions for children?
Physician: I think the best way to answer that question is to talk about the cultural shift that happened in 2020, because transgender ideology and Covid are inextricably linked. Normally, doctors operate by the authority of the professional societies that govern our specific practice. That worked because the individuals in those institutions were reliable, intelligent, and thoughtful. But with Covid in 2020, we started getting medical decrees without peer review or evidence—you saw this with masks, social distancing, and emergency-use authorizations. These decrees were expressed as something that everyone had to do, without justification based on sound science. The other thing was censorship. If you were to ask questions or express doubt about these medical decrees, you would be ostracized within your department, and you stood a good chance of being publicly humiliated, severely reprimanded, or fired.
That’s when transgender ideology really took off. Within these academic institutions, so-called experts in the field of transgender medicine would simply declare that puberty blockers and other interventions were the gold standard of care. The evidence to support this is completely fraudulent, but no dissent was permitted. Everyone within the medical community knew that if he questioned transgender ideology, he would suffer the same type of repercussions that had happened during Covid. The best way to describe the environment would be as an authoritarian, censorious culture that discourages any meaningful debate and encourages the demonization of anyone who asks questions.
Rufo: What are the main tenets of transgender medical theory that are enforced as the conventional wisdom? And how have those tenets changed medical practice?
Physician: One, when an individual believes he or she is of a certain sex, he or she is truly of that sex. Two, the ideal response is to affirm that individual’s preferred identity. Three, the repercussion of nonintervention is a higher likelihood of that individual committing suicide. The threat of suicide removes any of the guardrails for what we must do to affirm that individual’s identity. Puberty blockers become justified at 11 years old. Hormones become justified at 13 years old. Double mastectomy becomes justified before 18.
But in reality, when you “affirm” these individuals’ gender identity, what you are doing is affirming their hatred for themselves. You have these children who are going through confusing times, difficult times; when you affirm this belief system, what you’re really doing is telling them: “You hate yourself at this moment, and I will affirm that.” We have to ask ourselves, why do these people have such high rates of suicide? Because we’re affirming that they should hate themselves and that they should try to destroy themselves.
Rufo: And yet, these are medical doctors. They presumably understand basic human biology. They presumably agree with the dictum, “first, do no harm.” And yet they’ve bought into this not just abstractly but concretely; they’re performing these procedures. How does all their background knowledge crumble in the face of these ideas?
Physician: I believe it’s because they’ve bought into the false ideology of transgenderism. And when people have a false ideology, they need a way to separate themselves from nonbelievers and to express their faith to other believers. And if these rituals are not derived from a cultural heritage with a moral tradition, they become susceptible to unbound human depravity. When you look at the Judeo-Christian tradition, you have the outlawing of child sacrifice and other ways that standards were codified. But in the transgender ideology, none of these guardrails exist. So, what becomes the greatest expression of faith to other believers? To sacrifice the most pure and innocent. Once they do that, they become heroes. They become martyrs. They have their flag hung up at the White House. And there’s no going back, because if they were to demonstrate any degree of humility, they would have to come to terms with the fact that they advocated for and participated in a practice that destroyed the lives of innocent children.
Rufo: Tell me more about what’s happening to these kids and their health outcomes.
Physician: It brings me back to a story. There was a kid in the children’s hospital in his teens who had really bad Crohn’s disease, to the point where he’d already had multiple surgeries. And that kid would always be coming back to the hospital and the operating room. But one day, at the same time that we were rolling that kid back to the OR, another kid was headed to the other operating room to get an implant put into his arm so that his hormones could be suppressed. The first kid had no choice. He had no control over his condition of Crohn’s. He was born that way. There was no way to prevent it from happening. But the second kid was put into that situation because of the psychiatrists, the psychologists, the doctors, the politicians, and those in the media who convinced him that this was the correct thing to do to cure his mental anguish.
This should weigh heavily on the consciences of the doctors who did this to a child with the opportunity to live a normal life, to have a normal childhood. At some point, that child is going to wake up, and he’s going to realize that this was unnecessary, that his sexual organs are permanently mutilated, that the balance of his hormones is completely destroyed. He’s going to realize that there’s no going back, that the people who were supposed to protect him threw him to the wolves.
Rufo: What do you predict for the future of transgender medicine? Will it continue to gain ground, or will it all fall apart?
Physician: I don’t know. I pray that there is a change. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is what puberty blockers do to children. This medication is called a “gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist” and it comes in the form of monthly injections or an implant. And because it simulates the activity of this hormone, it shuts down the activity of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is this almond-sized structure in your brain, it’s one of the most primal structures we have, and it controls all the other hormonal structures in your body—your sexual development, your emotions, your fight-or-flight response, everything. But it shouldn’t be described in such cold physiological terms because your hypothalamus is not just a hormone factory. It’s this system that allows you to stand in awe of the beauty of a sunset, or to hear the sounds of orchestral music and to stop whatever you’re doing and want to listen. And I always think that if someone were to ask me, Where is it that you would look for the divine spark in each individual? I would say that it would be somewhere “beneath the inner chamber,” which is the Greek derivation of the term hypothalamus. To shut down that system is to shut down what makes us human.
Perhaps you are moving away from the "let's all go and vote harder for the GOP"?
What would you look for in an autopsy report that would shed any light on that question?
Transgender ideology the thrill of crossing point of no return self stupidity ensues with great sorrow.
I don’t know what others think, but I think it was the SSRI in her system that was causing her to be unfeeling, like a robot. Those drugs are used to prevent the highs and lows of emotions.
I would look for what SSRI she was on. The medical community knows those are dangerous drugs, but they hand them out like candy.
Well, that’s a good question. I’m not qualified to look for whatever might be in there, if anything, that would tell us.
I would like to see “her” manifesto, however..
So, best described as a ‘fascistic cult’.
When I see rows and rows of ‘Pride’ flags, I see Nazi flags.
"Experts" again! I got sick and tired of being forced to wear masks, "social distance," and stay home based on what "experts" were telling us.
Recall that the term "expert" comes from two words--"ex," meaning a has-been, and "spurt," a stream of urine.
They are encouraged to rebel against how God created them. That will never end well; that is what the serpent tempted Eve with in the Garden. I remember one story, I think it was a teacher in California, that a mentor persuaded a child to undergo trans procedures, including surgery. Eventually the child realized that their life's potential was severely damaged; they wrote a suicide note, went out on the expressway and stepped in front of an oncoming truck.
The mentor's reaction? 'What a beautiful story!' sigh
The more successful people were in tamping down the wholesale murder of innocent babies in the womb, the more the morally decrepit left needed to find a new way to make their sacrifices. When you think of it in those terms, this approach is ongoing and probably more delightful to these evil monsters. Snuffing out a life vs. ensuring a life of misery.
Do you know who this guy was?
And do you know what happened to his research?
Bkmk
Lord help our children. And destroy the enemy of what is good and right. Utterly destroy them Lord!
I believe that question is largely a cleavage point in that if a chisel is placed on the rock of politics with that question, a blow to that chisel will split somewhat cleanly separating Leftists from Conservatives.
Leftists believe Truth is subjective, whatever you decide it is. Conservatives believe in objective truth, truth that can be confirmed through the application of the scientific method.
Conservatives believe in observations of reality to find Truth in this world, and we can accept God's world on faith.
Leftists believe in faith in this world for everything which is why they believe in Globalism, high taxes, global warming, white supremacy, transgenderism, and so on. They are wholly objective on God, and refuse to believe unless they have proof. That is, they have the two things backwards. That is why we find it so jarring to hear a Supreme Court Justice nomination baldly state she cannot define a woman. Or some celebrity declare that yes, she believes a biological man can menstruate or have babies.
It all boils down to whether you believe Truth is subjective or objective. Because if you think truth is subjective you have a Willy Wonka Gold Pass into Cuckoo Land. In Leftist Cuckoo Land, the world is filled with possibilities. Men can be women, dogs, cats, unicorns, you name it. The laws of finance only mean what you say they mean. To Leftists, how much money you have on hand has no bearing in how much money you can spend. If you don't like being in a recession because the economy has been retracting for two quarters in a row, you merely change the official definition, and you aren't in a recession any more. You think simply not sending people to jail for violent crime will reduce violent crime. And so on.
And in the end, it is whether your Truth is Subjective or Objective.
I posted this yesterday on a thread titled "Woke ‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’ Canceled After One Season, Will Be Removed from Paramount+" and someone said it was because people didn't want to see minorities on their television programs, so they don't watch, and the show bombs.
I disagreed and wrote this:
Disgusting and extreme child abuse by idiot doctors and idiot parents. My opinion is the C19 vaxxxes have messed up these people’s minds.
Good post.
What you said about the movies is insightful.
Last night we watched “The Sting” again. Great movie. When it was finished, there were extra features that we could watch, so we did.
There were a lot of interviews done many years later with most all of the actors. One thing they said over and over was the attention to small details that the director and writer of the screenplay was phenomenal. Everything had to be very specific to the con man culture, their language, the way they could get someone to believe them. Those things made the movie believable and authentic.
You’re very right about the lack of genuineness in woke culture. It’s where Bud Light has royally screwed themselves over, and there’s no way for them to recapture their former buyers, because the cat is out of the bag. Now people know how much they’ve been played, and they aren’t happy about being fooled.
It is about Truth. If truth is subjective, then it can’t be truth.
Anyway, great post. I sure enjoyed reading it.
Effective movies do smoke and mirrors to make you think it is Luke Skywalker aboard an Imperial vessel telling Princess Leah he is there to save her, when in actuality, it is actor Mark Hamill talking to a piece of masking tape on a piece of plywood paint flat black.
If done effectively, we interpret it as taking place on an Imperial vessel instead of a Hollywood set.
That small kernel of truth enables all that follows.
If the set was poorly done, people would think it was in a set in Hollywood.
No doubt but also people don't want to be forced and they are trying to cram it down our throats. All of it - all this race crap, all this wokeness, man/woman BS etc.
Google the combination of the name of a major medical system and the word gender.
Some people might wish to reexamine their wills.
Thanks gor the link. I knew about the books being burned, didn’t know who he was.
Ironic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.