Theology in the Raw - Transgender Health Care and the Scandals Revealed in the WPATH Files: Mia Hughes

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Mia Hughes, a journalist for the think tank Environmental Progress, discusses the controversy surrounding pediatric medical transition and the collision of trans rights with the rights of women and the LGB community. She authored the recently released WPATH files, which expose the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as an activist group with questionable medical practices. The conversation delves into the history of WPATH, its influence on healthcare for trans-identified people, and the lack of evidence supporting its treatment protocols. Mia highlights the ethical dilemmas and potential harm caused by the medicalization of gender identity and the irreversible interventions performed on minors. The conversation delves into the harmful effects of gender-affirming medical treatments, particularly on adolescents. Mia discusses the leaked internal discussions from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and highlights the lack of scientific evidence and the political activism within the organization. They emphasize the importance of informed consent and the need to protect vulnerable individuals, especially minors, from irreversible medical interventions. The conversation also touches on the potential for future lawsuits and the contrasting approaches to gender-affirming care in North America and Europe. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Mia Hughes, who is an Ottawa-based journalist for the think tank Environmental Progress, and she primarily covers issues related to gender with a particular focus on the controversy or controversy of pediatric medical transition and how trans rights collide with the rights of women and the LGB community. Mia previously covered the gender issue for the post millennial and has been published in The Critic, Lesbian and Gay News, and Gender Dissent. Mia is a British mother of three living in Ottawa, Canada. This is going to be a bit of a more serious conversation

and a very controversial conversation. I reached out to Mia because she authored the recently released WPATH files. And if you know nothing about what that means, we talk about it very early on in the conversation. So we should catch you up to speed. WPATH stands for World Professional Association for Transgender Health. And it is the leading global organization dealing with healthcare for trans identified people. It's become a very controversial organization and a very controversial topic. Whenever I give any talk on anything related

to the transgender conversation, I just get that out of the way from the very beginning. Anybody who dares to speak publicly about anything related to the transgender conversation is dealing with controversy. So the whole, you know, you can't talk about that because it's controversial. You can't say that. You can't do this. It's controversial. Everything is controversial. So it's just the way it is. The key is, can you go about engaging in this conversation graciously, kindly, and very thoroughly researched in your knowledge. Whatever you claim to say or believe or whatever,

I do think we need way more thought and research that goes into how we engage this conversation. And I found Mia to be extremely well researched in her work on the WPATH files. That's why I reached out to her. I mean, I was reading this, I've read a good chunk of the WPath files. It's very long. And I was just really impressed with how thorough it was.

I found Mia to be incredibly honest and kind. And yeah, I'm excited for you to tune into this very controversial topic, controversial conversation. And I'm excited for you to get to know Mia Hughes. So please welcome to the show the one and only Mia Hughes. All right. Hey, welcome to the show, Mia. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for having me. So let's go back to the, just go back to,

as far back as you want to go, how did you even get interested in this topic, specifically healthcare for trans identified people? And the focus here is largely on minors, but not exclusively. Like when did you first get interested in this conversation? I can tell you the exact date. In fact, it was December 19th, 2019. That was the day

that JK Rowling wrote a tweet, which is now rather famous. Some might say infamous. JK Rowling wrote a tweet in support of Maya Forstater, who was a tax consultant in the UK, who had lost her job basically for saying that, well, women are female, men are not women, and humans cannot change sex, you know, describing reality. She lost her job and then she took it to an employment tribunal and the tribunal ruled against her saying that this, her opinion that women are female and this matters was not worthy of respect in a democratic society. And J.K. Rowling tweeted in support of Maya. And I was on Twitter that day and I was unaware of this issue. I was actually one of those people because I leaned to the left politically. I was one of those people who was just going along with trans women or women because I thought it was the kind thing to do. I hadn't given the matter any

thought whatsoever. And then when I read J.K. Rowling's tweet, it was gorgeously worded and I thought, I agree with this. This makes sense to me. And then I looked at the response on Twitter and it was just outrageous. People were so angry with her and calling her something, calling her a turf, calling her a transphobe. And I realized that day, that very day, reading all the replies, just what was going on, just what was expected of us. We were expected, I didn't realize we were supposed to believe that trans women were actually women.

I thought we were all just saying that to be kind to these men who feel more comfortable presenting as women. And then I found out on the same day that some of these men believe themselves to be lesbians. And that they were telling lesbians, they were calling lesbians bigots for being lesbians. Lesbians not wanting to date men, they were calling them bigots. And as well, I discovered shortly after that, what was happening to children. I learned that children were being taught they could be born in the wrong body. And I learned that teenagers in pediatric gender clinics were having their puberty blocked, were being given irreversible cross-sex hormones

and having healthy body parts cut off, chopped off because they believed themselves to be members of the opposite sex. The moment that I discovered that, the issue became an obsession for me. It became a fixation. I could not believe that the medical world could commit such a crime. So I started to investigate it. I was just a stay-at-home mother.

I was homeschooling my children. I was not political at all. I had no controversial views. Then I learned what was happening to children and that changed everything for me. First of all, did you ever listen to the podcast series, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling? Oh, it's amazing. That was... I mean, I would say it's amazing on two levels. Number one, just a sheer journalism there was so, so, so good. I forget the host, the person who did that, she's the, I think, granddaughter of the Westboro Baptist guy, right?

Yes. Megan Phelps- Yes. Oh, what's her name? Megan Phelps-Roper, right? Yes. There Felts, Roper. Roper. Right? Yes. Yes. There you go. The journal... Whatever opinion you'd have about JK Rowling and that whole situation,

just the journalism was so good. She was very sympathetic with JK Rowling, but she said, all right, what are the critics saying? Interviewed some critics. On one level, journalism was amazing, but then also just the... It was just so incredibly eye-opening. I mean, to hear JK Rowling's heart in it all, yeah, it was just so incredibly eye-opening. I mean, I, to hear JK Rowling's heart in it all, yeah, it was just incredible. I'd highly recommend that to anybody, though, which trials of JK Rowling. What is WPATH?

Let's start, let's go there next, because we're ultimately gonna spend most of our time on the WPATH files, which you basically authored. I mean, you're the producer of the WPATH files, right? So what's, for people that don't know, producer of the WPATH files, right? So for people that don't know, like what is WPATH and what's the significance of WPATH for this conversation? Okay. So if you want to understand what this medical scandal, and it is a medical scandal,

you absolutely must understand the organization that sits at the very core of it, and that is WPATH. So WPATH is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. This is a group that sets the standards of care for gender medicine. Until recently, you could have said these were the internationally respected standards of care that nations around the world followed.

That would not be true now because many nations in Europe have completely abandoned WPATH and have gone in a much more evidence-based approach. They set these standards of care and they have a carefully crafted public image as being a scientific organization, a healthcare group, very professional, very evidence-based, and they are advocating for the best possible medical treatment for people who identify as transgender. But that's not strictly true. It's far more accurate to call them an activist group with a sort of sprinkling of medicine and very bad science mixed into the soup. This is a group, it's a strange organization, it's a professional organization, but it's

a hybrid. Within this group, you have got surgeons, endocrinologists, clinicians, mental health professionals who deal with people who have gender dysphoria. Then you've got activists. You've got a really strong activist cohort that will be made up of human rights lawyers or just people who seem to be transgender and have an interest in trans activism and gender medicine. They're all mixed together in this weird hybrid organization. But the trouble, I think that's a really dangerous combination because this group is setting medical standards of care. Transactivism is one thing, evidence-based medical care is another. You absolutely cannot

mix the two, in my opinion, and WPATH really is proof that I'm right on that because they formed in 1978. I'll give you a quick zip through. So 1978, in the 50s and 60s, there's this weird obscure fascination with what was called transsexualism at the time. Harry Benjamin was one of the key figures. John Money, many people have heard of him. Alfred Kinsey. It's a very obscure field of medicine. Harry Benjamin then gets together a group of people, the Harry Benjamin Association. And then in 1978, they form the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, HBIGDA. That's WPATH.

They later became WPATH. In the early days, I honestly do think that perhaps they were in their own very strange way pursuing science. They were trying to find the best scientific way, the best way to help these people suffering from gender related issues. Then around the late 1990s, the group starts to become very political. That's simply because at the same time, the modern trans rights movement was in its infancy. It was just getting off the ground. Basically, the two then evolved together.

Activists start to join Hibigda and they start to shape how Hibigda does its research. And it's no longer a quest for science, it's more a quest for the human rights, trans rights. And you can see the first decade of the 21st century, they start to very much focus on affirmation, medicalization. They're not producing science, they're just doing trans activism. They rebrand in 2007 as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. I think that's key in that they almost self-identify as a world-leading professional association. They are now the world leaders. They de-psycho-pathologize gender identity disorder.

That means they'd make this political decision that being transgender is not a psychiatric disorder. It's perfectly natural and healthy. And therefore, anyone who tries to help the transgender person reconcile with their body, that's conversion therapy and that's transphobia. And because that becomes their central mandate, they only advocate for medical, hormonal, and surgical interventions from that point

on. They plunge further and further until a key moment was 2022, when they produced their Standards of Care version 8. This was a remarkable document, hundreds and hundreds of citations, but contained a chapter on eunuch as a valid gender identity deserving of hormonal and surgical affirming castration, and a chapter on non-binary medical care, which included surgeries for people who identify as neither male nor female can have their bodies smooth and sexless, no genitals or anything, or if they're both male and female, they can have a second set

of genitals surgically created, so they have both. This was an activist document in every stretch of the imagination. And it really shows what happens when you abandon the Hippocratic oath entirely and just pursue your activist goals. That's a great, yeah, that's a great history. I've read, yeah, you're taking me back down a very familiar road that I've been on. So yeah, thank you for that.

Yeah, 2022, I remember that report came out and there was, it got some mixed reviews. There was like the Society for Evidence-Based Medicine had some pretty ruthless critiques of it. I'm trying to think who's the sexologist in Canada who has been critical of WPATH for a while. I'm trying to think of his name. He took over for- Is it James Cantor? Yes, James Cantor. Yeah. Is it James his name. He took over for, is it, is it James Cantor? Yeah. James. Yeah. He's yeah. He's brilliant. He's brilliant. And I, it's such a volatile conversation.

Even if I sympathize with somebody saying, I'm always like, well, slow down. Let me go do some fact checking. And every time I go do a deep dive fact check on James Cantor, he checks out pretty good. Like the dude, he knows how to do his research and, uh, I mean, he's, he's a, not a right winger. He's a gay man himself. It's all like, he's like coming from some like religious right perspective or something, but he's been very critical specifically just on a basic medical level of, um, some, well, some, there are many aspects of W path. And I, yeah, I remember reading his critique of W path aspects of W path. And I'm, yeah, I remember reading his critique of W path that the, the 2022 report and it was, it was pretty devastating. Let's go now to, okay. So when did, what is now the W path files this? I mean, it's a 241 page document. I have it up here where

on page 70, you do say, I think this is the executive summary. Maybe it's your, your words or maybe somebody else. There can be no doubt that we are currently witnessing one of the greatest crimes in the history of modern medicine. That's a bold statement. I, having read through good chunks of this document, there's a lot of evidence to back it up. I mean, it's, it's pretty daring. And I know most people aren't going to take the time. I mean, you're, you're, you have loads of just screenshots of conversations happening between W path and doctors asking questions. And it's a lot to wade through. And then some of it's kind of like, Oh, what's going on here. And other ones are like, wait, did I just read that?

Right. That's horrifying. I just be honest, like reading the actual, like, Hey, I've got a patient with schizophrenia and Molly's mental disabilities and stuff they're wrestling with. And like, what should you do? Well, they can still consent and you should move forward with the surgery. I mean, it's like really, it's eerie. What led to you specifically the WPATH files? Was that in response to the 2022 report? Is that when you started really diving in to do the research to is now the WPATH files? It's not. So, at the time of the 2022 standards of care version eight,

I was a writer for the post-millennial. I was covering the gender issue full-time for the post-millennial. So, I did. I covered standards of care eight. I was even, I covered the WPATH covered Standards for Care 8, I was even, I covered the WPATH 2022 conference that happened in Montreal. Some crazy things happened there, let me tell you. So I've definitely been fascinated by WPATH since the beginning, because once you, like when I say I plunged into this in 2019, you start to, it's a very bewildering place to plunge and you don't have any idea what's going on, but it becomes very apparent very quickly that you keep coming across WPATH. WPATH says this, there's WPATH over here, and you quickly realize that you've got to understand WPATH if you want to understand the scandal. So I had definitely been reading and writing about WPATH for a

number of years. It wasn't until 20, it was last April that I started working for Michael Schellenberg. So almost immediately he hired me to cover the gender issue as well. And I was writing for his Substack Public. Almost immediately after I started working for him was when he was given the WPATH files. He then passed them on to me. This would have been probably May of last year. At first, we tried to turn the files into a three-part series of articles for public. But as you just said, hundreds of pages of documents and it's all so unbelievable and there's so much content and I just couldn't do it justice in three articles. So, Michael, after many attempts, Michael had the idea to move me over to environmental progress, which is his think tank. And that's where I got to

write the deep, investigative, extensive report. My contribution to it is 70 pages. My report is 70 pages long. And I urge people to read it as I made it as readable as possible, because I wanted, I understand how bewildering the files are, hundreds of pages of WPATH members in these conversations on their internal messaging forum. I wanted to present the information, tell the full story about WPATH, and make it as readable as possible for someone only just discovering this issue. The intention was to write it for people who think WPATH is a real, trustworthy, scientific medical group.

And the idea was to tell the story of WPATH, building it upon their own words, basing the story on their own words and the way they talk about the patients, the very vulnerable cohort of patients that they claim to be helping. As you can see from the files themselves, I don't believe they are helping these people and I don't believe they are improving their lives. It is very readable and I appreciate that. It does have 304 footnotes.

I have an audience that is very bookish and they appreciate research. They like footnotes, not endnotes. They want to see sources and stuff. Having read through a lot of these same sources, you did extensive research, even if somebody disagrees with you and says, no, I think you're whatever the disagreement might be. Anybody in the right mind is going to say, you've done some homework here. It's not like you're reading a couple like Fox news articles or something. And like, it's, this isn't a hit piece. This is a extremely well researched document. And

you're citing loads of peer review medical journal. I'm just scanning them right now. And I'm familiar with a good chunk of these. Oh, you can cite Anne Lawrence. She's got some good stuff. Can you get, could you have any examples off the top of your head, specific cases that you discovered that you report on here. Like, for some it's like, okay, I'm still kind of fuzzy. Like, what are these files and what's the problem? What are the, you say it's a medical malpractice, it's a huge scandal.

Like, what are some examples of what's going on that you report on here? Right, so there's two, we got two different sets of leaked information, I suppose. One was all the files that you see, the screenshots, and then there was a panel discussion, We got two different sets of leaked information, I suppose. One was all the files that you see, the screenshots, and then there was a panel discussion, a leaked video panel discussion. So I'll start with the panel discussion just because that deals with children and adolescents,

and then we'll move on to the files themselves. So in the panel discussion, this is a panel that took place in May 2022 with some very prominent WPATH members. There's one of the co-authors of the child chapter for Standards of Care 8. There's a former WPATH president. There's a pediatric endocrinologist who is very prominent in Canada. So, these are really, really important influential people. They're discussing the difficulties of the ethical dilemma involved in basically chemically

castrating adolescents. The pediatric endocrinologist, he starts off by saying something like, it's very difficult that we're explaining puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, this medical treatment pathway to young people who haven't had biology in high school yet, which is your first red flag. Okay? They're acknowledging that these are young people who have not had high school biology. But he then goes on to say that he finds talking to a 13-year-old about fertility preservation, so bear in mind they know they're chemically castrating these kids because they

are offering them fertility preservation. He says he finds talking to these 13-year-olds is like talking to a blank wall. They're like, ooh, babies gross, which is of course precisely what the average 13 year old would say because they do not have the cognitive capacity to understand lifelong sterility. I was once 13 and I would have said exactly the same thing. All the way to my mid-20s, I would absolutely have said, I do not want children. I will never want children. Then I hit 30 and I became obsessed with the idea of becoming a mother. I had three children. I became a stay at home mother.

I was breastfeeding, co-sleeping, all the rest of it. People change. It's totally normal for this 13 year old to say, ooh, baby's gross. And so not only that, but he then goes on to talk about there's a study. So, this experiment began in an Amsterdam clinic in the 1980s. This puberty suppression, basically adolescent attempts at sex change. And so, the Dutch have the first long-term study on the outcomes of the early cohort who went through this experimental medical pathway. The recent study that came out shows that there is significant

fertility regret. 27% of them actually regretted losing their fertility, but about 56% of them, if I remember correctly, want to have children. They're in their 30s and they want to have children, but they can't because they were sterilized. He brings up this study to the group and he's saying, yeah, there's regret, there's significant regret, and I don't think that surprises any of us. Then he says that in his own clinical experience, he sees the adolescents that he has chemically castrated come back in their 20s and they tell him that they've met someone and they want to settle down, they want to have kids. He replies to them, oh, the dog's not doing it for you anymore, is it?

Meaning he knows that when they were teenagers, they thought they would always be happy just having a dog. He sees them when they come teenagers, they thought they would always be happy just having a dog. He sees them when they come back in their 20s. They've met someone, they want to settle down, they want to have a baby, and he replies, oh, the dog's not doing it for you anymore. There's a certain callousness to the way these people talk about the regret and the young people that they are experimenting on because it is an experiment. There's no evidence that this is safe or effective.

And then there's another one in the panel who talks about how difficult it is to talk to nine-year-olds about fertility preservation. She says, oh, it has me stumped. And they talk about how they just want the kids to be happy now, in the moment. And it's very difficult for them because they understand that there's regret. And I just, the way I see it is that conversation was really chilling to me because they see everything that we see.

You know, they were talking about everything that I talk about, that others talk about. They see everything we see. You know, they were talking about everything that I talk about, that others talk about. They see everything we see, and yet they are the very ones who are allowing these young people to sacrifice their fertility. They are the very ones placing the young people onto the medical pathway that is robbing them of their fertility and their chance to grow and change. All the information is in the show notes. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. In doing so, you get access to all kinds of different premium content. Most of all, you just get access to the theology in the raw community. We have all kinds of awesome chats and messages back and forth.

It means the world to us that you support the show. As the show has grown, so have all the expenses and all the work that goes into pulling it off. Again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. And I just want to thank my, uh, the people that are already supporting the show. Thank you so much for keeping this show, not only going, but also thriving. So patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. What do you see as the motivation here? I mean, I could give two, are they well intended, but misinformed?

Like, okay, you have all these problems, but we all know as the saying goes, you'd rather have a dead son than an alive, you know, daughter or you'd rather have a live daughter or dead son saying like, suicidality is still worse than 50% fertility regret. So that might be well intended, but maybe misinformed. Or is it basically like, there's this, you know, I've got, you know, tons of funding from activists that I'm just going to go with this and I really don't care what's going to happen to these kids. Like it's just a politically correct thing to do or, you know, do you have any thoughts

on the other motivation? Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that. I firmly, firmly believe that it is the first, the former that you said. It is, they are not evil people. They are not evil people setting out to harm children, nor are they evil people just making a profit and who cares what happens to these kids? Absolutely not, in my opinion. They are true believers. They really do truly believe in the existence of the transgender child. Because they're true believers, in their world exactly that. This is a transgender child, a transgender adolescent, and there is nothing that can be done to reconcile the

gender identity with the body. That's impossible because they live in this W path world. They're in this very ideological framework where any attempt to reconcile body and mind is conversion therapy and that's bad. That makes you a bad person. They live in this world where the only way to ease the pain and the suffering of these young people is to give them the hormones and surgeries to bring body and mind into alignment. Of course, yes, there's the transition or suicide myth. It's a complete myth. It's a lie. It's not true. They do, I believe, inside WPATH. You can think of it honestly. You can think of it like a cult. It is very cult-like because they are very much shielded from debate. They're shielded from the evidence

from the outside world and they only exist. They exist in an echo chamber where gender affirming care is life-saving care. That's the culture within. Yes, if these children will live a life of misery and possibly commit suicide, if they are not given access to these hormones and surgeries, then of course they must provide this treatment. They really do act wildly as if these kids are dying of cancer. And I draw the analogy in the report that there is no other treatment pathway that you could justify sterilizing a child. Only in oncology and gender-affirming care do doctors sterilize children. And in oncology, you can understand. I mean, the child's life is at risk. The child will die if you do not perform these interventions. So it's justified. And in gender affirming care, the only medical

justification they have for it is the child is at risk of suicide. So they act wildly as if the child will die without the medical treatment. But of course, there's no truth to that whatsoever. The psychology of it is fascinating because I always look at them, I don't know if you've read the book, Mistakes Were Made But Not By Us. Have you read that? Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris, I think. They have this in the book, they have something called the pyramid of choice. Whenever you are making a really difficult decision, ethical decision, you stand at the top of a pyramid. You can go in one direction or the other.

These doctors, at some point in the past, made the decision to go down the gender affirming care side of the pyramid. Perhaps when they did so back in the 1990s or early 2000s, perhaps it looked like real science and perhaps it looked like ethical medical care that really was helping these children. But with every patient that they put on the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, with every child that they sterilized, basically, they had to be right. When you've made a decision like that, you must be right, especially as a doctor. You don't want to think of yourself as harming patients. So there's this powerful self-justification that takes place with every single patient.

The further down the pyramid they go with each patient, with each child that they sterilize, the self-justification process becomes stronger until you're standing at the very bottom of the pyramid and you absolutely at that point have to be right. You cannot have sterilized hundreds of children in your medical career only to find out that there was no evidence for it. You were doing terrible harm and that makes you a monster. That means you'll go down in history as Walter Freeman and his lobotomies or something. I think they're now at the bottom of the pyramid. They're so entrenched. They can't possibly let themselves look at the evidence that is mounting all around them

that says they've made a terrible mistake. So they're just blinding themselves to it. Do you think that you mentioned it, that the moral linchpin is the suicidality piece, that if you believe kids that don't get surgical intervention, hormonal intervention, that the most likely outcome will be attempted if not accomplished suicide. And if that is not true,

then that kind of pulls everything out from underneath. Would you, that's what I've kind of seen that a bit. Absolutely. That's what it is. You see, the problem with that is that's a trans activist narrative. Give me what I want or I'll kill myself. That is the core of modern day trans activism. It's the black male that lies at the core of all of it, basically. That's what I mean about WPATH being an activist organization because that's a really, really important and devastating claim.

You can't just throw that idea out there without evidence. You can't base an entire treatment protocol on a claim so, so important without a shred of scientific evidence. Yet, that's precisely what they did. This organization that claims to be a scientific and medical group has based an entire treatment protocol on the fact, on a trans activist fabrication. It's a fiction. It's not true. The trouble I have is if you were a scientific organization, if you did care about evidence, then you would produce the evidence to show that that's true. It would be easy because we document suicides. We are aware of, we have the numbers. We know what the suicide rate is. It simply

is not the epidemic that they are claiming it to be. If you look at the actual hard evidence, for example, there's one study of the Tavistock Gender Clinic, which was the centralized gender clinic in London. Over a period of, I think it's about 10 years, they looked at the suicide rate. There were four completed suicides, and it needs to be said that every suicide is a terrible tragedy, especially when it's a child. But four in 10 years is actually not epidemic.

Thank goodness, it's good. We should be happy that the suicide rate is not epidemic. But two of them, two of the kids were actually, they were undergoing gender affirming care. They were on the drugs, the puberty blockers and the cross-sex hormones and two were on the waiting list. So first of all, that shows that access to the treatment protocol didn't actually reduce the suicide risk at all. It remained high. Other studies have shown the same thing, that the suicide rate before, during, and after medical transition remains higher than the average population.

Can I jump in really quick and give an important statistic of those four kids? That was of a survey of, I believe, 15,000 kids. So this is like four out of like 10 kids or something. It was a massive group. Can you verify that's off? It's either 12 or 15,000. It was a massive number of over 10 years of kids who were on the wedding list or going to gender care. I just think that that's a bit important. It is important and I don't have it before me me nor do I have it stored in my mind. I will. But it was a tiny, yeah, if you can.

I'll put a link in. There's all sorts of, there's so much literature out there to show that first and foremost, what they get wrong is that this is typically the young people who are referred to gender clinics, particularly now, have very complex mental health needs. They have coexisting psychiatric conditions that also contribute to suicidality and elevate the risk of suicide. This is a population that is complex. The idea that providing access to an experimental treatment pathway for which there is no evidence whatsoever, the idea that that would magically vanish the suicide risk is very simplistic and absolutely not accurate. It's misinformation. We've got long-term studies that show 10 years post-transition, the suicide rate is elevated

significantly over the general population. There's the NIH study, there was a really interesting and quite devastating study that looked at access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in the US. I think it was only 315 study participants and they actually had four suicides. These were young people who had access to the treatment. So basically all this boils down to is, it is simplistic to the point of being fraudulent to suggest that access to gender affirming care magically vanishes the suicide risk. And it's dangerous misinformation that nobody should tolerate.

And yes, they within WPATH and within the field of gender affirming care, they almost cling to it. They cling to the transition or suicide lie because of what I just said. It is the only medical justification they have for sterilizing children. It's the only medical justification they have for amputating healthy body parts,

for creating lifelong medical patients. They really do have to frame it as if it's cancer treatment. Otherwise, how can you justify doing that to these young people? Have you heard the statistic, you know, 42% of trans-identified people attempt suicide? Because that's a pretty well known statistic. It comes from that UCLA study several years ago. Because I think some people listening are like,

well, this sounds pretty convincing, but I keep hearing 42% are like, you know, this high, high at risk. So how do we correlate these two pieces of evidence or percentages? Now, the thing about attempting suicide, you've got to look at what the definitions actually are. So in my report, and I can't remember on what page, I do think I'm citing James Cantor's research on this one. When we talk about suicide attempts, not to minimize the distress that a family would go through

when a child attempts suicide, but certainly with adolescent girls who make up the large majority of gender clinic referrals these days, with adolescent girls, a suicide attempt is often a cry for help. They're not usually successful. The cohort who successfully complete suicide are middle-aged men. Boys are typically more, the completed suicides are more common in males. Teenage girls, suicide attempts are very often a cry for help. These are girls who are in a very distressed frame of mind. These are girls who are in a very distressed frame of mind. So 42% attempting suicide, again, this is, I think, in response to an informal survey. It's self-report.

It's not coming out of gender clinic. It's not hard data. It's just people responding to a survey. This is not a source that is very trustworthy. It's not rigorous science, first of all. But I'm not belittling it. If this is true, if 42% are committing suicide, are attempting suicide, that means that this is a group that needs mental health support, that needs their psychological, their psychiatric disorders addressed. They need to receive very deep, exploratory psychotherapeutic support to get to the bottom of why they are feeling so distressed. The answer is not give them experimental puberty blockers and cross-sex

hormones. The answer is not allow them to make an irreversible, life-changing decision because if they don't, they might try and commit suicide. That's too simplistic. You've got to consider the fact that if it's the wrong decision, if you take a very mentally distressed adolescent who is suicidal and you give them the experimental treatment pathway, you don't try and help them at all with their psychiatric comorbidities. You just give them access to a very harsh treatment protocol. Then they get all the way to the end and they still have all the same psychiatric issues and they now regret that they have gone through this treatment protocol. It is quite likely that you are putting them into an even more dangerous situation, that there may be an

even higher risk of suicidality and suicidal thoughts because you haven't helped them with any of their psychiatric conditions and you've now changed and altered their body in a way that they deeply regret and that they'll have to live with for the rest of their life. So again, forget the simplistic transition or suicide. Forget the, okay, if we give them gender affirming care, the suicide risk will be resolved. It's not as simple as that at all. You have got to think about the long-term health and wellbeing of every single one of these patients. I want to add that too. I believe people can fact check this by just Googling it, but I

believe suicide.org says that 95% of either attempted or completed suicides, I forget, is due to an untreated mental health issue. Mental health is the primary, overwhelmingly primary cause of suicide. Again, I can't remember if it's attempt, ideation, or completed suicides. Also, something interesting with that 42%, and I document this in the appendix of my book, Embodied, where I talk about suicide. Again, I have very close people to me who left his wife and three kids behind. And so this is not an abstract conversation for anybody.

It shouldn't be, um, you know, so it's, it's a, one suicide is, is a horrific thing. I also believe weaponizing suicide can be very bad because it's like you're using something so traumatic to argue for a, for a, for a, for a, for a, for a, for a is a horrific thing. I also believe weaponizing suicide can be very bad because it's like you're using something so traumatic to argue for a, at the very minimum, an ideologically debated point of view. But when, so there were several studies done with the high suicide rate among trans-identified people. Oftentimes those studies, they don't control for mental health. And I read actually three different studies done that did control for mental health, meaning you survey a bunch of trans-identified people who also have mental health conditions and you have a high rate.

And then oftentimes people just control for just the general population, but it's like, no, you need to control for non-trans identified people also with mental health conditions to wrestle with. And when they did that, the percentages with three different studies were basically the same showing that the common denominator might not simply be a trans identified person that hasn't had surgery yet. The common denominator is there's an untreated mental health issue that somebody's wrestling with, which makes it almost a little sinister when people bypass, like they look, they like, yeah, yeah,

they're wrestling with all this mental health stuff. We just need to get medical intervention. It's like, they're not even, if somebody doesn't actually treat the mental health issues before medical intervention, to me, that's, I don't say dark and sinister, it's really sad for one, because maybe it's not a good motivation like you said, I appreciate your generous interpretation,

but that's like, oh, that's pretty frightening to me. I wanna kind of go back to, you mentioned two areas when I asked for example, this is like 20 minutes ago, and then you brought up that panel. Is that panel public? Can someone go and watch that? Or is that just something you've had access to watch?

Or is it online? We released it. I should really know this, actually. With the files, we did release the entire video. But actually, where that is, I assume on the website, I should know, but I don't. In my report, I know there's a full transcript of the video. So that's part of the 200 and so many pages document, I'm quite sure.

Okay. So that was, okay, that's helpful. And again, it's in environmentalprogress.com. Is that the website that would, okay. So if someone wants to go and explore some things more. Okay. What was the other piece? So I asked you, so I asked you for examples and you said you'd give to the panel. And then I think we didn't even get to the second part

of evidence that sort of is exemplary of the kinds of things and the WPATH files. Right, let's dive into the actual files themselves. So just so everyone knows, this is... There are internal discussions from WPATH's internal messaging forum, which is on a platform called DocMatter. And that's where doctors are supposed to,

or medical professionals are supposed to, gather and share, you know, difficult patients and share the science and advise each other on how to improve patient outcomes. I really do not believe that's what's going on in WPATH's forum. There are extreme examples, but I'll start with what I found the most distressing part. There are conversations in there about the effects of testosterone on the female body. I found it very distressing to read because they're always... How the forum works is somebody shows up and the original post is typically a post about a difficult patient.

So, somebody will show up. It was an ER doctor maybe who shows up and says, I've got a 16-year-old girl who showed up in the ER. She has pelvic inflammatory disorder. She's been on testosterone for about three years. She has pelvic inflammatory disorder. She's been on a testosterone for about three years. She has pelvic inflammatory disorder. She has vaginal atrophy, which is sort of the thinning of the vaginal walls so that there's cracks and there's bleeding. She has uterine atrophy and terrible discharge. They don't know what to do with her because they've tried... We don't know what to do with her because they've tried, you can put an estrogen type cream or a ring inside to try and prevent this from happening, but this is a very common

side effect. This is not an unusual side effect. This is a very common side effect of putting women, teenage girls and women on testosterone because our bodies are just not designed for it. But first of all, what happens, and this is a common theme too within the forum, the person will post this is really difficult and then a whole chorus of people come along, either they're medical professionals and they say, oh, I saw a couple of patients and I tried this. And then somebody else comes along and says, I saw a couple of patients and I tried this." Then somebody else comes along and says, I saw a couple of patients and I tried this. They're just throwing out ideas. They don't

know what to do. First of all, there's no one sharing any science. The reason for that is, there is no science because I looked for the science. Okay, what do you do when a teenage girl has vaginal atrophy to the point that she is bleeding and she cannot have sex and she's in terrible pain? There's no science. Although exists are studies that say, yes, these teenage girls are suffering from terrible vaginal atrophy and it is very hard on them and very detrimental to their well-being. We need to figure out a way to handle it. Nobody actually knows how to handle it because this is brand new territory.

We've never pumped women and girls full of testosterone before and called it healthcare. We just haven't done that. You've got the anecdotal, oh, I tried this. It's some kind of anti-spasmodic medication. I tried this and it helps relieve the pain of orgasms. And then other ones tried something else. And then what's crucial is a whole bunch of trans-identified females, this is women who

think they're men and they're on testosterone, they show up and they say, I had that and this is what I did. Another one shows up, yes, I had this and this is what I did. I think that when that happens, even if these were medical professionals who cared about the outcome, the long-term health of their patients, and even if they were medical professionals who cared about the outcome, the long-term health of their patients. And even if they were medical professionals who cared about the Hippocratic oath to first do no harm. As soon as the trans-identified females show up in that conversation and say, I've had this and this is what I did, nobody then can have an open discussion about whether or not testosterone,

whether or not it's a good idea to give testosterone to teenage girls and young women, because there's somebody in that conversation who has made that decision about their own health, about their own body, and again, going back to this self-justification or this psychological impulse that we all feel when we've made a decision that is irreversible. We are going to be psychologically motivated

to convince ourselves that it was the right decision. When you can't turn back the clock, your mind must constantly work to tell yourself that it was the right decision. And I think once these trans identified females are in the conversation about the teenage girl with the vaginal atrophy, no medical professional could ever say, could ever say the right thing, could ever raise the question of, is this ethical medicine? Is this the right thing to do? They simply can't do that because they're in the presence of people who have made that decision for themselves. I mean, you said this is not the most extreme example. That's pretty eerie. I'm hearing you say that they're not denying that these are common effects of cross-sex hormones.

They're just kind of integrated into, this is still the better path. But in terms of, it's not even denied, like it's not denied that these are the common effects. Cause some people can say, no, no, that's junk science or whatever. Those are rare examples. You're saying WPATH itself wouldn't even say it.

This is a common experience. Oh, they do. They are aware. You can't deny it. In the limited scientific research that I found, the majority of the trans-identified females on testosterone were experiencing this, maybe not as extreme as the pelvic inflammatory disease that sends you to the ER, but everyone, the majority were experiencing debilitating vaginal and uterine atrophy. So, no, they can't deny that it's common. And again, this brings us back to, because they exist in this very rigid ideological framework where there is no non-invasive option, in their world, you simply cannot try to help the teenage girl accept her body because that's transphobic,

that's conversion therapy, and that makes you a bad person. You can't do that. So they are working, they're in this world where the only option is to give her puberty blockers and to put her on testosterone. They don't see that they have any other choice. So they see the harm, but because they are political activists, they are not medical professionals who are open-minded enough that when the evidence is presented to them that harm is being done,

that they can change the treatment. They simply cannot do that because they are very rigid, ideologically driven healthcare professionals. Hey friends, my book Exiles, The Church in the Shadow of Empire is out now. I am so excited and a bit nervous about the release of this book. This is a topic I've been thinking about for many, many years and finally put pen to paper to write out all my thoughts. Specifically, I'm addressing the question, what is a Christian political identity? As members of Christ's global, multi-ethnic, upside-down kingdom scattered across the nations, how should we as members of that

kingdom think through and interact with the various nations that we are living under? So the book is basically a biblical theology of a Christian political identity. We look at the nation of Israel, we look at the exile of Israel, we look at several parts of the New Testament, the life and teaching of Jesus, several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, do a deep dive into 1 Peter and the book of Revelation, and then explore some contemporary points of application. So I would highly encourage you to check out my book, Exiles, and would love to hear what

you think. Whether you hate the book, love it, or still think it through it, I'd love to hear what you think by dropping a review on Amazon or, I don't know, post a blog, just, you know, ripping it to shreds. I don't really care. I would love for you to just wrestle with this really important topic in this really volatile political season that we're living in. And I wonder if for some, like especially older, let me say older trans women in particular, meaning a male who identifies as a woman. When you transition post puberty, you still have a body structure

that's gone through male puberty. And it is much harder for most trans women to pass as female in society once they've gone through male puberty. This isn't debated. I mean, trans women have told me this, you know. Now, if a male transitions before going through full male puberty, it is much easier to pass. So I wonder for some, could it not be trans women

or activists and or both Anne, you know, kind of saying, gosh, I want to give this kid what I wish I had an existence where I didn't go through male puberty. I would have been able to maybe pass a lot more. Is that, do you think that that is, I mean, I'm not validating, I'm not saying that that's a good motivation. I'm saying, I'm just saying that might be a motivation. Have you found that? Do you agree or disagree with that? Or do you think that that could be part of it too? No, you're absolutely spot on. I talk about this in the report that the entire, you can say, what will we call it, pediatric

medical transition, the entire attempt to perform sex changes on adolescents stems from the fact that the adult men, the first adult men to go through this, when the experiment first really kicked off, you know, we're talking in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, the men who came through the other side, they were not happy with their appearance, with their medical transition, because they did not pass as women for exactly the reason that you just said. You cannot undo male puberty. It's quite simple. And so this is, again, we're going back to the Amsterdam Clinic.

This is the Dutch that did this experiment. They did the first long-term follow-up study. It was like a 15-year study, but they didn't follow the men up for 15 years. It was, I think, an average for about five years. But that's precisely what they found. The men were not happy because of a, I quote, a never-disappearing masculine appearance. Basically, they cannot undo male puberty. The Dutch looked at the bad results of the adult experiment and had the idea as a remedy to transition minors, to

transition these kids before they went through puberty. That's the entire basis of the child experiment, the puberty suppression experiment, it's because it didn't work for adults, so we're going to try it on kids. We're going to block the puberty, the male puberty, so that these young people will live happier and they'll pass and all of their mental health problems will disappear because they'll look like women. This is wrong for so many reasons. If you think, I talk about this often, I'm saying I really don't believe any of these people are evil. But look at that idea. That is a truly evil idea. Instead of hanging up their lab coats and saying, okay, this was a bad experiment. It failed. We did not help

these men. They decided, let's do it to kids instead. That's really truly evil. So the Dutch at the time, but they're not evil people, I got to say that. But at the time, because puberty blockers, you can see it was just one incremental step at a time. So puberty blockers, the idea was that you would just block the puberty of all of these kids who were gender dysphoric and it would just give them more time to think. They were basically using it as a diagnostic tool. It was the kids will be more relaxed, they won't be stressed out about the changes that their bodies are going through and they'll have more time to think about their gender identity. And therefore, the changes that their bodies are going through, and they'll have more time to think about their gender identity.

And therefore, the ones that still feel that they're in the wrong body, they can progress to the hormones, and the rest of them can stop taking the puberty blockers and go back to just developing naturally. That was the idea. It turned out, and it was very, very soon after they started the experiment, it became

apparent that that was not how things were playing out at all. In the past, we're looking at about 80% of young people desisting during or after puberty and reconciling with their birth sex, typically becoming homosexual adults. That's the rate of about 80%. As soon as they start blocking puberty, almost 100% persisted and went on to take cross-sex hormones. Again, the red flag, the alarm bells should have rung at that point. In fact, they did even question, are the puberty blockers locking in the gender identity? Because you've gone from 80% desisting to just 2% desisting. Something has happened, something dramatic changed.

We now know, we're quite sure, I think we can be quite sure in saying that the reason that puberty blockers lock in the gender identity is because puberty was the natural cure. Going through puberty, allowing your body to develop, accepting your homosexual identity, the cognitive development, the maturity, the life experience of going through puberty was the cure for the gender-related distress in almost all young people. And so blocking puberty, freezing the kids in time locks in the gender identity. You're blocking the natural cure. This is the problem. Nobody set out to hurt these kids. But in the early stages, when every single child on puberty

blockers was going on to take cross-sex hormones, they should have said, whoa, we've got this wrong. It's not giving them time to think. It's locking in the gender identity, but they didn't do that. And that again is an evil act committed by good people. Good people commit acts of evil all the time. That makes sense. Okay. So what's an extreme example that you found in the report?

I'm almost nervous to... Right. So, still on the testosterone, there are a few extreme examples. I'll stick with the testosterone briefly. There's one very chilling conversation in there, where a WPATH member shows up. And he's got a 17 year old girl who's been on testosterone for a couple of years, and she has large liver tumors. Now, it's not clear whether they're malignant or benign, but she has large, large liver

tumors that her oncologist thinks is due to the testosterone. And then another WPATH member, also a family doctor, shows up in the replies with just an everyday run of the mill anecdote is the way it feels to me. She says, oh yeah, I had a trans colleague who after several years on testosterone developed liver cancer and died. The oncologist also thought that it was due to the hormones. That's the end of the conversation. Now, I've talked to many a medical professional while I was writing the report and after to ask if this is a normal way that doctors talk. Because bear in mind, we're talking about a fatal outcome

talk. Because bear in mind, we're talking about a fatal outcome. And we're talking about a young teenage girl. And I pulled up a case study. There's a case study of a 17-year-old who on testosterone also had malignant liver cancer. And then there were a few other cases that I could pull up. But there's very little literature, again, because this is brand new territory. We have not given large numbers of women and girls testosterone, so we do not know what the long-term outcomes are. There is no literature. Doctors assure me that this is not how medical professionals talk. That if you see something so serious, what you must do is raise the alarm. Somebody should show some concern, oh my goodness, what if we are giving, what if there is a ticking time bomb, what if many of

these young women, teenage girls, young women in the future are going to develop liver cancer, we need to look into this. But in the conversation, just a little tiny exchange, there's no concern, there's no curiosity, It's just the conversation is over and I assume everyone just moved on with their day. And there's a lot more. Yeah, I've read several examples in the report. Again, this is firsthand, you're reading these discussions. I'm curious, how did you get these? I forgot to ask, how did you get these files? I mean, were these like illegally gotten or whatever? It was like, when it's leaked files, I always wonder like,

yeah, where did this come from? The legality of it, I'm not sure. I'm not a legal expert. I do know that it's, well, actually, I can't really answer this question because all I know is someone or more than one person, I'm not sure, provided these files to Michael. They gave them to Michael Schellenberger.

He is the only person who knows who the source or sources the identities of. I don't know, I just know that they are from, we did verify, so I can assure you that they are real, because I contacted all of the people named in the files and I told them what they had said and how I was going to frame it. We confirmed that the conversations are real, but I don't know who the source is. What's been the reaction of WPATH in response to this? Towards you, towards the organization

as a whole? It's been very interesting. Before we released, when I did contact, we had a very vaguely worded legal threat that we didn't take very seriously because we were confident that we were presenting the information in a factual way or we were not twisting anyone's words. There was no defamation or whatever. And then after the report came out, I think about two days after, we released on March 6th and then WPATH issued a public statement on March, we released on the 4th, they made a statement on the 6th. And the statement, it was obvious to me what they were

trying to do. So first of all, they say, you know say WPATH is a scientific and evidence-based organization and then they vague accusations of transphobia to anyone attacking them. Then just a bizarre statement, they said there was a line in it that said, the world is not flat. Gender, like genitalia, is diverse and transgender people are no threat to the global gender binary or something just wild like that. If you read my report, you'll see that basically the core, the main point in the report is that this is not a medical group, not a scientific group. It's a political activist group masquerading as a professional healthcare group. And then the statement that they produced, that they released was basically a political activist statement. What sort of medical group

says the world is not flat and gender like genitalia is diverse. What does that even mean? I think what they were hoping was that they could just brush it under the carpet. They could just dismiss it with a very weak statement, brush it under the carpet, and it will just disappear and it will go away. I don't think it has worked out that way. It received an awful lot of international attention. We heard from an internal source that they're in something of a chaotic state right now. They're in the internal workings of WPATH. They're in a state of chaos. I'm not sure what will actually come of it though. What effect has it had on medical professionals themselves? Like do you see if the standard of care in the United States at least is gender affirming,

meaning if somebody identifies as a different sex or gender, then medical intervention is the best path. Has that been rattled a little bit by the release of these files? And then I guess another question is you mentioned in passing early on that several European countries that used to take a very gender-affirming approach are now rethinking that. So I guess they kind of go hand in hand. Yeah, it's really difficult to say now in these early stages what impact it's had on the medical world because this type of thing takes time. If you read, one of my favorite parts of the report is the medical history side. I put four case studies of past medical scandals, comparing them to this scandal. The one thing

that you learn when you read medical history is that it can really take a very long time for the medical profession to face up to a mistake. Precisely for the reason that I talked about earlier, doctors do not like to think that they are causing harm. There will be a very powerful, willful blindness to looking upon the harm that they have caused. Because North America is so entrenched, it's like the gender-affirming care. They put all their eggs in one basket, gender-affirming care. It's life-saving, it's medically necessary, it's evidence-based.

As well, the whole field demonized every single person who raised concerns. They absolutely vilified any medical professional. I don't want to go too much on a tangent, but if you look at Dr. Lisa Lippman in 2018 when she published a paper, just putting forward the theory of rapid onset gender dysphoria, putting forward the theory that perhaps there is a social contagion, perhaps there is peer influence. When you see five girls in one high school class come out as boys within a short space of time, she basically just said, maybe something's going on here and maybe we need to look into this. The trans activists and the gender affirming care proponents destroyed her. The reaction

was vicious and aggressive and utterly despicable. That sent a message to the entire medical profession. If you even question puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, if you even question anything about gender-affirming care, we will destroy you. Now, when you've gone so all in on a political stance that has no evidence or science, but you've gone all in anyway, it's really hard to turn the ship. It's really hard for an entire field of medicine. All of the professional medical associations were duped by WPATH. They were duped into following WPATH standards of care. Perhaps there was some fear. Perhaps they didn't want to be targeted either. Also, as well, many WPATH members are on the inside of these other

major medical associations. The endocrine society guidelines were basically just written by WPATH members. The AAP was influenced by WPATH. When an entire medical establishment has thrown itself into this treatment protocol, there's going to be no knee-jerk, oh, we got it wrong, we're going to change track, we're going to go in the other direction. Now, going to Europe, you mentioned Europe, the culture now, there's just a vast chasm between the two continents, because Europe has gone, they were influenced by WPATH, but less so. The Europeans, first it was Finland, then it was Sweden, and then it was England. They saw that something wasn't quite right. England, the Tavistock had whistleblowers. Sweden and Finland, they

did systematic reviews of the evidence for puberty suppression and they realized that there is no evidence and that this is causing more harm than any of the supposed benefits. When Sweden, Finland, and England looked at the evidence, found it to be lacking and changed cause, that triggered a wave of countries in Europe following their lead. And they all abandoned WPATH. So what you've basically got now is the Europeans are looking at evidence, they're taking an evidence-based approach and the North Americans, I include Canada in this, we are still on the ideological WPATH approach. Only one can be right because science does not respect borders. A medical scandal is a medical

scandal, whatever nation it is occurring in. It is so plainly obvious that the Europeans have got it right because they're looking at the evidence. WPath is ignoring the evidence and continuing with its political activism. One more question. Where do you see the future with North America then? Because when you talk about Sweden and Finland and even the UK, these are countries that are widely more accepting of say LGBTQ or trans people, very progressive. like the United States is still very conservative compared to, you know, Canada might be in between.

So do you see, is it just a matter of time until the United States sort of catches up with where progress maybe has gone too far for like a better terms? Or is it just a whole different medical system too? That's another complication. I mean, we're not in a socialized medical system like European countries, which yeah, where are we going to be in five years?

Here's how I see it playing out. You're right. Totally different medical system. At this point, I have to separate Canada and the US because we also have a totally different medical system. But speaking strictly about the US, the way I see this playing out is in the courts. Lawsuits. I understand that you've got the legislative battle, the Republicans banning, and then the ACLU challenging, and it's all a big mess. I don't think that is actually

what's going to solve it. I think it's going to be malpractice lawsuits. Look at past medical scandals. The best parallel on that is when North America had the multiple personality disorder epidemic and that absolutely outrageous medical scandal that collapsed in an avalanche of lawsuits. It even started to collapse before the avalanche of lawsuits because health insurance companies get very uneasy just at the thought of malpractice lawsuits. And as soon as the first cases were won, health insurance companies were like, whoa, okay, we're not providing insurance for this anymore because it's too much of a risk for them. I don't know if you know, but I think that there are a couple of US states who have done what everyone needs to do.

Everyone all over the world needs to do this, and that is increase the statute of limitations to 30 years. Right now the statute of limitations is typically two years. That means a person who transitions, they need to de-transition and launch the lawsuit within two years. Otherwise, the statute is expired and they cannot bring legal action. So, a couple of US states have done it where if you transition a minor, if you transition a child, the statute of limitations is open from 30 years after they turn 18, so until they're 48 years old. And that is the way to do it because if you are working in a

gender clinic and you are so sure that you are only transitioning the really truly trans kids, and they are always going to be happy happy and they're always going to thrive, you've got nothing at all to worry about. Okay? But if there's a possibility that you're transitioning a whole ton of adolescents who are still in a stage of identity development and don't know anything about themselves or the world, there is a high likelihood that by the time they reach their 40s, they're going to feel significant regret. Just doing that is going to make health insurance companies very uneasy, knowing that this is... I think it's perfectly reasonable to do it because gender-affirming medicine has no evidence

to support it. It has no science. Because it's a particularly unusual field of medicine, it's perfectly reasonable to respond with an unusual statute of limitations. And then you can still transition these kids if you're really confident in your approach. So I do see it as being in the courts. I don't see it. I don't see the medical world, your major medical associations, WPATH, I don't see the medical world, your major medical associations, WPATH,

I don't see them saying, we got it wrong, sorry about that, we got it wrong. I just don't see it happening. Yeah, there's that line, I mean, money, it all comes down to money, right? Who's the one, what's her name, that sued in the UK, that sued, I believe, to have a stock and went to the high courts and they ended up raising, what's

her name? Kira Bell. Yes, Kira Bell. That was a- Yeah, that was powerful. Well, she said follow the money. That was her line. She said, why is this?

She said follow the money. I'm not putting, that's just what she thought. I often reflect on that. I think here, I think money will always play a big issue in decision making. Yeah, because transition regret, typically it's not within the first year, maybe even two years sometimes, but it's kind of seven year plus is when regret can set in. And I say that I have two friends in particular. One's been transitioned for 15 years, very happy. I have others that regret and they end up de-transitioning.

Another one is maybe a few years into their transition transitioned for 15 years, very happy. I have others that regret and they ended up de-transitioning. Another one is maybe a few years into their transition. So it's a mixed bag. Can I ask, sorry, one more question. If I can ask a personal question, do you have any religious or non-religious do you have any religious or non-religious moral hesitations with an adult who has truly informed consent to a surgery making that decision? Is anything in your concern here a rise out of some intrinsic problem with an adult trans person making a decision under their, or is it really with the lack of informed consent that's happening with adolescents? Oh, no. I am probably one of the more hardline people in this debate in that you often hear

adults can do whatever they want. That's the's the people, there's a, there's a cohort of our debate that are of our sort of side, I suppose, who we've got to protect children, we've got to stop doing it to kids, but adults can do whatever they want. I don't sit in that camp. I'm not saying I have a moral revulsion towards it, I am saying that I think there are very vulnerable adults getting sucked into this who need protection. But beyond that, I do have an issue with gender medicine as a whole. And that's simply from an ethical standpoint, because as I say in the report, I don't know if you haven't made it all the way to the end of the report, there's a paragraph in the conclusion where I say, it would be criminal

for a surgeon to sever the spinal cord of a person who identified as a quadriplegic. It would be criminal for a doctor to blind a sighted person who identified as blind. And I think it's also just as criminal to amputate the genitals and remove the healthy breast tissue of people who identify as members of the opposite sex in that you are taking a healthy body and you are destroying it on the basis of a belief, the person's belief that is not grounded in reality. Now, that's not to say that I think all medical transition needs to be banned because I'm realistic.

In, honestly, in my own, if I could wave a magic wand and all of it would disappear, I would, because I actually do not think that it helps people. I've looked at the history of gender medicine, I've tracked it all the way, and I can see that there has never been any science to prove that this is safe and effective. I also think that there are false promises being made to these people. I think that no man could possibly really truly understand what life will be like after he has his penis inverted. Here's what I think. If a man is going into this medical treatment pathway with totally realistic expectations,

that one, he knows that inverting his penis is not going to turn him into a woman, that it is going to impact his health negatively for the rest of his life, it will turn him into a medical patient. It will probably take many years off his life, and it will probably make dating and intimacy much more difficult. If he also understands that inverting his penis does not mean he can enter women's spaces, and it does not mean that people are obliged to call him she and pretend that

he's a woman. If he goes into it knowing all of that, and if he has no psychiatric comorbidities that could make the outcome more difficult, then sure. If it's your body and you are choosing to do that, if you understand all of that and you still want to. But in my report, I do talk about what I think is the solution to this problem because we are in this mess and we have got to deal with it in a better way than how we're dealing with it now. The Portman Clinic is the adult clinic attached to the Tavistock, which was the youth clinic in London that is the controversy that just shut down.

There was a consultant psychiatrist there in the 2000s called Dr. Az Hakim. I interviewed him. What he did, when he started at the Portman, he had two groups of people. He had the group of people, the group of adults who were seeking medical transition. And they had the crazy unrealistic expectations that surgeries and hormones were going to solve all of their problems and their life was going to be wonderful, and they were really euphoric and excited. And then he had another group of people, and they were the post-op regretters. They had gone all the way through, they regretted it. And he told me that the post-op regret group was just abject misery and despair and the

other group was really excited and euphoric. So he had these two disparate groups, basically, and he had the brilliant idea to put the two together. He put the ones wanting to transition, and they had this fantasy in their mind of what it would be like. He put them face to face with people who regretted it. His intention was not to prevent them from transitioning, it was to give them realistic expectations. And he said that 98% of those wanting to transition did not transition, because they saw that the fantasy that they had concocted in their mind in no way resembled reality. And the 2% or so that did ultimately transition, he says they went into

it with much more realistic expectations and therefore they were far more likely to have a better outcome. So that's the way I see it. I don't think we could possibly ban it, but I do think we have a moral and ethical obligation to make sure that everybody going down that treatment path understands exactly what the outcome is. That's all. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you, follow you and your work if people want to hear more?

I'm mostly active on Twitter. I still call on Twitter. I still call it Twitter, can't help it. I do too. That's my handle is at underscore cry Mia River. Mia is M-I-A. And then of course I'm still with environmental progress. I may be publishing an article or two here and there

on Michael Schellenberger's Substack Public, but there's lots more to come. Thank you so much for being on The Algener. I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you for having me. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.