Ask Dr. Drew - Parental Rights Under Attack By Activists: Dr. Mark McDonald (Author of “United States Of Fear”) Discusses The Agenda Against Parental Consent – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 241

Episode Date: July 22, 2023

Activist organizations have put parental rights in their crosshairs with new laws that allow schools to withhold information from parents about their own children, and empower officials to offer life-altering drugs to kids without parental knowledge or consent. Dr. Mark McDonald – the author of “United States Of Fear” and “Freedom From Fear: A 12 Step Guide to Personal and National Recovery” – discusses the implications of removing parents from decisions made about their children. Dr. Mark McDonald is board-certified in both child & adolescent and adult psychiatry, with extensive additional training in adult psychoanalysis. He specializes in the evaluation and treatment of young people with mental illness, but his practice also serves adults, couples, and families. Over the past decade of post-graduate training, he has supervised and taught medical students, residents, and fellows in multiple disciplines of medicine, psychiatry, and therapy. Follow Dr. McDonald at https://twitter.com/MMcDonaldMD and read more at https://www.dissidentmd.com and https://markmcdonaldmd.substack.com 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • PRIMAL LIFE - Dr. Drew recommends Primal Life's 100% natural dental products to improve your mouth. Get a sparkling smile by using natural teeth whitener without harsh chemicals. For a limited time, get 60% off at https://drdrew.com/primal • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And today I'll be interviewing one of my very favorite mental health professionals. He is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist, adult psychiatrist, additional training in adult psychoanalysis, specializing in the evaluation and treatment of the young people with mental illness, of course. Freedom from Fear, A 12-Step Guide to Personal and National Recovery is his latest book, United States of Fear. Before that, he and I, he has been helping me through the pandemic make sense of things. There is the book there, Freedom from Fear.

You can get more of his stuff at dissidentmd.com. Dissident, like somebody who's undermining things. And that's why I like Dr. McDonald. He makes you think about stuff. Reminder, I'll tell you again in a minute that Tuesday and Wednesday, Dr. Kelly Victory joins us both days. Tuesday for Ed Dowd returns. He promises some bombshell data. And Michael Yadin with Kelly Victory on Wednesday. I believe he's a former Pfizer executive. We got a lot to talk about where Dr. McDonald will be and some of his thoughts, his book, and his recent observations. We'll get right to it after this.

Our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic. Because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***ing sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that?

I'm just saying. You go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help.

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and ultra-retinol creams. Just go to GenuCell.com slash Drew. Use the code Drew for an extra discount and free priority shipping. Again, that is GenuCell.com slash Drew. G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash D-R-E-W. Dissident MD is his website, as I said. In addition to his book and the website, he is going to be speaking this Saturday at Godspeak live stream. He'll tell you more about it in just a second. He's become increasingly concerned about parental rights and the ability of government and the medical community to make decisions on behalf of our children without parental participation, which is something I think we all should be greatly concerned about. It runs completely counter to everything that I have been trained, both from an ethical and a clinical propriety standpoint.

Please welcome Dr. Mark McDonald. For some reason, Caleb, I don't hear Mark. He's there. On my end here, so hold on. But I don't hear it. He said, I see his mouth moving, but I don't hear. I don't know if you're hearing that, but I am not. There he is there he is interesting

uh you know what it is i think i was so good at setting there you are mark i am here can you hear me no there there you are here how about that i thought i thought i had done such a good job setting up the uh all the sound equipment with my wife not here i thought i had left everything you out of the picture, but no, evidently I did not. Yes, how about that? So talk to us really quickly about Godspeak Saturday, what that is, how people can see it if they want.

Godspeak Cavalry Chapel, it's located in Westlake in the valley in Southern California, but they also have a live feed that doesn't require you to be physically on site at their website. Just Google Godspeak Cavalry Chapel, you'll find it. Dr. Jeff Barkey, who's a family practice physician and my fellow co-podcast host of Informed Dissent. Riley Gaines, the Pennsylvania swimmer athlete who has been in the news recently for having fought back against a man named Lila Thomas, who goes as a transgender swimmer who's been in the news recently for having fought back against a man named Lila Thomas, who goes as a transgender swimmer who's been basically competing and winning in all of the

athletic swimming events in Penn for the last year, and the two pastors of the church will all be there to discuss very specifically the issue of transgender athletes and whether or not women in particular have the right to compete with only real women. This is a rights issue. This is a freedom issue. This is a equality issue. It should be an issue that unites all Americans, but it's become very controversial and contentious. And he and I, Jeff and I will be speaking about this in conjunction with Riley to talk about what we can do to help protect the rights of girls and young women to compete fairly in sports. I understand also you become concerned about the rights of parents, and that's the part that I've become sort of alarmed by. Again, these things go too far in one direction or the other. And now we have situations where children and teachers and

new professionals who don't know the child or the family are making decisions. That's so anathema to everything I've been trained to do. What do you say about all that? Well, I think it's actually immoral. And specifically in this issue of transgenderism in children, this is my strongly held belief. If you are not firmly opposed to the chemical castration and the genital mutilation of children who have a gender dysphoria or mental illness, then you are actually abusing children. That's my position. And unfortunately, institutions, especially schools and media and corporations and government now are aligning on the side of the child abuser. Specifically in schools, there are now unified school districts. I just interviewed a teacher who was in one in

Southern California a few months ago on my podcast, as well as several others in Central and Eastern California that are firing the instructors. They're actually firing teachers who refuse to gender affirm the students, meaning specifically allowing boys to shower in the locker rooms of girls during PE class, or to refuse to share information about the transgender status of the children with the parents or to not use the preferred pronoun or the new name of the child in the classroom. In other words, if you are not fully on board with this, the actual school districts and the

teachers unions will come down on you as a teacher and get you fired because you want to actually respect the rights of the parent to be involved in the education of the child. I've never seen this before in the last 15 years in my practice, but it's happening all over California and the rest of the country in the public school system. I want to push back a little bit on some of what you're saying there. I get your position, but I have a little more nuanced position because I have seen people who received hormone blocking agents around puberty, and I've seen them years down the road. And it clearly, I mean, it works for some patients. And my concern, and again, we can argue whether that's a true statement or not, but let me just posit that as sort of a hypothesis at least. But the problem I have is I see no criteria for selecting the proper patient for the proper treatment.

It's just everybody gets the same treatment, which is anathema, again, to good practice. It's us, it's our profession that is supposed to get it right. And if we all determine, again, I'm positing this, that to treat somebody early has net benefit long-term, gender dysphoria, again, whatever's going on with that person. Let's say we found a person at age 12 who is thought to be benefited from some sort of diversion of puberty and does indeed do so for many years down the road how do we find that patient how do we select that patient and

why aren't we worrying about that does that does that even make sense to you as a question it does but i think there's an assumption that's involved in your question which i would challenge and the assumption is that this illness and i think we both agree that this is an illness, this is not a fashion choice, for example, that the illness is a physical illness and not an emotional one. And I would say it's a 100% physical illness in the same way that body dysmorphia is not a physical illness. I've seen kids, not recently, but in prior years, who would come to my practice and say, you know, I really feel like I'm a girl born with only three fingers, not five, but I have five. What are you going to do about that, doctor? And I would say, well,

we're going to treat that as a problem of thought and emotions, not a problem of having too many fingers. If a surgeon were to have, say, cut off her two fingers because she felt that she was a girl who really only had three, she identified as a three-fingered girl, that doctor would be in prison, and justly and rightly so. I see no difference, none whatsoever, between that case and the case of a girl who says to me, doctor, I actually think I'm a boy. Would you please cut off my breasts and inject me with hormone blockers

well we're gonna we're gonna it's very contentious landscape i get it i i i'm sort of somewhat agnostic in the sense that you know i don't it i'm interested in human thriving and flourishing and you know whatever gets somebody there. I have no – whether somebody takes an SSRI or somebody takes a hormone blocker, these are all medication. And back to the seriousness of the medication, these are profoundly serious medication that we do not know the long-term effects of yet. And these are gigantic surgeries. These are not minimal surgeries. They're serious surgeries. long-term effects of yet and these are gigantic surgeries these are not minimal surgeries they're

serious surgeries and so once again i turn the the i turn the the camera back on us we are we our profession needs to get that right whatever it is we decide is right and it's very uh concerning one size fits all it's concerning let me let me try let me sort of um transition to a broader topic because i i'm noticing this i'm having the same kind of concern when i read medical literature today and it all let's say as it pertains to vaccine or as it pertains to lockdown or as it pertains to masking in certain journals, leading journals, it all goes one way. It only goes one way. And that's never happened in medical literature in my career. So I know there's something adulterated about what I'm seeing. I don't know what it is, but I know it's

not right. These feelings come over me all the time now where I'm thinking, this is not the way we do it. We don't treat one size fits all with all patients. We don't have no dialogue and alternative opinions in the medical literature. We throw them out there and let people decide for themselves. What's going on? Again, I told you before, I told Dr. McDonald before the break, before the mics heated up, that what's going on is my defense strategy against saying I'm goddamn angry about this. I'm angry about it because I can't use the medical literature the way I always have, and it's deeply concerning. important point that might address what you were struggling with earlier, or were struggling with, I should say, which is how do you assess the truth, honesty, and fairness of information

right now? And you mentioned journals as one example. When it all goes one way, there's something adulterated. Well, the reason for that is that there's censorship within the medical literature. And I know this for a fact because I know several of my colleagues who are prolific publishers in medicine, hundreds of journal articles over the course of their careers with impeccable credentials. They have been unable to get a paper published in the last 18 to 24 months because their

paper goes against what everything that you're reading about says. So they have to actually pre-publish, meaning they can't get peer review because once it goes into the journals, it doesn't get published. It gets stalled for a year, two or three years. That's censorship. In the same way, ask yourself the question, who's getting censored within this larger battle or debate about the transgenderism issue. It's not the people who are pushing for state sponsored surgeries or for puberty blockers against the wishes of the parents. Those people are not being censored.

So I think it raises this sort of larger question or larger issue, which is in answer to the question, how do you determine who's telling you the truth? Ask yourself this question, who is doing the censoring? In my view, in almost every subject and every issue, the side that's censoring and blocking speech is doing something wrong and untruthful. And where is that suddenly coming from? How did we get to this point? How were people, let's just take an editorial team from Jammer, New England Journal or something. What do they tell themselves that they're doing? How did they, I mean, do you ever get a chance to talk? I have

no contact with that group that does the editorial review. I just see it in action in a way that I've never seen it in my entire career. What do you imagine they tell themselves? They're doing God's work and it's just the way to do it? Or is it that allowing for dissenting opinions is somehow anathema to good practice or will adulterate everyone's... It's just the opposite of everything I've always done. And I just have trouble coming to terms with it. Well, I think in terms of journal articles, the answer is actually quite simple. It has to do with financial corruption.

All of the journals, all of the major journals, The Lancet is a great example, are primarily sponsored by contributions from pharmaceutical corporations. That's where all their money comes from. So if an article is published which challenges in any way the primacy of a drug whose company is sponsoring the publication of that journal, there's an inherent conflict of interest. That's just a fact. Now, I would presume that that conflict of interest is going to lead towards a curation, that's a kind word, or an adulteration, your word, of what actually gets published, a censorship basically campaign. I don't think that's a big stretch. In the other areas, in terms of say the transgenderism issue,

I think there's a similar motivation. There is a push now across the country to formally by the government and in concert with insurance companies to block the removal of any payments that could be made for these hormones or for these surgeries. In other words, there's a lot of money to be made in supporting surgeries and hormone blockers for young people for two reasons. One, they cost a lot of money to start up up front, tens of thousands of dollars. And if insurance companies pay for them, and if the government is paying for some of these insurance policies like Medicare, Medi-Cal, not Medicare, that's for older people, but

Medi-Cal, some of the younger sponsored subsidized insurance policies for kids. And over the course of the lifetime of this person, there's going to be basically a lifetime patient involved because once you start cutting off genitalia, removing breast, instituting hormone blockers, you're automatically increasing the odds of osteoporosis, infertility, chronic infection, problems with resergerization, all kinds of very expensive medical processes that lead to a very, very long lifetime cost, all of which is paid for by government slash taxpayer money and private insurance money. So I think there's a financial corruption element within the transgender, pro-transgender activist movement as well.

There's other factors, but that's one that I think is a very obvious one that everyone can understand, which is follow the money. Follow the money always is right, even when it's not a major contributor. It is certainly a motivating factor. I think that's a reasonable thing to put out there. But I want you to put you on your analyst hat for a second and help me try to understand what these trends are. You and I have talked about this a little bit over the years. The two things I want to sort of say as a preamble is this reminds me, so many of these things remind me of the opioid crisis. When you have evangelical physicians, we have physicians that evangelize a topic. No one shall have pain.

Pain is the fifth vital sign. They get capture. They capture the regulators. They capture the review organizations. They capture the insurance companies, the VA, the professional societies, and then it's on. Now it is just fully ensconced. So evangelical clinicians are, I smell all around COVID.

I smell all around transgender things i saw it in real time with the opioid crisis that's one issue the other is i feel like we've had some sort of a turn towards hysteria or something maybe it's all narcissism. I certainly saw narcissism evolve when I was working at the psychiatric hospital all those years. I watched the act, you know, remember the sheets we used to fill out with the four axes in it and, you know, axis two was the personality disorders. When I got to the facility, there's all kinds of different kinds of uh diagnoses you know all kinds by 1989 it was primarily cluster b by the 90s it was exclusively cluster b uh so the two questions i have am i right about evangelical physicians which is really we should be really it's in the

zone of mad scientists people should understand that's what a mad scientist is, number one. And then number two, what do you think is going on with the general character trends in this country? I think you've hit on two very important points. I'm going to answer it in a simple way to your first point, which is that I think you can divide the population now into two groups. There's a victim class and there's a opportunist class. And looking at the transgender subject in particular the victims are the kids and I'm not saying that the kids are not without an illness I'm not denying that there is a gender dysphoria there's a problem in the emotional makeup of children not at all what I'm arguing is that they are becoming predated on,

victimized by a growing class of opportunists. And those are the therapists, the clinicians, the doctors, the Kaisers, the UCLA's, the Yale Child Development Study Clinic, the government, the media. There's individuals, groups, and organizations that are taking advantage of this growing emotional destabilization of our youth population in the US in order to advance their own economic and power interests. Which leads to the second point, which is what you're asking about regarding narcissism. Well, this couldn't happen unless there was some kind of a personality defect in these people.

And I don't mean the children. I mean the opportunists. You have to be narcissistic on some level. And I mean toxic narcissists, not narcissists like I care too much about myself. I mean toxic narcissism to think that what you are doing in predating on these victims, these children, is somehow appropriate to your calling as a physician or a therapist, or somehow justified because you're making a lot of money. I do think that narcissism is important. I do think that there's a personality disorder.

I do think that there is an amorality, A-M-O-R, amorality involved and subsumed by this personality defect of narcissism, which has grown tremendously throughout the population. It's even present in the victims to some degree. The reason why adolescents today are so confused to some degree is that they're so hyper-focused on themselves, primarily because they look at screens all day long and they perceive their value based on what's reflected back to them on TikTok and how many likes they're getting and how many snap streams they're maintaining that they don't have any solid identity. And that is to some degree, the definition of narcissism, at least what brittle

narcissism is, which is a shallow core. Our youth has a shallow core and then our adult predatory community has a toxic, malicious narcissist. Exploitative. And I think they're exploitative and they exploit the shallow narcissists of our youth. And it's a really sick combination. It's creating a lot of damage. Taking that over back to COVID, is Deborah Birx a narcissist? Was that what was guiding her evangelical tour of the country to to mandate

lockdowns everywhere fauci burks farrar all of these individuals i believe believed and thought almost to the degree of a religion that they knew better than everyone else, that any challenge to their authority was calling into question the veracity of their divine position. I mean, think about Anthony Fauci. When you question me, you're questioning science. Remember that quote? I mean, that is basically what Barbara Farrar said,

what Burke said, they all said that. Now, who says that who's not a narcissist? A scientist should be humble. A scientist should say, please question me. Tell me where I'm wrong. Show me where I'm wrong so that my position can be further strengthened by your critique. A narcissist says, don't even question me because I have it all right. And if you do, I'm going to cancel you, censor you, lock you up, fire you from your job, ruin your business, attack your children and take them away from you. That's exactly what these people did for the last three years. And they're doing it now

with the transgender debate. They're doing it with the environmental debate. I think there's a larger issue here at play, which is bigger than the coronavirus, it's bigger than transgender, it's bigger than the environment. It is really a transfer or a transition, an evolution away from a society of freedom, liberty, and humility towards one of accretion of power on a narcissistic foundation with a vertical line of power from the top to the bottom. And the top is always media corporations and Government and the bottom is always everyday regular Americans, especially parents and even worse children. I Don't know if you heard

Fran Drescher today addressing the SAG strike, but she was There were echoes of this issue there. She was saying, you know, these corporations are losing track of the rank and file. And, uh, there, there was a lot of rhetorical excess in what she was saying, but it caught, it was, it was attention grabbing and, uh, it, it made you think, which I love. Oh, there it is. So she's the president of, uh, of, um, well, this is, this is what she had the president of uh cove of uh of um well this is this is what she had said when she was fighting the mandates back in early uh yeah no she look i communicated with her during all that that's i'm that's a whole other thing but she just announced the uh the

strike today yeah and it was kind of interesting yeah like a boss yeah you saw that yeah i had to watch it like two or three times. I was really impressed. It gave me a lot of energy to watch her getting all fired up. Like, that's the nanny. Hell yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So, I mean, there was excess in what she was saying. I mean, it's a point of view, right? Always be careful. But there's some truth in it. And's some you know and there is a problem right now with supporting the middle class supporting labor and i'm all for that that's for sure um so again these are nuanced issues but i i'm i'm interested in whether or not there have been previous periods

of history i always try to throw back to history and evolution when I see these extreme trends that don't make sense to me. Are you aware of previous periods of history where, other than the obvious establishment of totalitarian states where they're using propaganda and fear, are there other sort of trends where this kind of character issue has gotten set up and the people who are in the exploitative side are so explicitly using fear and manipulation as a way of accreting their power well if you want to include hysteria as part of that you just look back to the salem witch trials in the united states they're widely understood to be a hysterical reaction to threats of fidelity and marriage among that population of the pilgrims. There were no real witches in the Salem witch trials, but there were a lot of people who were scared that their position and their authority would be threatened. And so they went after

the witches, the bad people, the ones that were threatening society. They were the conspiracy theorists in order to sideline them and keep their position strong and their power intact. That's something that has happened in this country in the last 250 years. I just wonder if we could see, look into the character structure of those people at that time and what set set it all up it's just i you know i look at pre-revolutionary france too i keep thinking that's another time and france it's a little clearer that at least as i read the history that there was so much childhood trauma back then you know something like three out of five or three or four out of five children born were just left in orphanages or something.

Some crazy number like that. And only, no, I know what it was. I think it was one out of five left in orphanages and four out of five died that were left in the orphanages. And so it's just, you know, and there was all this narcissism and sexual acting out and violence. And there's a lot of stuff going on back then. Feels familiar. Think about the french revolution i mean that that was not a a movement that led to a lot of goodness there were a lot of mass executions a lot of innocent killings and deaths all under the the auspice of brotherhood freedom and equality well you take that to the extreme if you're not my brother and you're not my equal and you're not supporting my idea of freedom

you're guillotined and what we're hearing that today and to a large degree the idea of equality can be looked at from a couple of different points of view and one of them which is toxic is look if you're taller than me I'm not going to try to rise myself up raise myself up I'm just going to cut your legs off because things have to be the same and that's a very dangerous way to see equality in fact I would even say that you can't have true freedom unless you're willing to accept inequality because true freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. If you want an endpoint that's the same for everyone, you cannot have a free population.

The two cannot coexist. Yeah, it's gravely concerning. It ultimately is underpinned by envy, and envy is the great liability of toxic narcissism right and every religion every scripture written by every religion has repeated injunctions against envy watch out for envy envy is the enemy and now we're celebrating it we do celebrate envy what is social media about if not envy it started out as jealousy. It started out as a way of comparing yourself to someone. I wish I had that car.

I wish I had that body, that figure, those muscles, that girlfriend, that life. That's bad enough, but it's not necessarily toxic. What's toxic is saying, huh, she's got that car. Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to key it. She's got a hotter boyfriend than I do. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to spread some rumors about how she's been slutting around with some other guy. I'm going to get him out of the picture. They have a nice life. You know what? I'm going to go spray paint their front door

with anti-Semitic remarks so the community turns against them. That's what envy does. Envy spoils. And what I see in my practice with these young kids these teenagers on social media they're not just getting depressed and anxious and feeling jealous they want to go and act out and hurt the other person who seems to have more than he or she does and you know what when you look at social media everybody has more than you have because that's what social media is based on, showing the best, not the real. Mark McDonald is the dissidentmd.com. Freedom from fear is the book.

We have to take a little break here. Caleb, I think when we get back, if you don't mind, Mark, we'll have it. There is the book. We'll have a chance to – oh, I love the way the mask is sort of the talisman for control and fear. But I want to maybe take some questions from our Twitter spaces when we get back. Is that agreeable for you? I'd be too. All right.

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I do not give financial advice and previous performance is no guarantee of future performance. Visit birchgold.com slash Drew to get your free info kit on gold. That is B-I-R-C-H-D-O-L-d dot com slash d-r-e-w welcome back we're speaking with dr mark mcdonald his book is freedom from fear his website is disinitmd.com uh i'm going to take calls from our twitter spaces for dr mcdonald uh and you just raise your hand or you ask to be

brought up here to the podium and we'll bring you on up. You have to mute your mic in the lower left-hand corner. Caleb has a little cartoon that he shows us about how you go about this. And we'll be streaming on multiple platforms if I bring you up. So just your consenting to that. Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble. Josh, let me bring you up. Hey, Josh. So I just saw you there and I thought, what a wonderful opportunity for you, Dr. McDonald. Josh thinks a lot of, he's very interested in the kinds of things you've been

trained in and particularly we've talked over the years about narcissism. So Josh, go ahead. Yeah, you know, I'm not trained. So I do a lot of reading. My main thing is Eastern philosophy, but I really put a heavy weight on psychoanalysis. My original gut reaction here is it's sort of a shame that we, on one hand, we take sexuality, and you probably don't do this because you've had some training in psychoanalysis. We take sexuality out of all of the neuroses, psychoses. That's the trend. We go towards CBT, and we sort of don't do the psychoanalysis like it was done 100 years ago with Freud. But then what we say is we say, then the person who comes with a sexual issue, and I'm sure Dr. Mark wouldn't say that homosexuality is an illness, but someone comes to us with a sexual difference.

And then we say, well, they can't have that either. So for me, again, from an ignorant point of view, because I really am ignorant on this, I see it as sort of we're being pigeonholed here. And we, I speak for everyone here, that either we have a sexual issue that we can look at the unconscious and try to negotiate, or the patient has to come with something. And if we say the patient can't come into my office with a sexual difference, I think I'm not saying that Dr. Mark is saying that, but that's where I see this going and it worries me a lot. Yeah, that's an interesting point. And I have a follow-on to that, but I'll let Dr. McDonald address that. You're raising a very important point and that point is that yes sexuality and sexual nature and sexual

fantasies in particular have been absolutely made taboo now that doesn't mean sex is taboo there's more sex in our lives meaning on billboards and movies genital sex and copulation than ever in history in public but that has nothing to do with sexual identities sexual fantasies the way that sex drives the way that we see the world that's the psychoanalytic point of view that's a psychological one and I personally welcome that in my practice and I wish more therapists would what I object to is taking that and connecting it up with what is now commonly referred to as gender dysphoria, meaning that we're going to treat gender dysphoria and

other identity issues with essentially chemical and mechanical medical interventions. We're going to treat gender dysphoria in a way that we would never treat body dysmorphia. That's the problem I have is the medicalization of this issue rather than the psychologicalization of it. What if they end up in the same place? In other words, see my position is that why should I judge or have an issue with hormone and surgery as opposed to months or years sitting in the office three times a week or twice a week? or what I would hope for my family, but who am I to say that one, if they end up meaning thriving

and flourishing and happy, who am I to say which course is the one that has to be followed? Well, the easy answer to that is, does one work and does the other not work? And the answer is, objectively, based upon the research, there is no positive outcome in surgical interventions and chemical castrations for those who call themselves transgender or who diagnose as gender dysphoric. I think I've seen it, Mark. I think I have seen patients that were served well by it. I do believe that.

Now I'd love to maybe do some follow-ups or see them over long periods of time to understand whether I was just seeing a moment where things look good. There are publications. You look at one out of Europe, in Northern Europe, they've got eight to 10 to 20-year longitudinal studies with thousands of patients, and the outcomes are incredibly poor when you use medical interventions versus therapeutic ones. Also, those who come in with this disorder, whatever you want to call it,

80% of the time, by the time they reach early 20s, early adulthood, they actually have grown out of it without any interventions whatsoever. So the idea that we would institute an irreversible intervention, meaning castration and mutilation, which we can't actually reverse for something that isn't proven to be effective, when most of the time the people will actually do fine on their own. To me, that seems like a violation of the do no harm basis of medicine. That's how I interpret it. And let me then head over to sort of the gender fluid, non-binary sort of category again you know far be it from me I've met many non-binary individuals who I you know I love are they actually family members and have no you know

I have no quarrel with that person forming a formal identity around this sort of new, I don't know what to call it, principle, concept, identity formation. My concern is, and you tell me if I'm right or wrong on this one, is when you say fluid, that means to me an incomplete or ill-formed identity. It's not done. It's like borderline personality disorder. It's not, it's not done. It keeps, it's like borderline personality disorder, you know, it goes all over the place. Am I onto anything with that? And how do you interpret all those issues? I think you're a hundred percent right. I just published my substack today on this exact issue, which is at dissident MD substack, quoting the polling data that just came out of the Harvard University newspaper,

which compared the same data to a poll that was done 10 years ago. And it asked all of the students to identify themselves sexually. Are you heterosexual, homosexual? I saw this. Sexual orientation. Or how do you identify your sexual persona? Are you binary, non-binary, two-spirit, etc, etc? Exactly. Interestingly, the percentage of students who are now

considered to be in the non-cisgender category is 20% of the student body, which is a huge increase from 10 years ago. And also interestingly, the percentage of that group that is calling themselves lesbian and gay has actually gone down in other words the part of the pie that's gay is is much much less it's 50% less than it was 10 years ago which means the rest of the pie as a proportion has exploded ie the those that are unclear about their sexual orientation and their sexual identity. They're sort of in that middle or that liquid phase, as you called it. Now, this tells me that it's not that today, as we're often told, well, gays and lesbians are so much more comfortable

coming out. That's why we have so many parades and people coming out as gay. Well, they're not at Harvard. They're actually going down. So that's not an issue. It's not that we have more freedom. That's why people are coming out in these other non-normative sexual orientations and identities. Something else is going on. Are you saying that because there is perceived stigma against being gay, people go to an alternative sort of interpretation is that what you're saying i'm saying what i'm saying is that often we're told that there's a reason a societal reason why there's more gay people and more non-binary and they're more transgender basically

all the non-normative sexual identities and orientations that are exploding and my argument is well if that were the case why would we not see the same percentage of gays and bisexuals and lesbians and transgenders and non... Why is suddenly the pie, if everybody is free to express themselves, why is the pie suddenly becoming overwhelmingly non-binary, confused, unclear? It seems to me that sexual freedom should be equal for everybody. So I don't believe that somehow all these non-binaries came out of the closet. I think that this is a new phenomenon that is not a, let's be free and express the way we've

always been, but it's actually a radical shift that is socially driven. It's a social contagion. That's what Abigail Schreier wrote about in her book, Irreversible Damage. The number of girls and the percentage of girls that are coming out now in their teens as transgender has exploded compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Is it because they're freer to come out? No. It's because there is a seed planted, a social seed in a school, in a community, on a social media website that then infects all of the girls around them who are having

general adolescent identity crises who then come out as transgender. I think that's happening on the university campuses as well. That's why I don't think the solution to this is drugs and surgery. It's better parenting, it's better education. It's better therapy. It's understanding your own identity through a psychological matrix and lens, not drugs and scalpels. What happens when you express these opinion amongst your peers? 80% of the mental health community, and that includes therapists, psychiatrists, I would even say pediatricians to some extent, are either partially or fully on board with the

gender affirmation pathway, which is don't challenge the child as you would in any other dysphoric condition. Completely collude and affirm and agree with that child's illness and support that child's transition through drugs and surgery. That's about 80% of the people that are in my collegiate circle. And I think they've turned their backs on their patients by doing this because they would never do this with a patient that came in and said, my body looks funny.

I'm anorexic, but I really feel fat. And then the therapist says, well, just keep starving yourself till you look like the way you should look. That's malpractice, but that's what we're doing with patients that come in with these gender dysphoric conditions. So I think the therapy community, the psychiatric community has been really taken over by an unethical and predatory element in our country and they're not doing service to their patients. So I would be considered an outlier within my professional circle.

Pablo, go ahead and unmute yourself and let's hear from you. You're muted. There are the mics in the lower left-hand corner. It takes a second for this to kind of mill through, but you were up as a speaker, Pablo. And if we can't figure out unmuting that mic, Thank you, Dr. Drew. Thank you, Dr. Drew. I saw one of your tweets earlier

featuring Dennis Rancourt, or as you might say, French Donnie Rancourt. I was looking forward to seeing that. When you're putting that out there, Dr. Drew? Would I point... I'm sorry, I didn't get the question. Paul, let's try again.

Sorry, sorry. Maybe I'm not too clear. Wait, wait, Caleb. I think he's asking about the Dr. Rancourt interview, which actually was yesterday, so he can find that on Rumble and YouTube and everywhere right now. It's already out. Yes.

Oh, I see. It's out out. Yes. Oh, I see. I wasn't sure. I'm in England, so I'm on a different time zone. So when you say 3 o'clock Eastern time, I really don't know what that means. But I kept looking out on your feed, but I couldn't see it. But I really look forward to that. I think he has a very, yeah, he has a very alternative, much like Dr. McDonald.

His opinion is very peripheral. It's very, well, it's very, I don't know how to describe it. It's an alternative opinion, Dr. Ron Corr. That's the way I look at it. I look at it all as thought provoking. That's exactly right. And I get criticized for not, quote, pushing back. And I have to ruminate about things for a while before I can push back on something.

I hear it. I listen. It takes me like a couple days to think about people's opinions before I sort of formulate my sense of it. So to push back on a, quote, guest. These are my guests. I treat them as guests. And some of them say things that I really, I mean, the only guy I really pushed back on with RFK Jr. when he was taking aim at AZT, because that was something that I was a part of. And it was such a, Mark, it was such a thing to be able to open those boxes and have something to offer these men when we had nothing. And the hope was, yes, it was not a great medicine, but the hope was we could keep these

guys alive another four months and during that time come up with other antivirals and combination antivirals, which is exactly what happened. And by the way, learn how to treat the Kaposi's and learn how to treat the pneumocystis better. And we got better at everything very fast and it was in fact a great leap forward did fauci do some things that you know the kinds of things we've seen happening lately i i don't know i wasn't aware of at the time that's for sure were you around during all that i was around i was in high school here in los angeles so i know about it from the position of a teenager but that is far cry from my vantage point today i am far more uh suspicious and i also think well informed than i was in the 80s

maybe it might be me too like i said i'm open to a lot of things i wasn't open to three years ago uh i can't see a name on this one this This is a, somebody with a, some Sanskrit or something in their name, something about 76. It looks like, uh, but, uh, you're up just unmute that mic and, uh, go ahead. Hi, Dr. Drew. So I was just curious if you were, um, I was just curious, you know, in a world like today, what you stand for and what is your purpose? And, you know, you talked about that great leap forward and what you did with science. And as a mom and an American, I would like to know kind of like what your objectives are in your life and where you see us heading in the future. I don't have grandiose objectives.

I don't know how to think about your question except to say I've been very confused by some of the things that have happened in the last three years. I'm trying to make sense of all of it. I, during the pandemic, felt like I was creating something, or my wife had created, it was her and Caleb's project, that was akin to the French underground, where people could get together and share things, you know, quietly in the underground. And in terms of purpose you know i it's always you know

make things better that's certainly the the goal how he doing so these days though is terribly confusing and feels like there's landmines everywhere it felt like it used to be easier to try to make a difference i'd say say make a difference. What is your name? I'm sorry. Well, my name is Kimber Rose. And the thing is that. So Kimber, yeah, make a difference is how I'd summarize it. But go ahead.

Yeah, I think each person kind of living up to their own intrinsic value and potential will basically bring this all home for us. So I really believe in good people and I'm just being discerning and just want to ask those questions. Well, you know what? It's an interesting question and I'm going to go a little further with Dr. McDonald on this, because I think it is actually another really privilege is even a strong enough word, of having a skill and a wisdom where we have this ability to help another human being. We always have that. That can't ever be taken away from us unless we get dementia or something. But we have this thing that we can offer at all times. And I personally feel deep gratitude for that and having been able to use it and expand it. And it's still sort of a motivating feature of what I think I'm doing here.

Is that indulgent? Is that narcissistic? Is that something you feel too? What do you do with those thoughts? I don't think that's indulgent at all. In fact, I often tell my patients that my favorite definition of love comes from C.S. Lewis's definition, which is to support the other in that person's pathway towards achieving his or her full potential and I try to think that that's what I attempt to do with my patients I attempt to support them in their pathway to attaining their full potential I don't try to cure them I don't try to fix them I don't try to correct them I try to see how I can assist them through talking through

medication through now more recently through supplements through education about sleep diet and exercise and sometimes through challenges you need to challenge people sometimes to encourage them to do better all of those things and never ever ever ever under circumstances, collude with them. That, to me, is anathema as a therapist, as a psychiatrist. But all the other things, do all of that so that they can attain their potential. And to me, that is about doing good and making a difference in a moral and ethical way that is not narcissistic

and not indulgent. I personally have found in the last three years that I don't think that that's enough for me because I only see one person at a time. And so I've moved more into the route that you take, which is to try to speak one to many. That's why I wrote books. That's why I've gone on speaking tours. That's why I try to address people in large groups now, because I want to make more of a difference than I did up until 2020. So I don't think that that's narcissistic either because I don't get any ego gratification from it.

The gratification I get is from doing two things ultimately, supporting and encouraging the spread of truth and supporting and encouraging the development of courage. Those two capacities, truth and courage, I believe are withering on the vine in our country. And I think if we had more of them, we would have a better nation. Yeah. Truth, courage, freedom. These are words that were very disposable most of my life. I didn't really think about them. I didn't have to. Now they are coming across my lips constantly and it's a preoccupation, all of them. Um, there is interesting, you know, uh, I want to reflect on something you said there about collusion it's interesting you you left something you maybe just left it out just because you were

thinking about something else but there is a thing that we do as caretakers also that I was very guilty of before I sort of became more skilled and more you know healed my own stuff which is we can rescue and and rescuing is not what patients need they you make them now eternally dependent on rescuing it is indulgent it is more gratifying to me it's easier work than what you're talking about doing rescue is relatively easy. And of course, there are times when you have to rescue in an emergency or whatnot. But I see a lot of rescuing these days, a lot of it. And I just kind of shake my head.

Are you seeing that as well? It's an excellent point. I didn't even think about it until you brought it up. But I completely agree with you. I think rescuing has become a new virtue signal it's not only self-indulgent it's now also being gratified by the reflection of others compliments towards your rescuing which makes it even harder to recognize it because people aren't calling it out they're thanking you the public is thanking you for having rescued someone, which is actually doing them harm.

Yeah. Well, just look at the streets. All those people that are getting all that services on the street, they're rescuing them so they can stay in their pathology as opposed to challenge them, asking them to do things, moving them along helping them get not die of these this terminal illness that is so well represented on the street am i also right that in terms of what i was calling making a difference it was easier in the past it didn't have as many land mines associated with it wasn't it wasn't it couldn't you just do it and people would assume you were good intention well intentioned now you're the assumption is you're not well-intentioned why why i i think i think because there is now such an attack on what is true that when you want to make a difference by spreading truthfulness

you are almost always attacked because the power now resides primarily within institutions that are not spreading truth and so a lot of the people that have done good historically have done good by exposing the lies it's hard to do good when you're trying to cover things up and so the people who are doing the most good are also the ones that are under the most attack because they're exposing what is not true. And there's so much power now on the side of those who attack truth and undermine it. And I don't think that was always the case. There was always a check and balance.

Who were the best journalists, the muckrakers over the last hundred years? They were the ones that were exposing the lies. Who are the journalists that are lauded now? These are the journalists that are basically just spokesmen and spokespeople for whoever is in power in government, corporate, and media culture. We've actually turned journalism into media, which is just a mouthpiece like Pravda was of the Soviet Union. So what do you do if you want to speak the truth as a journalist? Well, you can't really anymore because you don't get any access, and then you get fired. That's just one occupation, but it runs the gamut, and even people who are not doing it

at work. Look at the Moms for Liberty group that protested in Philadelphia over the weekend. What are they protesting? They were protesting pornography in schools. That was it. We don't want pornographic books in our schools. They were attacked. They were physically attacked. They were spat upon. They were called racists and Nazis. Even though the woman who led the group, I interviewed her yesterday on our

podcast, Informed Dissent, she's an immigrant from Puerto Rico. So these are not people, the ones that are being attacked, that are harming our country. These are people that are trying to expose filth and lies and harm to the most vulnerable in our population. And they're now being put on the side of the bad group. So I think it's harder to make a difference because most of the people that are trying to really make a difference are being attacked by people who feel threatened because their authority is being undermined and again remind ourselves you should remind yourself that uh history history the heroes of history are almost always people that are standing up to prevailing wisdom and authority with the truth go go study what happened to galileo go study what

happened to him uh you know and yet it moves is his final under his breath uh statement when uh it was he was being told by the the spanish inquisition at the time that the sun the worth was the center of the universe and it did did not move. It was immovable. And again, you just study your history, think about your own history and what you've looked at, who have been your heroes in the past. I assume maybe people look at different heroes these days. I don't know.

But Dr. McDonald, I am in the middle of a colonoscopy prep, and it's calling to me right now. so so you've had this great good pleasure of being with me on a day when i'm i'm at the beginning part of the prep but sufficiently engaged with it that i'm going to have to run out of here right now um i do recommend everyone get their colonoscopies get your colonoscopies everybody this this is the least fun part of it which is the prep i actually have to get it every year because I have something called Lynch syndrome, so I have to go every year. I'm very familiar with this.

I thought I would squeak by this afternoon before the real, real intense part kicks in, but I, I, I'm starts to come. It's coming. It's, it's already underway here. I'm I'm well, I'm guessing I'm into it more than I thought I was. Um, but, uh, I appreciate you being here. I'm going to be on your podcast.

Where can people find your podcast? So when I am there, he's going to psychoanalyze me. That's what I intend that to be amongst other things. Oh, no. I want to make it very friendly. I'm expressing curiosity about your life. But I may make some analytic comments. It's called Informed Dissent.

Yes, please. And it's available on all podcasting platforms, Apple, Spotify, Buzzsprout, etc. Or you can just go to informedescentmedia.com and you can sign up for it that way. We're really looking forward to having Dr. Drupinski on in the next week and exploring from the other side of the table what his views are about how he's changed in the last few years. I am very, very curious. We've already addressed it a little bit, but I want to hear more about it. Yeah, very curious. We've already addressed it a little bit, but I want to hear more about it. Yeah, me too. I am because I'll tell you what, I, you know, having somebody attuned and skilled the way you are, who knows what will emerge. I'm looking forward to it. And I'm, and I'm, I'm an open book. And by the way, I've done so much therapy. I know that

I go into that state very easily. I go, it's almost hypnotic state for me. Uh, and so I can, I will descend into it with you and you'll have your way as you please i love it i'm really looking forward to it i love those kinds of yeah me too me too and thank you for being here again dissidentmd.com you see it up there on the board uh the book is freedom from fear uh dr mark mcdonald thank you so much for being here thank you for having me appreciate it it. Cheers, my friend. And there we are. Ed Dowd with Kelly Victory and Michael Yadin next week.

Steve Kirsch on the 20th. Oh, Kelly's coming in all three days next week. Very good. Joseph Freeman also. Steve wants to debate, I think, so we'll see what comes of that. I think the word debate is being misused here. We just should be allowing opinions to be posited and see whose opinion is

the most convincing, the most persuasive. Okay, so Caleb, don't go away after you do the commercials. I will come back to you here, but I'm going to have to run right now. The First Lady of Love will be back. She's on a plane right now. She's on her way from New York City and will be here tonight. And she'll, of course, be helping us out next week as well. So we thank you all for being here. And I will see you Tuesday at three o'clock Pacific. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I

am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and

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