The Daily Signal - Will the 'Invisible Hand' Finally Stop Doctors From Putting Kids on Experimental Gender Drugs?

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Doctors across the country have seemingly thrown caution to the wind, prescribing experimental drugs to block puberty and to chemically alter young people's bodies in the name of a nebulous gender identity, but rising rates for medical malpractice insurance may cause them to think twice. "If the Hippocratic oath, if basic high school ninth grade biology, if the moral natural law theory of human beings being image-bearers of God, if none of that will convince doctors that this is a bad idea, and it takes their own economic self-interest, that might be a sad commentary on the practice of medicine, but I'll take it, right?” Latham Watts, vice president of public affairs at the nonprofit law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, tells “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, April 8th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Latham Watts. He is the vice president of public affairs at the law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. We spoke about the threat of gender ideology and the broader and specific situation of medical malpractice insurance for many doctors who engage in what's euphemistically called gender affirming care. These rates for medical malpractice insurance have really skyrocketed as it's become very clear to medical malpractice insurance companies that there is tremendous risk in doctors providing these experimental gender drugs to block puberty and chemically alter people's bodies in the name of gender identity. Many of the people who formerly identified as transgender have later realized that they were sold a lie and that they have permanently altered their bodies in pursuit of an ideology that really led them off the rails and doesn't correspond to the natural biological truth that they were born with and that they've developed naturally in their own bodies. So these people, many of them have lost the opportunity to have children. They've lost the opportunity to nurse children if they do have children. They have, in the name of gender ideology, in the name of women trying to appear male for men trying to appear female, these people have altered their bodies. And they only realize after the fact that this is tremendous harm that was done to them. And so many, many people have claimed that doctors who engage in this practice are violating the Hippocratic Oath, which among other things includes the promise to do no harm to patients.

And we spoke, I spoke with Latham Watts. Now, Watts is at Alliance Defending Freedom. This is a law firm that focuses on five main areas, free speech, religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage and family, and parental rights. And in pretty much every one of these spheres, perhaps only the sanctity of life accepted, gender ideology gets in between Americans and their rights, particularly when it comes to free speech where a lot of people are being forced to use pronouns that they disagree with that are not true to biological reality, religious freedom, when many people, particularly Christians, but also traditional believers in Judaism, Hinduism, Hinduism, Islam, many faiths don't acknowledge this gender ideology in the face of it. So when they're required to kowt out of this ideology, they're being required to violate their faith. And also, you know, parental rights in many cases, there are laws now, especially in California and other blue states, where parents' rights to make medical decisions for their own children on these

issues have been circumvented by the state so that if a child claims to be transgender and wants these experimental treatments, many times schools are incentivized to go around parents to get kids on this path without any parental involvement. And ADF is representing many clients who are struggling with these issues. So I sat down with Latham Watts. He talked to the issue. I think what was really shocking to me, he gave this quote, which I think really hits the nail on the head. He says, my take on it was that if the Hippocratic oath, if basic high school ninth grade biology, if the moral natural law theory of human beings being image bearers of God, if none of that will convince doctors that this is a bad idea, and it

takes their own economic self-interest, what Adam Smith called the invisible hand of the market. That might be a sad commentary on the practice of medicine, but I'll take it. I think that really shows where we are in this country. Hopefully, many doctors are waking up to just how dangerous these so-called treatments are and medical malpractice insurance, if nothing else, will hopefully give them the second thought to say, hey, look, maybe this isn't such a good idea for these kids. So listen to my interview with Latham Watts right after this. The Heritage Foundation is the most effective conservative policy organization in the country. Every semester, our interns are a vital part of

that mission. We pay competitively. We develop talent. And we give our interns access to some of the sharpest minds in the country. We're going on offense. So join us. To learn more about the Young Leaders Program here at the Heritage Foundation, please go to heritage.org slash intern. This is Tyler O'Neill. I'm managing editor at The Daily Signal. I'm honored to be joined by Lathen Watts, who is VP of Public Affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom.

It's great to have you with me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to do it. So you recently wrote an article, and I think this is a really important topic, about the increasing cost of medical malpractice insurance for... companies for doctors who are offering these experimental medical interventions that are euphemistically termed gender affirming care. Yes, there were actually, I wrote the article I did because I read a couple of articles that came out, but they came out both right around Christmas and so they

didn't get a whole lot of attention, both on the same topic, one sort of decrying it as bad news and another one sort of celebrating it as good news. So I decided to write about this that clinics that They're getting into this kind of work, as the other articles detailed, were surprised at the rates they were being quoted for malpractice insurance. Some of the quotes they were getting back were like five times what they were expecting. And those rates continue to rise. And so, you know, I wrote that malpractice carriers, they don't make these decisions in a vacuum. What's driving this is the kids who went down this path and have now come to the conclusion that what a terrible mistake they have made are now looking at the adults who should have known better. and have retained counsel, and some of them are filing lawsuits against these folks for malpractice.

So the insurance carriers see this. They see the litigation increasing. They see the risk increasing, and so the rates increase. You know, it's the invisible hand. It's Adam Smith, you know, the invisible hand of the economy. She wrote about 1776, you know, but we have seen it manifest itself ever since then. You know, he just sort of pointed it out for everybody. And so I guess my take on it was, you know, if the Hippocratic Oath, if basic high school ninth grade biology, if the moral natural law theory of human beings being image bearers of God, if none of that will convince doctors that this is a bad idea and it takes like their own economic self-interest, that might be a sad commentary on the practice of medicine, but I'll take it, right? If the invisible hand

pushes them in the direction of doing the right thing, then that's a sad commentary. that's a good thing. And there are some great attorneys who are taking these cases and really brave clients, you know, who are raising this issue. And, you know, I don't think anybody can really blame parents who are just desperate to help a suffering child, particularly when when a lot of them have been sold this lie that you, the only choice is between a living transgender daughter or a dead son, right? If that's the only options you think you have, then one can empathize and probably understand how they made this decision, but the doctors should know better. And that's where these malpractice suits are coming from. So I think it's going to be an interesting development in

this whole area of the law, and it's an area that we're very engaged in from the parental rights standpoint of we see multiple times now in school districts around the country, schools, secretly socially transitioning children at school and keeping it from the parents. And that's as a fundamental breach of parental rights as I can imagine. So we've been very busy on it and probably will continue to be, but it's nice to have some help from the invisible hand once in a while. Can you paint a little bit of a picture? You know, I've been doing some reading on this and there are some psychologists who say that even just the social transition is a powerful therapeutic that pushes people down this path that ultimately leads them to the position that they may need to file these lawsuits. But like,

these detransitioners, what are they suffering and why is it so important for them to file these suits? Well, if they go through, and I should say, you know, I mean, I'm an attorney, I'm not a doctor, you know, but when you read about these cases and you see what they've been through, the cross-sex hormones, the puberty blockers, and particularly if they go through with surgeries, these things are irreversible. The damage that's done to a healthy human body under the guise of sort of addressing what is a serious mental health, issue cannot be reversed. And when these now young adults, but then kids who are going through this with continued therapy come to the conclusion that I have made a horrible mistake, they

start looking to the people that they should have been able to rely on to help them through this. What they're coming to realize is what I needed was compassionate counseling to help me understand and to become comfortable in the body that I was created with. And so I think that's where you know, this litigation comes from. Once they come to that conclusion, they started looking at what they've been through and they see, you know, some of these kids were put on hormone therapy after as little as one meeting with a therapist. You know, and I mean, that's what, an hour? Like, you talked to me for an hour and you sent me on down this path and they are, you know, rightfully so, wanting to hold these people accountable. It's, if you're dealing with, you know,

an adolescent, you know, a teenager, I think I put in the piece, you know, if I had a dollar for every person, I know who went through puberty and really enjoyed it and always felt comfortable in their body, you know. You'd have zero dollars. I would be bankrupt. Yeah, exactly. You know, like some of this is, you know, the natural human development. And in some cases are far more serious than others, right?

And gender dysmorphia is a diagnosis. But what they need is compassionate counseling, as I said, to help them become comfortable with the body that they were created. Because the truth of the issue is you can take all of the... these drugs and you can do all of these irreversible medical procedures and it doesn't change who you really are right yeah i mean it's you were born either xx or x y and all of that stuff that you're going through is not going to change that and i think when people come to that realization sometimes after they've done all of this it becomes an even more traumatic experience for them i did all this thinking it was going to fix it and it didn't right when i think of it almost as a

separate religion. You know, it's almost like, you know, first century Gnosticism, where they believe that, you know, and they're not exactly Gnostics, because the Gnostics believe that the physical form is inherently evil and the spiritual form is inherently good, therefore you go with the spiritual over the physical. But to some degree, they're, they're echoing that where they're saying, look, I have this internal sense that's more important than my physical body. And yet you essentially have this entirely different worldview being foisted on us by authorities in the name of compassion. And it's causing all of these ripple effects in society that I think ADF has been one of the people at the forefront of addressing where this goes wrong. And I'd like you to just

briefly mention some of the cases ADF has done has taken up that involve the after effects, you know, the side effects of this ideology. So, I mean, our mission, we say all the time, is to protect and advance the God-given right to live and speak the truth. And that's what these kids need to hear. They need to hear the truth told to them compassionately, lovingly, to help them accept what is the truth on this matter. And a lot of our clients who are simply seeking to, again, live and speak the truth, that then ends up in situations where we've had to legally defend teachers who would say, look, I'm happy to call you by the name that you want me to call you, but I'm not going to say these pronouns, because that's not the truth, right? I am not going to participate in what may be well-intentioned, but is a lie.

I mean, it's Rod Dreher speak not by lies, right? I mean, great book. So we've been involved with protecting teachers and their rights in several cases. We currently have clients in Colorado whose daughter was on an overnight field trip and was told that she not. Jefferson County, where I grew up and went to school. Yeah. Was told not only how she'd been assigned to share a room with a biological male, but to share a bed with a biological male.

And the parents would not have known unless the daughter had called them, you know, basically in a panic, what do I do? So, you know, we're involved with the school district in that case, trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened. And, you know, we're willing to help the school district with implementing policies that will protect parents' rights, protect these kids, and basically do the right things. with every case, you know, not every case that we take ends up in court, you know, if it can be

resolved without litigation, so be it. Sometimes people insist on learning the hard way. We can do that too. But, you know, our goal, as with everything, is, like I said, it's advancing the God-given right to live and speak the truth. And whether that's on this issue or any other issue, you know, those are the rights that are key to human flourishing, you know, which we've seen throughout history, in particular in Western civilization. And you talk about advising school districts. I think there are a few cases where ADF has worked to advance these policies. And then what you often see is a demonization attempt.

Somebody, you know, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has absolutely no credibility on these things, has called ADF a hate group, put you on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. In what I'd say is a clear case of defamation, routine defamation that they employ against all sorts of conservative and Christian organizations. But we've seen ADF get branded this way and then people demonizing these policies as though they're rooted in hate. I mean, our work speaks for itself. The SPLC, I think they're well documented, their sort of modus operandi.

And so it looks like, you know, if you don't agree with them, that's their definition of hate, right? You know, and if the First Amendment means anything, it's the right for people to express views and to disagree. And if we can do so civilly, we can come to understanding. You know, and that's how issues are supposed to be worked out in a free and civil society. So, you know, we stand by our work and anyone, you know, who has questions about our approach to things or our clients or their views, whatever, you know, ADFlegal.org, you know, it's all right there. You can see it for yourself and you can come to a determination on your own what you think of, you know, our clients and their viewpoint and our advocacy for them. And I think when people understand what's actually going on,

there's a reason that so many people support us, despite whatever the SPLC may say this week or last week or next week or next year. Yeah. Well, I mean, their own employees have said they're a highly profitable scam. I wrote a book about it, making hate pay. I mean, I think it kind of speaks for itself, but it's also the thing you have to keep coming back and saying, like, look, don't take this seriously.

Yeah, there's a, I forget who said it first, but there's an old saying that the truth is like a caged lion. If you let it out, it'll defend itself. That's kind of our approach when it comes to the SPLC, and really anybody else that wants to criticize us. This is what we do. This is who we are. And people can see for themselves and make their own decisions. Yeah. Are there other upcoming cases specifically with regard to gender ideology or regard to free speech that you would like to highlight that really stand out to you that

ADF is working? We're very busy, as usual. Our cases are generally in four or five big categories of free speech, religious liberty, sanctity of life, marriage, family, and parental rights. So we're busy on all fronts. This term at the Supreme Court, we're involved in a couple of cases around the issue of life and the sanctity of life. So we've brought suit against the Food and Drug Administration for really abandoning their responsibility. If you look at what the Food and Drug Administration is supposed to do, make sure that the food and the drugs that are available to consumers are safe for consumers to take. And when they initially approved the drug Miffa-Pristone, which is used for abortion, they mandated very extensive safety protocols around

that drug. And then a few years later, they just decided to repeal them, which endangers the women who are taking these drugs. And so that suit really is about holding the FDA to account for that. One at the federal district court level, we won at the Fifth Circuit. They've appealed to the U.S. Supreme court. So that case will be argued really pretty soon, like in the next couple of weeks. So hopefully we'll have a decision by June into the term. The second case at the court right now, we are assisting the Idaho Attorney General defending his state's law against really overreach by the federal government. Again, it's the common thread between the two, even though they're very different cases, is accountability for the federal government. Idaho in the post-Dob's world is

empowered to enact policies on the issue of life, and they did. And then the federal government came along. The Biden administration pointed to an older federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which was written to make sure that people who show up in the emergency room can't be turned away based on not having insurance or not being able to show that they could pay for it. You know, the word abortion is nowhere in that federal statute, but the Biden administration has declared that a woman who comes to the emergency room under this statute, if she asks for an abortion, you must give her one. Again, the word abortion is not in the statute. The state is not in the statute. The state is a government.

statute does require that you provide stabilizing care to a mother and the baby. Biden administration is somehow interpreting, I guess, stabilizing care to include aborting the child, which would basically gut Idaho's state law, which limited abortion to when the life of the mother is in danger. So the Idaho AG is defending his state's laws, and we're honored, privileged to help him with that. So that's the second case that we have at the court this term. Yeah, what is the rationale behind the FDA? Because are they just saying, that these women need to have abortions so badly that we can just throw the book out? It's a dangerous game trying to put yourself in the heads of the bureaucrats at the FDA.

So I can't really claim to know exactly what their thinking went into it. I know when they talk about it, they talk about it in terms of access to abortion, but the safety protocols were there for a reason. If you just look at a few of the ones that they got rid of, they expanded when it was originally approved the gestational age of the baby you could only take it if it was in the first seven weeks and then they expanded that to 10 weeks and the further a woman further along a woman is in her pregnancy the more risk there is to her taking the drug so they expanded the age the gestational age were taking it they expanded who could prescribe it initially you had to have a doctor visit

and get it from a doctor so they expanded that they reduced initially you had to have three doctor visits they reduced it to one and then they reduced it to none saying that you could do this on the phone, you know, or telemedicine and just get a prescription. They expanded, removed the, or ignored, really the restriction on the drug can now be mailed directly to the patient. So you now have a woman who could never have an in-person appointment with a doctor, get the pill, take it at home, and if there are complications, if something goes wrong, the FDA is basically just saying, well, I mean, go to the emergency room, I guess. So they are endangering the health and safety of the women who are taking the drug. You know, to say nothing about what the drug does, you know, to the baby,

but the women who are taking the drug, by the FDA's own label, it says one in 25 women who take this drug will end up in the ER. So it gets a lot of attention, and I think it generates a lot of controversy because of what this drug does. It is a chemical abortion drug. But if you could set that part aside and just look at what the FDA did and ask yourself, if the FDA approved a drug and had a series of safety protocols that were required for the approval of the drug to go out to the market. And by their own label, they tell you one out of every 25 people who take this drug is going to end up in the emergency room. And then they went and removed all the safety protocols that they initially required. I mean, would you believe that the Food and Drug Administration

would do that? I mean, for any drug, it's really unconscionable to me, the callousness with which this agency has acted, the callousness that they have acted. And so hopefully, as I said, we've on every case, every court so far, and hopefully that will continue with the Supreme Court, and those safety protocols will be put back in place so that the women who take this drug will see a doctor at multiple points along the way. Because part of the reason it was required that, especially that initial visit, was to make sure that there's not an ectopic pregnancy involved here, right? I don't know how you diagnose that over the phone.

And then the aftercare, you know, the requiring them to see a doctor afterwards was to make sure that there's not any sort of infection, there's not, you know, internal bleeding of some sort, Or, like, if you're just left on your own, you may come to the decision that I do need to go to the ER, but maybe it's, hopefully, it's not too late. You know, but it's such a risk to do this without so much as one visit with a doctor because of what this drug does. And they didn't have any new studies casting doubt on their previous decision. Again, you know, they have extensive, you know, procedures that they supposedly are supposed to go through to make decisions like this. Our clients file was called a citizen's petition.

so when a federal agencies, particularly the Food and Drug Administration, so when they started taking these safety protocols, pulling them off, several doctors filed petitions saying this is a bad idea. And they basically ignored those and went right ahead and did what they set out to do. Well, thank you so much, Lathen. Is there anything else you want to touch on? And where can we follow your important work? Yeah.

Thank you for having me. ADFlegal.org. You can read about the FDA case, the EMTALA case, cases on parental rights and free speech, religious liberty, all of those cases, you can find more information there. And if you want to support our work, can find out how to do that there as well. And we're blessed to be supported by people around the country, which allows us to not have to bill the clients for our work. And so people are interested in partnering with us in that. They can find that out at ADF legal.org as well.

Well, thanks again. Yeah, thank you. Good to be here. That was Latham Wants, Vice President of Public Affairs at the Law Firm Alliance Defending Freedom. And again, I'm Tyler O'Neill. If you liked what you heard here, please feel free to leave us a five-star rating and review, we read all of your feedback. And don't forget to come back to this very podcast feed at 5 p.m. this afternoon, while we'll bring you the top news of the day, the headlines that you need to know what's going on in the world for your evening commute home. Again, this is Tyler O'Neill. Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. And don't forget to tune back in at 5 p.m. for our top news edition.

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