The Highwire with Del Bigtree - CDC ISSUES NEW “CHESTFEEDING” GUIDANCE

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

As new CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen takes the helm of the agency, the topic of ‘chestfeeding’ has hit the media as guidelines from the CDC now recommend off-label use of drugs to enable men to breastfeed.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Let's jump into a topic here and finish up with something we covered quite a bit here, and that's the CDC. Okay. Last two weeks ago, we covered there was a new director, Dr. Mandy Cohen. She was from North Carolina. She directed her health there. We covered her kind of track record during the coronavirus response. A little bit of authoritarian, a little bit of kind of just flip a coin and guess what kind of restrictions you want this week. Big kind of questions with her leadership skills.

Well, she has been sworn in. So this week, she is now sworn in as the CDC director, Michelle Wulinski, is out. out and she remember she is taking the helm of an agency that has lost the integrity of the American people lost to trust the American people she has a lot of work to do and she's coming in right on the back of headlines like this check this out CDC gives guidance for trans people quote chest feeding kids accused of failing to consider possible health risk it says in sections of the major health institute's guidance on breastfeeding it considered it i'm sorry contain information for those who have had much of their breasts removed in general

under reassignment surgeries or for biological men taking hormones to grow breast on how to feed their newborn children. That is what the CDC is, I guess, on the front burner for them as she, as Mandy Cohen walks in. Top priority. Let's make sure that men can breastfeed their children. Right. And now, this is going over to the U.K. as well. This is not just, you know, a conversation topic here. It's a conversation topic in the UK. This is the article covering that. It says here, how trans women use a powerful mix of hormone drugs and pumps to breastfeed babies. But how safe is it really in is actually nearest a child? So this was a biological man.

There was a picture in this article that a lot of people were talking about. Biological man identifies as a woman breastfeeding their child. So that is the picture right there. Now, when you look into this article, it really starts, we can pick this apart. Because what do we see in here? We see this crossroads of the transgender community and the medical community in big pharma. It's like this axis that comes in. And this is what this article tells the story of.

So we look at these quotes in here. It says, it is unclear how many other trans women have been able to breastfeed since the first recorded case in the U.S. in 2018. It says, however, whether this milk can sustain a newborn or has any long-term effects is unknown, according to some experts, some of which have called for further research beyond single case studies. So again, the science isn't there. We're talking case studies, experiments, if you will. So let's look at, so people are probably saying, wait a minute, let's pump the brakes here, hold on.

How is this happening? Are they actually doing this or is this just posing for a selfie? Well, they are. And like some of the transition drugs that are used for this community, these are drugs being used off-label, which means they're drugs for one thing, but just turns out they also have this little side effect that's an advantage for some people to do this. So this is no different. So we have a drug called motelium. Motilium, we look at the package insert for this. Don't have to go very far. It's right there in black and white.

Let's check it out. It says here, it is best not to take motilium if you're breastfeeding. Okay, full stop. Let's keep going. That's only the first sentence. Small amounts of motilum have been detected in breast milk. That's a problem. Motilium may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart and a breastfed baby.

Motilium should be used during breastfeeding, only if your physician considers this clearly necessary. So you know how you and I always talk about. Look, if you're an adult, take all of that. What is this drug supposed to do? This is essentially it's an anti-exiety drug. It can help people if they have any problems with vomiting, nauseousness. And it has a side effect that it can make you start lactating if you're a man.

Correct. Okay. Got it. And so you have this, you have this drug. One of anyone's anxious about that. Side effect or an advantage. Depends where you're looking at it from. So we look at this now and let's look at that case report.

So just keep that in mind, all right? You have this drug, it has these side effects, and you have, you know, some of these warnings on there. So we look at the MHRA. The MHRA is this drug regulator in the UK. If any adverse events come up, this drug regulator steps in and says, hold on, we found some issues. Let's update the label so doctors can give informed consent to their patients so people know what they're really dealing with. Well, they actually found some issues with this drug beyond what. what we just talked about. So let's look what they're saying. This is now the new guidance here.

And it says here, the following advice is given by the U.S. drugs in lactation advisory services. They're saying now a maternal daily dose of 30 milligrams of domperidone. Now that's the actual drug. Motilium is the marketed name, but don't, we're talking about the same drug here. So they're Don Perignon. Don't paring young. Don't periang, yeah. Only 30 milligrams. Don't drive after 30 milligrams. So we have 30 milligrams and it should not be exceeded. That's what they're saying. And they're also saying you shouldn't take it for more than a week.

That's it. So 30 milligrams max, not more than a week. Now, let's look at the case study. So they're saying all we have here is a few case studies to look at when we're talking about this kind of brave new world. So let's look at that case study, a 2018 case study out of Canada. And we look right in here. It says case report induced lactations in a transgender woman.

And we start to go in here and talks about the details of it. It says the patient obtained. Dom Paradone from Canada, an anti-medic used off-label as a galactagogue internationally. The patient was started on Domparodom 10 milligrams potid. That's 10 milligrams three times a day, 30 milligrams total. You're already maxed out there. So this doctor said, let's just put the pedal of the metal right off the bat. Let's just max it out.

Cool. So no big deal. All right, so you're maxed out. You're still in the safe limit. But now let's keep reading in this case report. It says here, the patient's first follow-up visit occurred at one month. Wait a minute. You've been doing it for a month? I thought I was only supposed to happen for a week, but let's keep reading. On physical examination, she was able to express droplets of milk. The dom-paradone dose was increased to 20 milligrams peri-quid.

So now we have 20, 40, 60 milligrams a day. Double-dose every day. Double-dose every day. Max-dose. So, okay, now we might be in some controversial territory if you're a doctor, but, you know, hopefully it's only for a month, right? Unfortunately, let's keep reading. This is in the case report. It says here, as at the time of this article submission, the baby is approaching six months. The patient continues to breastfeed as a supplemental formula feeding, and she continues to adhere to the medication regime described earlier.

So this person is doing it for six months, 60 milligrams a day. Six months. They're breaking all of the rules. But we have a case study. We have any, you know, can we have anything in the scientific literature to inform us to go forward into this uncharted territory? This is it. This is what they're talking about.

And that's what they've done. This is what they're doing. So the CDC, despite all the only little tiny bit of evidence we have is now recommending to practitioners and trans people, you want to take these drugs so that you can breastfeed. Well, you know what I find amazing about this story is I think it was just a couple years ago. We were covering the fact that the CDC, the FDA, and I think even the WHO, we're really trying to cut down on this idea of breastfeeding being natural. It's unfair to those women that can't breastfeed and to call it natural. I think here's some of the headlines. Are there unintended consequences to calling breastfeeding natural?

They said it was the gateway to other things that people might think are natural like vitamins. We need to stop calling breastfeeding natural. There was an entire attack on breastfeeding. So I find myself conflicted with the story because we've come full circle, I guess. Now we're back to how important breastfeeding is. It's so important that we're normalizing men breastfeeding. I don't know where this leads to, but what? And there'll be people that are going to attack the show saying that somehow we have a problem with trans.

I really don't. I mean, what we've said over and over again, you know, what adults decide to do with their body. It is a free country. I think here most people in the middle of this conference would agree, you know, live and let live. But we're talking about children here. We're talking about innocent children. If there's one job the CDC should have, it should be to make sure that children are being protected from being poisoned. And we know that there are side effects that can affect the hearts of these babies.

And when the CDC goes out and promotes a product with no long-term science, so few case studies to even know what's going on and not caring about the baby, more important for the mental health of this person, this man that wants to breastfeed, we're more focused on that than the future of our world, which is our children. I think it's clearly a demonstration of how out of balance and out of touch the CDC is with the goal. of most people in America and the world.