The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW STUDY CHALLENGES TRANS SURGERY CLAIMS

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Just weeks after Trump signed an executive order banning men from competing in women’s sports, a published landmark study is refuting the common conception on the mental health of patients after they have undergone transgender surgery.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

We're talking about the gender conversation here in the United States. And just a couple weeks ago, President Trump signed an executive order. And this is the headline that came from that. Trump signs executive over banning trans women for women's sports. Now, this concerned federal funding. So it's the power of the purse. They can pull federal funding using this executive order if they're not complying. But that's about all they can do.

But there was a bill that was going through the House. And it was killed. All Democrats voted against it. Bill to ban trans athletes from girls and women's sports, teams failed. to advance in Senate. And this was trying to enshrine this into Title IX. Title IX is sex-based discrimination in education programs. So they're trying to basically say that the participation was based on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth. And that did not happen. But we look at the New York Times. Really, how big is this conversation? How popular is this conversation? There's a New

York Times poll. And we look at, if you really dig into this poll and you look, and they're talking about athletes. The question was, athletes who were male at birth, but who currently identify as female, do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women's sports? And you can see here, the total 79% said they should not be allowed to compete women's sports. Obviously, there's a split here, 94% were Republican, 67% were Democrat. So that's one of the sub-conversations in this space. But one of the big conversations that we entered into it as was the medicalizing of children, often against their parents in foreign consent, and the children's, you know, the children's choice. And last year, there was the CAST report in the

United Kingdom. The CAST report was this expert body that got together and looked at all the evidence that showed, is it safe to give puberty blockers and give these hormones and drugs to children to transition them? They found that the evidence was lacking. And so what happened, NHS England stopped prescribing puberty blockers. That was a gigantic step. They followed a lot of other countries that were doing that as well. America still is doing this in a lot of hospitals. But now what's happening in the UK, so they said there's not a lot of evidence to do this. What's happening in the UK is they're saying, well, let's do a study to create some evidence. This is the headline, unethical fears as children to be given puberty blockers a new 10.7 million

pound trial. And we have Dr. David Bell. He's becoming a whistleblower. He's a former psychiatrist. Dr. Bell penned this article in the telegraph, Why I'm sounding the alarm on the next puberty blocker scandal. He makes an amazing point. He says, I've witnessed firsthand the grave dangers posed by the rush to medicalize childhood gender distress. As a former psychiatrist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, I was one of the whistleblowers who raised concerns about the practices at the now shuttered gender identity development service. What we uncovered was a service driven more by ideology than by robust clinical reasoning. Many distressed children often same-sex attracted with autistic comorbidities were put on

medical pathway to transition by some clinicians who had been captured by trans ideology. And as a result, cast aside ordinary sound clinical judgment, a clinical trial risk repeating these ethical failures. To be clear, the prescription of puberty blockers in the context of a trial would, in effect, introduce a known risk of systemic physical harm to a physical harm to a physical. physically healthy child. To put it mildly, this is a divergence from normal clinical trial practice. And that is what's happening. It's amazing, Jeffrey, when you look at this, one of the arguments why they don't do proper placebo trials and vaccines is it'd be unethical to somehow deny a child

this brand new product that hasn't been tested for safety, but they're so sure it's going to be great. Yet here we will do a trial literally castrating children to see if they turn out better in the future. That's ethical. I guess at least in England it appears that they want to try to do that. It's just it's unbelievable the double standard here. And just to remind people, the conversation that parents get, when they sit down with a gender transitioning doctor or one of these centers is, all right, your child feels like they're possibly trapped in the wrong body. We can fix that because if we don't fix that, the science says that they're going to have mental health problems in the future if we don't change this, if we don't use our medicine and our techniques to change this problem,

they're going to have issues with depression and suicide. Well, a new study just came out completely refuting that conversation. Transsurgery's increased risk of mental health conditions, suicidal ideations. That is the headline. We look at this study, and it looks at people that have went and undergone this surgery, full transition. And it says this, from 107,583 patients, match cohorts demonstrated that those undergoing surgery were at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery. Males with surgery showed a higher prevalence of depression, 25.4% versus 11.5%, and anxiety, 12.8%, versus 2.6%. Females exhibited similar trends with elevated depression of 22.9% versus 14.6%.

And anxiety, 10.5%, versus 7.1%. Feminizing individual. demonstrate a particularly higher risk for depression and substance use disorders. And that is the science. Over a hundred thousand match cohorts. So that's what we're looking at right now. And the big question really is, are these kids, I mean, this is one of the conversations when I look into this, are these kids coming into this decision by themselves? Or is this more of a conversation about the power of suggestion by parents and teachers

and health professionals? Well, that question is now completely 100% answered in a New Jersey hospital. This is the headline of the New York Post. New Jersey Hospital asked parents to identify pronouns and sexual orientations of newborn babies. So I don't know, it's not like you get a checklist, is it? It is like you get a checklist. Here's the checklist. You literally, the parents can just look, the kids are out of this equation at this point.

Who cares what they think? They just came into this world and they get a checkbox next to them. We've entered the S&L skit of two decades ago. What sex was your baby assigned at birth? Do you identify your baby as? Which of the following best describes your baby? Lesbian or gay, straight or heterosexual, bisexual, zero describes, please specify, furry, I guess.

My infant self-describes themselves as I'm sure it's going to be a cocker spaniel. I can see it in their eyes. I mean, this is, we have woken up in a cartoon. So this is the thing, though, people should understand. If the parents aren't fighting for their rights, the children are going to have any rights either at this point. It goes back to the parents now to decide this. But really, the big picture here is this is life intimidating art or I don't know what it is, but we now have entered a Saturday Night Live skit from just a couple decades ago in New Jersey.

It's playing out real time. Take a look. All right. Well, I have the results of your amniocentesis right here, and I've got some good news. Everything's fine. The baby's healthy. Dr. Hoffertz. Is it a boy?

Now, Ted, wouldn't you rather be surprised in the delivery room? No, doctor. I'd like to know. Well, no. It's a girl. I love girls. See, Ted really wants a boy. This is our eighth try. We'll try again. No, no more.

Doctor, will this one need that operation? Yes, I'm afraid so. What operation is that, Doctor? Well, every now and then, a little girl is born with a penis and testicles. And, of course, they have to be removed and reshaped. It's quite routine. Five of our seven daughters have had this operation. Doctor, what percentage of the babies that you deliver need this operation?

Oh, I'd say, 48, 40,000. 59, 50, 51% in that area. I mean, funny, but so shockingly horrifying. And really, just to sort of be a little bit more serious about it, one of the contentions that I've made as we've watched this transgender thing is really what is driving this. And this, if the parent is going to choose, this is what I think is a huge part of what's been going on. Not all of it, definitely pressure from teachers that are, I think, have mental issues and psychiatrists have mental issues. but parents, and it really reminds me of this concept of Munchausen by proxy,

sometimes just Munchausen. But let me describe what this issue is. Munchausen syndrome by proxy. MSP is a specific mental illness most often linked to child abuse. It affects caregivers, especially caregivers of children. It is also known as a fictitious disorder imposed on another, an FDIA. Mothers of small children are most often affected by this condition. Fathers or other caregivers can have it as well.

Someone suffering from MSP will act as though the person under their care is sick. They often will falsify medical information. They may lie to medical professionals about the health or condition of the person in their care. People with MSP do this to gain sympathy or for attention. I'm going to tell you, Jeffrey, I actually know a few people over the last decades, some that I grew up with that I watched online, go through this whole, my child's transitioning, and just my own anecdotal experience, a couple of those people. are some of the neediest self-aggrandizing people I've ever met.

They just needed attention all the time. And now, boy, are they getting it, now that their child is going to chop off, you know, their genitals or go through some sort of transition. I think this is a huge part of it. Maybe focus less on the children and focus a little bit more on the psychology of these parents that are doing this to these children.

Because we've known of this issue a very long time, and nothing gives you more attention than coming out and saying, my child is transitioning. So I'm just going to put it there. I think a huge part of it's Munchausen by proxy. I think I'm going to get myself a lot of trouble on this show today. I have come in this morning, woke up with a lot of my own opinions. Well, at the bottom of the line here, when you look at it, really the science is not there. And in fact, if you want to really go further on this, the science is looking like it is there. And it's causing mental health, it's causing mental health issues

fully transitioning. So that's a conversation, I think, for the medical community that really needs to be had in a truthful way and not worrying about people's feelings, but just looking at what is the best medicine to be practiced here. And I don't know if we've had that. We really fully understand that yet. And by the way, I mean, let the child go through puberty. You know, don't make the decision. Give them the opportunity to change their mind. Maybe they don't. But then once they're 18 or they're an adult, it's their free life. And you and I and all of us that I can, I will fight. for your rights as an adult to make a decision for yourself, whatever that decision is. But to do this to children and take away their right to have a choice when their mind has

developed, when they have experience, when they understand what sexuality is and what their interactions with people are, let them grow up and then make a decision like this. It's really, this one tugs at my heartstrings a little bit.