The Highwire with Del Bigtree - SCIENCE SUPPORTING GENDER TRANSITIONS FOUND LACKING

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

An explosive moment has laid bare the lack of science and evidence for medically transitioning children as society and governments back away from supporting the once popular procedures. Is the experiment over?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the things we do best on this show is we look at the narrative landscape. We look at this social landscape and we look at trends. And just for example, for COVID reporting, we were some of the first out the gate to really just nail this home and be really accurate as our record showed. When other people weren't saying anything or even worse, they were telling people to get the vaccine. And then all of a sudden, it was like things changed overnight.

And everyone was standing up against these lockdowns and the masking and saying, look, the science does not show that this thing stops transmission. It was like everyone turned into the high wire. Well, we're seeing a similar kind of inflection point, this moment right now, in the conversation of medically transitioning children. And sometimes when you look at opinion pieces over across all newspapers, you can really get like a pulse check on how the feeling is out there. And this is one of them in telegraph. I wanted to really just read the headline for. It's titled, The Spell of Trans ideology has finally been broken.

And the subheading there is every. every time people tried to bring this scandal to public attention, they were shut down. Finally, the truth is out. And what am I talking about? That's one article headline, but if you look at the news, it's telling the same story. Take a look.

I have studied the research, and there is no other instance where a medical profession has proceeded with little or no evidence showing whether or not these hormonal treatments are safe long term. We're talking about adults, we're not talking about children, And when we're talking about changing their biological sex through surgeries, that is not reversible, guys. Like, it is not a small thing.

Last month, England's National Health Service announced that there's not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty blockers for third graders. So too with all the other good place countries in direct opposition to America's choice to affirm children's wishes on switching gender, no matter the age or sex. psychiatric history. The far left, which always like to use, well, Europe does it. Yeah, no, that doesn't work on this one anymore. We started to see patients who were experiencing very significant medical harms, being rushed to the emergency room with lacerations requiring stitches. We had patients contact us who were begging to have body parts put back on within months of having surgeries. It is serious.

It's something that should be taken seriously. And there is a reason why we treat children differently in society. You have all these prestigious institutions, all these prestigious hospitals who are signing off on this and endorsing it. But the fact is, it's not based on any evidence. It's not based on any even logical reasoning. They can't even define the terms in which they're seeking to intervene on. This is not medicine. Remember that segment I did on the pronouns when I was at NBC?

I realized now I was part of this problem. You know, I was, my heart was in the right place. I wasn't trying to push anything bad on kids. I thought I was being supportive of them. I thought I was promoting anti-bullying. And now I just have such regret about it. If you're not actively fighting against this, you are part of the problem. You are hurting people.

And don't be lured into thinking it's empathetic to support this radical. radical experimentation on minors. It's always wild. I keep watching Bill Maher every week. I mean, we were playing a lot of his videos, and I just feel like I'm watching, you know, my alter ego, tell Bigtree that that slippery slope you go down. And at this point, I'm like, I think he still calls himself a Democrat liberal, but boy, is he lashing out. I think it was just, you know, a week ago, talking about how bad they got the COVID pandemic and now jumping ship on the transgender, you know, transitioning children. I want to be the same caveat I want to say every time to be really clear.

I have no judgment of people that once they're adults make a decision to, you know, transition or whatever they're into. This is a free country. I believe it should be a free world, and certainly you should be able to treat your body however you see fit. But in these circumstances, we're talking about children. We're talking about robbing them of the transition into puberty, which I would think in many cases would probably change their thinking. They may think they want to be the other sex. For whatever reason, they're enamored by it. But why don't you let them go through puberty?

So many stories we see out there. So many what we used to call tomboyes, you know, ended up being beautiful girls. So many of us like me, look, I was into music. I was into art. I was doing theater. And I actually had ballet classes for most of my youth. my parents were performers. So I wasn't, you know, playing football.

I was in ballet. Who knows where, you know, that would lead you now if I was asked questions. Yeah, I was looking at all of it. But it used to be accepted as a part of a well-rounded journey. And you would decide later on your life, obviously, what you're going to do with those talents. Now we're locking these kids in at just at a young age and not, as the one person said, no way to return from the decisions that are made. And I can't stress how explosive of a moment we're in right now.

Typically, it's one story here, a whistleblower there, and it builds on that. We have so many narratives, stories, information, science, converging all at once within literally weeks to a month. So let's unpack this to just really give people an idea what this is all about. So last month, England's health service stopped prescribing puberty blockers to transgender kids. That follows, they were following the Nordic countries and kind of came out of left field. But what they were really operating from was something called the Cass Review or the Cass Report. And what is that? That's a report that's now public, but we probably have to assume that they had an advanced copy of it to make that decision.

This is the headline that was made. Gender Medicine built on shaky foundations, Cass Review Fines. What is this? Well, this is Dr. Hillary Cass. She was the former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. And she is the leader of the cast review. It bears her name. And so let's look at this report. It's an extensive report looking at a lot of studies, a lot of science. And one of the key quotes in here is this. The option to provide masculizing feminizing hormones from age 16 is available. But the review would recommend an extremely cautious clinical approach.

There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18. This would keep options open during this important developmental window, allowing time for management of any co-occurring conditions, building of resilience, and fertility preservation if required. So what did it do? Well, this Cass Review did a lot of other things besides that quote. It looked at the developmental and current guidelines of recommendations for managing what they're calling gender dysphoria in children and young people. Most of these, they looked at 23 clinical guidelines. Most of these were not independent and were not evidence-based. They looked at 50 studies on puberty blockers. Only one was high quality.

Looked at 53 studies on the use of hormone treatments. Again, only one of those was high quality. So basically, in short, they're saying the science is not there to push this at speed, which has been going on. Another headline at the same time came out of the Netherlands. Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-20s. headline most gender confused children grow out of it. Landmark 15 years study concludes as critics say it shows being trans is usually just a phase for kids. But we have that piece of science. But what happened in the UK here is it's not just kids. This Cass review sparked an inquiry into all of the adult transgender clinics as well in the UK. Here's the headline on that. Adult transgender clinics in England face inquiry into patient care. It says in a letter

responding to CASS report, which NHS England sent on Tuesday to the seven trusts that hosts adult gender dysphoria clinics, it told them, quote, we will be launching a review into the operation and delivery of the adult GDCs alongside the plan review of the adult gender dysphoria service specification. The letter explained that the inquiry was needed because of, quote, concern put to the CAS review team by current and former staff working in the adult gender clinics about clinical practice, particularly in regard to individuals with complex co-presentations and undiagnosed conditions. So they have whistleblowers coming forward telling to look at this. And it finally goes on to say it was being launched also because there was,

quote, an increased incidence of individuals seeking to detransition following previous gender affirming interventions and the absence of a consistent defined clinical approach for them, said John Stewart and Professor James Palmer, NHS England's National Director at M. medical director respectively of specialized commissioning. So people are trying to reverse what they just did. They're having regrets. Moving over to the United States, again, this is rolling everywhere. Same story. We have whistleblowers coming forward. Whistleblower lifts lid on St. Louis' Kids Gender Clinic, calling it morally and medically appalling. And then the W-Path, this is an organization that has set a lot of the standards. And internal files, internal emails have come out last month.

These are some of the headlines that were created from that. Secret files show how international group pushes shocking experimental gender surgery for minors. Another one. Doctors admit link between transgender homorotherapy and cancer in leaked emails. And then from the sports perspective, small college association N-AIA bans transgender athletes from women's sports competitions. It goes on to say athletes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics will only be allowed to compete women's sports if they are assigned the female gender at birth, the National Small College Organization. now it's Monday. Now it said that NAA's council of presidents approved the policy in a 20 to zero vote. Monday morning after a December survey indicated widespread support for the move. This is believed to be the first National College governing board to put these guardrails on there. And finally, even down to the social level, kids in school, parents at Elk Grove Unified are planning a walkout and a protest over LGBTQ plus clubs started in the schools. This club was started by a third grade teacher, allegedly, for those students. It was hidden from the parents until they found out about it. Not very happy. So this is going on at every level of society, including science, medicine, governance.

Very explosive moment we're in right now. Yeah. You know, when you think about the sports, I saw a video online that just showed this runner that I might, the video says they were transgender. I mean, just absolutely, you know, leaving everyone on the one. world behind. We've, of course, the swimmer. We've all been watching. It's just, I think in so many ways we've reached the place of absurd. There's equality and understanding, but there's just fairness in sports. And it's amazing to see a 20 to zero vote. I guess there's hope, right? I mean,

as we're all sitting here scratching our heads, that slowly but surely as the pendulum has hit it's, you know, peak, maybe it's coming back around to some reason. And obviously, so many shows like ours and so many have been discussing this. And under threat, right? We get attacks. They write articles about how we have prejudices and things like that simply from saying, you know what, can we have a conversation here? It's so important.