Theology in the Raw - 765: #765 - How to Raise Anti-Fragile Kids: Dr. Leonard Sax

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

Dr. Leonard Sax (M.D., Ph.D.) is a physician, psychologist, speaker, and best selling writer. In this episode, Preston and Dr. Sax talk about why kids are growing up much more fragile and unhealthy (mentally and physically). Part of it has to do with parents who are coddling their kids and shrinking back from establishing God-given parental authority. Lack of boundaries on screen-time (and content) also plays a significant role in the epidemic of anxiety, depression, and suicidality among kids. Sax is also a leading expert in sex and gender theories, especially as it pertains to trans* identities and experiences, something he’s written about in his latest edition of his book “Why Gender Matters” (2017). Both of these topics--kids and gender--come together and shape Sax’s concern for some disturbing things going on in the medical field regarding kids who identify as trans*. More from Dr. Leonard Sax www.leonardsax.com Why Gender Matters Why Stinky Socks May Bother Women More Than Men. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Theology in a Raw. My guest today is a author, speaker, doctor, and medical researcher. I have on the show today, the one and only Leonard Sachs. You might have heard of Leonard Sachs through one of his bestselling books, um, uh, Girls on Edge, Boys Adrift, or the New York Times bestseller, The Collapse of Parenting. Or also he wrote another book called Why Gender Matters, which is the book that I've enjoyed the most. I mean, I've enjoyed, well, I've only read two of the four books, but this one really stands out to me. I really gleaned a ton from it. I recommend it to a lot of people. But Leonard Sachs has been, I mean, yeah, he is, as you will

see, so incredibly knowledgeable. I mean, the dude graduated from MIT. MIT at the age of 19 went on to do both an MD and a PhD. He is incredibly wise and very knowledgeable and a very clear speaker, which I've really appreciated from him. Sometimes people that are so smart and so educated, they don't communicate very clearly. But Leonard Sachs is definitely an exception to that typical rule. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and you can support the

show for as little as five bucks a month and if you do so you get access to premium content like patreon only podcasts where i typically address various questions that my supporters send in or once a month blog posts where i blog about whatever's on my mind. And yeah. So if you want to support the show, I really appreciate it. If you don't, then that's cool. If you can keep listening, it's a free podcast. I listen to all kinds of podcasts for free and I don't feel guilty about not supporting

them. So I don't want you to feel guilty at all about not supporting the show if you don't want to support the show. But if it has blessed you, challenged you or aggravated you and hey, you just want to support the show because you don't want to support the show, but if it has blessed you, challenged you, or aggravated you, and hey, you just want to support the show because you feel aggravated, and you know, it's 2019, and that's what people do these days, then you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Without further ado, let's get to know the one and only Dr. Leonard Sachs. Okay, I am here with Dr. Leonard Sachs. I'm so excited about this conversation. Dr. Sachs has written so many good books that have been a

huge part of, well, a couple at least that have really influenced me. So anyway, we're going to jump into some, I think, important topics, but also some controversial topics. So thank you so much, Dr. Sachs, for being on the show. Thanks for inviting me. And I'm going to go ahead and go with Dr. Sachs, even though I have a PhD. You actually have two doctorates, which when I first came across your name, I did a little research. And is it true that you graduated from MIT at, is it 21? No, at 19 years of age. At 19. So I didn't think that was humanly possible. When did you enter MIT? I entered at 17, and my mom was a single mom, and she was paying my way. She took out loans in her own name to put me through college. And at that time, I don't know if this is still true, but 40 years ago at MIT,

you could take as many courses you wanted in a semester, and it was the same tuition, regardless of whether you took three courses or eight. So I took eight courses a semester and graduated in five semesters at the age of 19, mainly trying to save my mom tuition so that she ended up paying five semesters tuition instead of eight semesters tuition. And then I went on to medical school and graduate school and I paid that myself and took out loans to get through medical school. That is, wow, that's incredible. I was raised by a single mom as well. So I understand.

Yeah, she was working three jobs just for us to survive. So I, gosh, I resonate with that a lot. And you know, it's funny when I finished my PhD in the British, I went to Aberdeen university and it's, it's basically when you finish your dissertation, you're done. And so halfway through, I realized that we're racking up loans. We're good. This is just sickening how deep in the debt we're getting, but I'm like, Hey, as long as I finish, once I finished, I stopped paying, you know, monthly tuition. So I was doing the same thing, working 18, 16, 18 hours a day to get the thing done. like, hey, as long as I finish, once I finish, I stop paying monthly tuition. So I was doing the same thing, working 16, 18 hours a day to get the thing done. So you went on to do both a PhD and an MD, is that correct?

That's right. I earned a doctorate in psychology as well as an MD, both at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And then you've been a general practitioner, a clinical psychologist and a researcher. Is that correct? We don't use the term GP because historically GP refers to someone who did not do a residency. I did a three-year residency in family medicine at Lancaster General Hospital. And I have been board certified in family medicine now for 30 years. I have been board certified in family medicine now for 30 years.

Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. And you're, so the, the books that most people might be familiar with boys adrift girls on edge and then why gender matters, which is in its second edition. Are there other two books in second or third editions or? Well, of course the collapse of parenting, which is my only book that was a New York Times bestseller, is fairly recent. So that's a first edition. Girls on the Edge, I'm working on the second edition right now. It's due in one month at the publisher.

And, boy, a lot of things have changed in the 10 years since I wrote the first edition of that book. Boys Adrift and Why Gender Matters, as you pointed out, are both in their second edition. So let's talk about parenting. I've got four kids, 16, 14, 12, and 10. And, you know, they're all would be, you know, Gen Z. They're raised in a world where they don't know any world without an internet, without, you know, cell phones, although we try to minimize that. you know, cell phones, although we try to minimize that. What, what, tell me some, what are some key things, key changes you've noticed among kids in the last, let's just say, 30 years since you've been really doing a lot of research in parenting and raising kids?

Well, a lot of these big changes have happened really in the last 10 years. And when I speak to parents, I emphasize that parents need to be knowledgeable and they need to be in charge with regard to these new technologies. So for example, many kids, many teenagers are going to bed with their phones switched on. And at two in the morning, your daughter is getting a text. OMG, Jason and Emily just broke up. This is really big news. We all have to talk about this. Parents are amazed to find that half the ninth grade kids are awake and texting at two in the morning. So this is something parents need to be in front of. So I recommend at nine o'clock at night, the very latest, you take the device from your child, you switch it off and you put it in the charger, and the charger

is going to be in the parent's bedroom. They can have it back tomorrow morning. Now, this is the parent's job. It is not reasonable. Many parents will say, well, you know, I think good parenting means letting kids decide, and my daughter wants to have her phone in her bedroom, so I'll let her decide. I think that's very unwise and unfair and not age appropriate. You know, what is your 14-year-old daughter supposed to say tomorrow in school when her friend says, hey, I texted you last night at midnight. How come you didn't answer? Is your daughter supposed to say, well, researchers have found that sleep deprivation

in adolescence is a major risk factor in the etiology of depression. That's ridiculous. You can't expect a kid to talk that way. You have to allow her to say, hey, my evil parents take my phone every night at nine and then want to have it back the next morning. It's your job to be that evil parent. No phones in the bedroom. And incidentally, that's not just my opinion.

Those are the official guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. And I cite those guidelines throughout the book, which recommend no phones in the bedroom. Bedroom is for sleeping. Look, the rules of good parenting have not changed in 20 years. 20 years ago, a girl could not accept a phone call at two in the morning because the phone would ring, and the parents would not allow it because they knew it's more important for a kid to get a good night's sleep than to be up for an hour in the middle of the night exchanging gossip. That was true 20 years ago. And it's true today. What has changed is the technology. It's now very easy for your daughter to accept that text at two in the morning because the phone never rang. It buzzed.

She has it on vibrate mode and she's not talking, she's texting. But just because it's easy to do doesn't mean it should happen. This is the parent's job. So I was speaking to parents at a Christian school and during Q&A, a father said, you know, Dr. Sachs, I get what you're saying about the importance of good night's sleep. And I heard what you say about no phones in the bedroom. But, you know, my daughter, she puts her phone on vibrate mode at bedtime, excuse me, not on vibrate mode. She puts her phone on airplane mode. She puts her phone on airplane mode. So she won't be disturbed overnight. And then in the morning, so she can still use it as, as her alarm clock. And then in the morning, she puts it back on, on regular mode, takes it out of airplane mode.

And I said to dad, how do you know that she keeps her phone on airplane mode overnight? How do you know she doesn't take it out of airplane mode? And dad was clearly offended. And he said, Dr. Sachs, you're suggesting my daughter would lie to me. My daughter would never lie to me. And I said, dad, with all due respect, I don't know you and I don't know your daughter, but I can tell you based on the research, your daughter is more likely to lie to you than to anybody else because she doesn't want to disappoint you, because she doesn't want to let you down. You know, there's great wisdom in the Lord's Prayer. Jesus did not say, make us strong to resist temptation.

He didn't say that. He said, lead us not into temptation. Because Jesus understood the human heart. And he knows, he knew, that if you put a temptation before us, we will fall. Don't put that stumbling block before your daughter. No devices in the bedroom. No devices in the bedroom. No phones in the bedroom. You switch the device off.

Now, I warn parents when I do these presentations, I say, when you get home this evening and you tell your daughter that you attended a presentation by Dr. Leonard Sachs, and Dr. Sachs recommends in accordance with the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics, no phones in the bedroom, that henceforth you will take the phone from her and she can have it back the next morning. Your daughter may not applaud. Your daughter may be upset. Your daughter may say, but I use it as my alarm clock. Let her know they still make actual alarm clocks.

You can go to the store and buy one. She can pick it out herself. They're not expensive. And now she may get really upset. She may say, but what if there's an emergency? Remind her that you still have a house phone, a landline in the parent's bedroom. If there's a true emergency, her friend is welcome to call the house phone and you, the parent, will pick up. And you, the parent, will decide whether this emergency warrants waking her up at two in the morning. It probably doesn't. It can probably wait. Look, this has to be your job.

It is not reasonable. As I said, dump this burden in the lap of your daughter. Where did the whole change? It seems like a change between the whole, like the type of parenting that you kind of alluded to that sort of lets the kid kind of determine how they're best raised versus the parent determining how they're best raised. I mean, does it go back to this whole culture that, you know, Jonathan Haidt and others talk about the culture of safetyism, you know, in the 80s and 90s? Or where this change come from where parents aren't, you know, parenting in this sort of capital P sense of the term.

And because I struggle with it myself. You know, we're always battling with, wait a minute, we've got to remind ourselves, you know, wait a minute, we're the parents and, you know, we have to, you know, we do know what's best ultimately for our kids. Is there something to pinpoint that kind of change? Well, I explore some of those issues in my book, The Collapse of Parenting.

point that kind of change? Well, I explore some of those issues in my book, The Collapse of Parenting. This transfer of authority from parents to kids. How did it happen? Why did it happen? When did it happen? What do we need to know about it as parents? So for example, there's one chapter in my book, The Collapse of Parenting, on overweight. In 1971, only 4% of American children and teenagers were obese. Today, more than 18% of American children and teens are obese. That's quadrupling in not quite 50 years. Why did that happen? Well, there are several reasons it happened. And I explored, I explore the, the, the three different factors that drove that explosion in obesity. But one of those three factors driving that rise in obesity was a change in the parent-child relationship. So I was speaking to parents in Chappaqua, New York, which is an affluent suburb north of New York City.

And a husband and wife talked to me afterwards, and they told me how they made a healthy, nutritious supper for their son and daughter. And son and daughter came home from school, and they said, ooh, yeah, we don't eat that. Can we just order pizza? So dad sat down at the computer, and the son and then the daughter dictated their order to him, which he

did on the Domino's Pizza online website. And the two pizzas, one for each child, were delivered to the home. And I said to dad, why'd you do that? Why don't you just tell him this is what's for supper? And dad said, well, I don't believe in using starvation as a means of discipline. this is what's for supper. And dad said, well, I don't believe in using starvation as a means of discipline. I said, they're not going to starve. But 40 years ago, if mom made a healthy and nutritious supper and the kids didn't like it, she did not run out and buy them a pizza. She would say, this is what's for supper. If you don't like it, you can go to bed hungry. If you let kids decide what's for supper, there are some kids out there who will choose broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, asparagus, and kale.

But there are many kids who will choose pizza, French fries, potato chips, and ice cream. One factor, not the whole story, but one factor driving this explosion in obesity among American kids is that parents now let kids decide what's for supper. It's the parent's job. That's why kids have parents. And if parents start letting eight-year-olds and 12-year-olds decide what's for supper, you will see a rise in the number of kids eating pizza and french fries for supper. And that means you will see a rise in the proportion of kids who are obese. It's not the whole story, but it's part of the story. Parents have to do their job and to say, tonight you're having salmon with spinach. And if you don't like it, you can go to bed hungry.

What's fascinating is there seems to be more of a trend towards healthy living, healthy eating, as opposed to like 20 years ago. So it's really fascinating that there's actually been a quadrupling in, you know. Yeah. And I can tell you about many affluent households where the parents are eating eggplant and kale while the kids are eating pizza and french fries yeah that's crazy what what uh have you have you noticed a any kind of change in a re-transform authority like i mean in your world when you're giving talks and talking to parents because it just i mean as a parent i can tell you about many families i've worked with and yeah again when I do these talks for parents, I say, look, you need to explain to your kids, there's going to be some changes. So that comes in part of the talk where we look at longitudinal cohort studies, following the same kids over 30, 35,

40 years. And we have many such studies. And I devote two chapters of my book, The Collapse of Parenting, to reviewing these studies where researchers have followed the same cohort of kids from infancy until 32 or 38 years of age. So there's a huge investment of time over decades to follow these kids. And what they find is that what predicts good outcomes, health, wealth, and happiness in adults, is self-control in childhood. So it follows that your first job as a parent should be to teach self-control and honesty. It's not a sermon. It's a robust empirical finding. All these studies come to the same conclusion.

So then I'll say to the parents, all right, how do you teach self-control to a 12-year-old? You say no dessert until you eat your vegetables. No video games until all the chores are done and all the homework is done. And I'll say to parents, if that has not been the practice in your home, I encourage you to make it the practice in your home. And if that has not been the practice in your home, I recommend that you sit down with your kids and explain, hey, we've been doing some things wrong here. We're going to make some changes. No more dessert until you eat your vegetables. No video games until the chores are done and the homework is done. No more screens at the table. No cell phones out at the table. Dinner time is going to be for us to talk

with one another, not to look at our screens. No more TVs in the bedroom. No more cell phones in the bedroom. No more earbuds or headsets in the car. When we're in the car, we're going to listen to one another, not to Bruno Mars or Miley Cyrus. If you make such an announcement, there will be an explosion. And the older the child, the bigger and longer the explosion. But if both parents stand their ground, after six weeks, you will have a child with better self-control and in most cases, a happier child as well.

Yeah, and I can only speak anecdotally. But as a parent, those conversations can be really hard. But at the end of the day, I've seen at least in my kids, that they actually deep down really do want and know they need order. getting a cell phone, which was a really tough decision. We said, there's no, we don't let them text, use texting or our kids aren't on social media at all. And at first, like, well, how am I going to talk to my friends? I'm not going to know what's going on. This is that all they do is text or snap or whatever. And I'm like, if, if your quote unquote friends aren't willing to pick up the phone and call you and have a conversation and invite you, then I don't think they're friends that care about you that much, that they were startled and crying and tears. And I kid you not, two weeks later, my daughter was thanked by, at that time,

what was she, 14, 15? She was thanking us because she knows how addicting the screen was, how texting is, you know, but texting, if you have an embodied relationship with somebody texting on top of that might be okay but to have the foundation of texting or snapping of a person and that's the foundation of the relationship that's just not a healthy way to build a relationship and i think after a couple weeks she saw that and then she would see everybody at her school with their heads down on their phones nobody's really talking to each other and she later on did end up and this is a really difficult you know conversation originally but she ended up thanking us because she saw the the psychological ramifications of you know being you know addicted to your phone so

I think it is a very difficult conversation it's not easy parenting's not for the faint-hearted but I think in the long run again speaking anecd speaking anecdotally, at least, I think our kids do know that some kind of order is really life-giving. Well, that's right. They are looking for that guidance. And if they don't get it from you, they will look elsewhere. They'll look online. And what they will find there is not healthy. Right.

Let's change topics a bit to the gender conversation. I was really, I mean, in the second edition of your book, Why Gender Matters, I mean, Let's change topics a bit to the gender conversation. I was really, I mean, in the second edition of your book, Why Gender Matters, I mean, you've got several chapters on things like transgender, gender nonconforming, obviously LGBT stuff, but also, I mean, I'm just flipping through it right now. And man, I'm sure you had to do some updating in this because in the last 15 years since the first edition, things have changed. Can you, I've had a few people on talking about the range of transgender experiences all the way from, say, early people who experienced early onset gender dysphoria, all the way to the other end of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is a term coined by the Browns. Lisa Littman. Lisa Littman.

Can you, I mean, there's so many different directions we can go here, but I don't know. I'll just lob the ball in your court. And can you start helping us understand both gender dysphoria, but also maybe the larger trans conversation from, you know, because you're both a practitioner, a researcher, and you've done a lot of, you know, psychological research, but also just meeting, you know,

counseling families and kids and so on. Yes, indeed. So suppose a five-year-old boy named Justin comes to you and announces that he is actually a girl and he henceforth wants to wear a dress to school and be known as Emily. What do we know about such boys and what are the guidelines to the American Academy of Pediatrics? Well, last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines. They said if that five-year-old boy comes to you and announces that he is a girl, then your job is to transition him to being a girl, to put him in a dress, change his name to Emily. Not only that, you are to change the birth certificate to Emily. Justin never existed. And if the parents push back, then you should consider

a referral to Child and Protective Services to begin the process that leads to taking custody of the child away from the parents. I wrote a letter to the editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which published these official guidelines, lead author Jason Rafferty. I wrote a letter pointing out that these guidelines are not based in evidence, that these guidelines are based in ideology, pointing out that we actually know quite a bit about such boys, thanks to the work of Kenneth Zucker and others who have studied such individuals for 30 years and have found that if you follow that five-year-old boy for just 15 years, now he's 20 years old, you will find that in almost every case, that boy grows up to be a man who doesn't want to be a woman, doesn't think he is a woman, he is a man.

That the great majority of these boys emerge from gender dysphoria as men who are comfortable being men and who want to remain men. So it follows that best practice based in evidence would be what some have called watchful waiting, which means that you don't put this boy in a dress and change his name. He wants to study ballet rather than football. That's great, but he will study ballet as a boy, not as a girl. Now, letters to the editor are not published automatically. They are reviewed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And about one week later, my letter was posted

on the website alongside the official guidelines. If you just type in to Google official guidelines, American Academy of Pediatrics, gender dysphoria, you will pull up the full text of the AAP guidelines and you will pull up right alongside it on the same webpage. You can click on the main text of the guidelines or click on the letters. You will find two letters that have been published, one by me and the second one by a pediatrician in Baltimore who said, hey, you guys need to read Dr. Sachs' letter because your guidelines are completely psychotic. Now, I have been reading the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on various topics for 30 years.

And normally, when letters are published that really attack the guidelines and say these guidelines are totally ridiculous, which is what I said, typically a month or so later, sometimes a week or so later, the authors of the guidelines will say, well, Dr. So-and-so is mistaken. They are not aware of this research and that research and this study and that study, showing that, in fact, our guidelines are accurate and the doctor is not aware of the relevant research. I waited for four months and no response was ever published. Indeed, no response has been published. After four months, I wrote another essay for the Witherspoon Institute, which is a Christian organization in Princeton, New Jersey. I wrote an article for them at greater length. The letter has to be less than 500 words, but I wrote an essay for the Witherspoon Institute showing just

how awful the AAP guidelines are. But this is really troubling because as I pointed out in my essay for the Witherspoon Institute, we parents expect our child's doctor to make recommendations based in evidence, not based in politics or ideology. And the American Academy of Pediatrics now has become a partisan agent based on these guidelines, siding with a very left of center view, which is that gender is something that kids invent, that the genitalia have nothing to do with whether you are male or female. The kids should be allowed to choose whatever they want to be. In California, we know that 33 girls under 18 years of age have had mastectomies paid for by the government. Two of those girls were 13 years old because they decided they were boys. That's really troubling that this ideology is now directing official guidelines in the American Academy of Pediatrics, guiding medical practice.

And when I speak to parents, I say to parents, you must be on your guard. You cannot assume that your doctor is going to make a recommendation based in evidence. If they're a faithful member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and accept those guidelines without question, they may insist that your son become a girl, change the birth certificate, with consequences that we have very good evidence suggests will be immensely harmful to this child. Yeah, I read a study. Is it Joanna Olson Kennedy who's leading the way in a lot of... Yes, that's the California... She got funded to perform this study, and two of the kids were 13 that had mastectomies.

I think five were 14, and she recommends hormone treatment not at at 13 but i think as young as eight last time i read yeah puberty blockers is what she's recommending blockers and then i think it's almost 100 of people like blockers end up going on cross-sex hormones um yeah that's so what what is because i mean i've read all those studies i think there's 11 published studies on the desistance rate among gender dysphoric kids it's anywhere from 60 to 90 i have not read any counter study so what what would joanna olson kennedy or diane ernstad or others on the far left say to everything you're saying about the desistance yeah Yeah, I've had this debate. And what they will say is that, well, all those studies began 30 years ago, because these are 30-year follow-up studies. They'll say 30 years ago, kids got no support for being trans. They were encouraged to remain their

biological sex. But they will insist that today, in our more enlightened era, when we encourage Justin to embrace his new identity as Emily, we believe that these kids will be very happy with their transition, and they will not change the way that kids in earlier studies did change. All right, well, that's a reasonable hypothesis, but it is merely a conjecture. It's a guess. It's a hope. And these doctors refer to these young children as pioneers, which is one word you could use. The word I use is guinea pigs. These kids are enrolled in what is basically an experiment at five, six, seven years of age with no recognition or data even to guide us as far as what is likely to happen down the road. I recently saw in the office a teenager who came in with an illness. a teenager who came in with an illness. This individual was sick and wanted me to evaluate their upper respiratory infection and perhaps prescribe an antibiotic for their persistent

bronchitis. So this is a patient not well known to me previously, but of course you get a good history on every patient. You need to know who you're evaluating and what medications they're taking. It turns out that this individual was born female, but has decided that she is actually male, and she's taking high-dose testosterone and has facial hair and a low voice at 16 years of age, but she's also taking high dose, full strength oral contraceptives to prevent ovulation and prevent pregnancy. All right. Well, as a medical doctor, you need to know if you're going to prescribe a medication, will this medication interact with the medications this person currently taking? How much do we know about interactions when a teenager is taking full-strength birth control pills with female hormones

along with high-dose testosterone, injected testosterone? All right, well, that's easy to find out. Let's go to the National Library of Medicine and type in that query. How many published studies are there of individuals at any age taking birth control pills at the same time that they are taking full strength testosterone injections? How many studies are there? There are none. There is no published study. There are some anecdotal reports suggesting that such individuals are at greatly increased risk of blood clots and pulmonary embolism, but those are merely anecdotal reports without a control group. group. So these kids are being experimented upon with no guess whatsoever, nothing based in evidence. We simply don't know what happens when you give birth control pills and testosterone

to a teenager at the same time. Maybe it's fine. Maybe it's not. Nobody knows. And it astonishes me that the same parents who insist on eating organic food because they will share very persuasively, they're concerned that, well, you know, we don't want hormones in our beef. All right, but you're putting hormones in your kid. And it's weird, the disconnect here, that the same people who won't eat beef unless it's organic and certified hormone-free have no concern about their child taking combinations of hormones about which we know nothing. Let me try to summarize some of the counter-responses.

I'd love to see how you'd interact. Because I've heard, I've used the phrase experimenting before and gotten some pushback because they said, look, we vaccinate our kids and we're not 100% sure of the long-term effects of that. We do all kinds of medical things that we don't have complete, it's not like we've exhausted all the possible. have, you know, complete, you know, it's not like we've exhausted all the possible. Yeah, I would interrupt that person right there. And I would say, excuse me, we have a great deal of research on every vaccine we use in this country. And we know a great deal about the vaccines before they are approved for use in the public. And every vaccine that is recommended for children in the United States has been exhaustively studied over many years' time. That's one reason they're so expensive. that what is being done to these trans kids right now, giving them female hormones and male hormones simultaneously, is not a departure from standard medical practice. It most certainly is a radical departure from standard medical practice. We have best practices based in evidence in every domain of medical practice in pediatrics. And what has been done to trans kids is a wild departure. And I say that as a

practitioner with 30 years experience. What about, okay, the second argument, thank you for that, by the way. The second argument is, well, it's either transition or die, given the high suicide rate. Sure, there might be some medical fallout, but it's better to have an alive daughter than a dead son. Even if the alive daughter might be, maybe there might be some chemical stuff going on that's, you know. Yeah, I get that. convinced that he is a girl trapped into the body of a boy is much more likely to be anxious, depressed, and suicidal than a boy who is content with being a boy. I get that. I understand that. I talk about that in my book, Why Gender Matters. But the assertion by trans advocates that, oh, But the assertion by trans advocates that, oh, if we just cut off his testicles and put him in a dress and give him female hormones, we will solve the problem.

We know that assertion to be false. We know that to be false because we have research where people have followed individuals who have undergone sex reassignment and surgical reassignment to the opposite sex. And we have a control group comparing them to people who did not undergo surgical reassignment to the opposite sex. That's how you do science. You have an intervention and a control group. And we know that 20 years down the road, the people in the surgical reassignment group are 19 times more likely to have committed suicide compared to individuals from the same demographic in the control group. So the notion that you will fix this kid's problem by castration and hormone treatment is not based in evidence. Again, when you present that to the trans advocates, they'll say, yeah, but those studies all began 20, 30 years ago when those trans individuals didn't have support in a more

supportive culture where we embrace and celebrate trans individuals. We won't see that. Well, maybe we won't. Nobody knows. Again, we are experimenting on kids. There's another way that was pioneered by Kenneth Zucker, who until very recently was regarded as the world's leading expert on children and teens with gender dysphoria, where he said, let's wait. Let's, yeah, let's support this kid. As I said, this boy doesn't want to play football he wants to study ballet that's great but he will do so as a boy and we will communicate we love you we care about you we cherish you but we're not going to cut off your balls just yet yeah we're going to wait and see and my understanding of suicidality i mean i'm not an expert um but given the research that i do i

have to you know be informed at least and i mean suicidality is incredibly complex um and to say again just from an empirical standpoint to draw a singular line from simply dysphoria to suicide it's like well have we explored any other possible either correlative or even casual factors i mean that for instance i mean the and i'd love for you to speak into this the the higher levels of other co-occurring mental illnesses i know uh autism is i think kids with gender dysphoria are like seven times more likely to be on the autism spectrum, or even like, I don't know the percentage of this, maybe five or 10% might have multiple personality disorders. Well, and this brings us to Lisa Lidman and rapid onset gender dysphoria. So people have been studying kids with gender dysphoria for many

decades. Boys who say they're girls, girls who say they're boys. And historically and internationally, boys who say they're girls have outnumbered girls who say they're boys by roughly three to one. And most of these individuals present early in life. And this boy will tell you at three years of age that he's a girl. At five years of age, he'll ask when his penis will fall off. It is persistent and early onset. Well, Lisa Littman at Brown noticed that she was seeing a bunch of teenage girls who suddenly decide that they're boys. And this was not previously well documented. So she did a study and simply recruited kids and parents of kids

who were teenagers when they decided that, no, I'm trapped in the wrong body. I'm really the opposite sex. And she found some very remarkable outcomes, namely that the great majority of these individuals are girls, kids who were born girls, who now at 15, 16, 17 years of age, after being very happily female for the first 15 years of their life and wearing dresses and having dolls and loving pink, now suddenly decided at 15 years of age that they are boys, they want to get their breasts cut off, they want to take testosterone. And she found the great majority of these girls have a psychiatric diagnosis. They're anxious, they're depressed, they're struggling, and they do this in groups. So the cool girl decides, I'm not a girl, I'm a boy. And her best friend then joins her, and her friend online joins her.

And they do this in a pack, and they will try to change the past. These girls will tell their parents, I've always been like this. I've never liked girly things. I've always been a boy. I've never worn a dress. And the parent will say, that's not true. Look at these pictures when you were eight, when you were 10. You loved wearing dresses. You loved doing girl things. You did ballet.

And the girls will say, no, that's not true. I hated it. I hated it. No, you didn't. The girls are trying to rewrite the past. And where is this coming from and again this is a major focus in the revised edition of my book girls on the edge so i read the first edition of my book girls on the edge 10 years ago yeah and at that time one of the big

things that i talked about was girls who said they were lesbian that was a big thing 10 years ago that is like so 2007 nobody cares about that anymore now the big thing 10 years ago. That is like so 2007. Nobody cares about that anymore. Now the big thing is girls who say they're trans, which really wasn't a thing 10 years ago. Now it's all around you. And why is this happening? So I talk about this in my book, Girls on the Edge. And I talk about girls I've heard from. And what's happening is that girls now are looking at Instagram.

And okay, who are the most popular women on Instagram? Well, let's see. Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, they're posing in bikinis, they're posing in lingerie and girls are like, yuck, that's not me. I have no interest in doing that. The culture is toxic. The culture is presenting these girls a very harmful caricature of femininity, that being a real woman means getting in a lingerie, arching your back and taking selfies with your lips parted on a bed, or pouting, I should say, on a bed to show the boys how hot you are. And a lot of girls are saying, yuck, that's not me. I hate that. That's not me. And they go online and they Google and they discover, oh, maybe I'm not a girl at all. Maybe I'm a boy. That's cool. Trans, that's really cool. And this seems to be part of what's driving this explosion in the number of American and British girls who've

suddenly decided that they are boys at 15, 16, 17 years of age, and they want hormone, they want testosterone. And in the state of California, it is now the law that if a 15-year-old girl goes to the school counselor and says, I'm a boy. I want to change my name to Jason, and I want henceforth to be addressed as a boy, the school must do that. And if the girl says, oh, and don't tell my parents, the school will not tell the parents, are not allowed to tell the parents. And if the parents find out and object, then the school is supposed to make a referral to Child and Protective Services so that the custody of the child can be taken from the parents. And that's happening right now in the state of California. Well, also, there was an article in USA Today just a few days ago. I think you even tweeted it about a parent in, I think, Chicago County who was telling

a story, almost that same exact scenario where he's about to lose custody because he's now seen as harmful and is going to increase suicidality because he's not just fully affirming our the standard care and practice do how do i word it our general the the medical industry are they making a distinction between early onset kids versus rapid onset kids? Because these are very different scenarios. It is a very different scenario. And what's really weird, I've done a bunch of events in California just recently in San Juan Capistrano for J. Sarah Catholic High School in Sacramento,

in Dublin, California, just in the last few weeks. And I was talking to a counselor who said that parents will, so he's a school counselor, and parents will ask him for his advice in these cases. And he will literally lean forward and whisper his recommendation to the parents that, hey, your girl's a daughter, a girl, she's going through a tough time, don't transition her. But he will not put this down on paper because he is concerned about professional sanctions. If he puts down on paper that you should encourage your daughter to stay a girl and not start testosterone just yet, that he could be sanctioned by the district and by the state. He could lose his license. He could lose his livelihood. So we now have professionals who are, that the culture

has gotten so weird and so perverse that we now have professionals who feel they cannot put their recommendation down on paper fearing professional sanction. So I keep hearing that the doctors are kind of seeing this stuff, but they're almost too scared to say anything or do anything about it. And I understand that. You don't want to lose your license. So you're not afraid to speak out. How come you? No, no, I'm not afraid to speak out, but I don't expect everyone else to, well, I'm trying to be modest here, but I, I try to be courageous. I think it's important to be courageous because if I am not courageous, you know, I've got the MD and the PhD and the four books. So, you know,

I shared that story from USA Today about the very similar to the counselor I encountered in California. Again, there was a story in USA Today about a school counselor who doesn't want to give his name because he's afraid that he will face professional sanction if he puts down on paper his recommendation that this child not start taking cross-sex hormones. If I am not courageous, how can I expect parents to be courageous? And in my practice setting, I don't work for a school or a public board.

I work for a private employer. So it's very unlikely that I will be sanctioned, knock on wood, for saying these things. My employers know all about where I'm coming from. They knew that when they hired me. So hopefully I won't be out of a job anytime soon. And also as a family doctor, there's a great shortage of family doctors in this country. So if my employers were to fire me, I don't think I'd have trouble finding other work. But yeah, you have to be courageous.

I want to be really respectful of your time. I just have just one more quick question. Where do you see this? It just seems like this is going to collapse in on itself. Where do you see us in two to five, maybe 10 years in this specific conversation? Do you see, I mean, because one thing I'm seeing is- I am not optimistic. I am not optimistic that this is going to change anytime soon. I do not

see any evidence that the leadership of the American Academy of Pediatrics or the editorial board of the New York Times has real concern about bringing their recommendations into an evidence-based, into alignment with the evidence. So I am not optimistic. And really, my wife and daughter and I have been looking outside the United States at universities, because we're so concerned about what we see in this country. But I must tell you, we're pretty discouraged about what we find elsewhere. Canada's certainly no better in this regard. No, no. It might be worse. So, you know, we are warned in Scripture

that despair is a sin, that we are not to be anxious about anything, that we are to rejoice continually. But Paul recognizes that's not easy. Second Corinthians chapter six, verse 10, he says, 2 Corinthians 6, verse 10, he says, we have reason to be sorrowful, but we're always rejoicing. So I think that verse very much to heart. We have reason to be sorrowful, but somehow we have to find the courage to march on with courage. Dr. Sass, I've got a thousand more questions, but I got to let you go. I know you got somewhere to get to. So thank you so much for being on the show and really appreciate your courage, your work, your honesty, your wisdom. So keep up the great work. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.