The Heritage Foundation: The Medical Harms of Hormonal and Surgical Interventions for Gender Dysphoric Children

In dealing with children who suffer from gender dysphoria – a mismatch between a person’s biological sex and their mind’s perception of that sex – parents are encouraged to affirm their child’s gender identity, while physicians are instructed by the higher-ups in the medical establishment to provide “affirmative care”, including puberty blockers and gender-transition surgeries. And yet, these transition affirming therapies are essentially untested experimental therapies which inflict serious long-lasting and often irreversible harms. However, instead of being factually informed about the high risks and the experimental nature of these therapies, parents are told that puberty blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones may be the only way to prevent their children from committing suicide. “Never mind”, says Ryan T. Anderson, who is a PhD research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, “that the best studies show that somewhere between 80 and 95% of children who express a discordant gender identity will come to identify with their bodily sex if natural development is not interfered with. Never mind that 41% of adults who identify as transgender attempt suicide at some point in their lives. Never mind that people who have had sex reassignment surgery are 19 times more likely than the average population to die by suicide. These statistics are tragic and they should stop us in our tracks.” 

In March 2019 The Heritage Foundation hosted an expert panel in order to discuss the medical risks associated with transition affirming therapies and their propelling ideology. The members of this panel were:

Elaine – mother of a gender dysphoric daughter who recently underwent life-altering medical interventions;

Michael Laidlaw, M.D. – endocrinologist working in Rocklin California, who has been practicing medicine for the past 18 years;

Marian Rutigliano, DO – emergency medicine specialist in Washington DC who has been in medical practice for 31 years;

Walt Heyer – author and public speaker who lived as a transgender-identifying woman for 8 years, until he was redeemed by Christ. Walt started his transgender journey when he was only 4 years of age and eventually underwent gender reassignment surgery. He de-transitioned 25 years ago and now works as an activist and via his website sexchangeregret.com helps others whose lives have been derailed by sex change. 

The panellist began the discussion by explaining what is comprehended under the policy of “affirmative care.”

Elaine: “While this sounds nice “affirmative care” leads directly to putting children on the path to medical transition with little chance of tuning back. Let me explain to you how this works: if you take your child to a clinic to seek help, “affirmative care” means the therapist must follow the child’s lead, the professionals must accept a child’s gender identity. In fact, this is the law in many states. Under conversion therapy bans, questioning a child’s gender identity is now illegal. So if a little boy is 5 years old and believes he is the opposite sex, “affirmative care” means going along with his beliefs.”

Now let me ask you a question: is it sane to affirm the belief concerning gender identity of a 5 year old child who still believes in fairies and Santa Claus? Is it science?? Dr. Michael Laidlaw does not think so, but then again, unlike some of his colleagues he engages in medical science not medical malpractice!

Michael Laidlaw, M.D: “Let’s think about it for a minute, if your child or someone you knew had cancer, would you want pathology result, would you want imaging to prove the cancer before you give harmful chemotherapeutics? How about this, how about for the so-called transgender child, the gender identity, can you find it in a blood-test, can you do genetic testing, or can you do a brain image...? You cannot, there is no objective test to diagnose this, and yet we are giving very harmful therapies on the basis of no objective diagnosis.”

Walt Heyer: “They cannot actually identify who trans kids are except by them saying so. There is no test, there is no proof. A parent [or grandparent, or teacher, or therapist] can actually cause a kid to be gender dysphoric, by affirming them [this was the case with Walt, his grandmother cross-dressed him in a girl’s dress and then told him how cute he was]...The APA [American Psychological Association] in their handbook in 2014 says, “Kids are not born transgender.” And yet we are treating them with medical treatment as if they were, and trying to alter them. They are not born that way. I want to say it again – we are manufacturing transgender kids. None of us should be a party to altering a kid’s mind, his psyche and sending him down the path where they are going to sit up here and say how their life was torn apart.”

Not only then do the doctors who go along with the “affirmative care” scheme give harmful experimental therapies to young children on no scientific basis whatsoever, but also, they quite often falsely tell parents that giving puberty blockers is a perfectly safe and reversible way for a child to explore their gender!! The truth however is that most of these confused and medically-abused kids will then proceed further to cross-sex hormone therapy in order to undergo full gender transition. Never mind that these hormonal treatments carry numerous serious health risks including the risk of premature death!

Michael Laidlaw, M.D: “Just to give you an idea of how high these doses are [of cross-sex hormones], normal adult female will have certain amount of testosterone say in the range of 10 to 50 [ng/dL]. Medical conditions can bring this up to 150, tumors can make this as high as a 1000. They are recommending to get these levels in a 300 to 1000 range [which is the male physiological range]...And are there side effects from this? Of course there are. Both sexes have shown increased risk of myocardial infarction, death due to cardiovascular disease, that’s males taking oestrogens and females taking testosterone; with the male, five times increased risk of deadly blood clots, two times increased risk of strokes; females also have been shown with liver dysfunction, hypertension...I want to make this clear, there is no FDA approval for either of these medications for this use.” [i.e., cross-sex hormone application of oestrogen and testosterone represents and off-label experimental use of these hormones].

Michael Laidlaw, M.D: “So what’s the bottom line on this child-adolescent affirmative therapy? We do not know long-term outcomes...medications are being used off-label without proper FDA risk assessment profile...This whole thing is an experiment on children...and the NIH is allowing unethical research to be conducted on children and adolescents...in 2017 they actually lowered the minimum age for cross-sex/wrong-sex hormones, it was 13, they lowered it down to 8 years old...this is unbelievable...who will speak up for these children?”

Now if all this was not disturbing enough, consider further that under “affirmative care” double mastectomies are performed on girls as young as 13 years of age. Radical hysterectomies on teenage girls are also sanctioned under this utterly monstrous and diabolical scheme. And while it would be criminal for any doctor to amputate a healthy limb, yet under “affirmative care” and conversion therapy bans in some states it is now criminal even to question the sanity of removing healthy reproductive organs – a procedure resulting in irreversible sterility – of teenage children confused about their gender!! It is the opinion of this author that hospitals that perform these procedures are not “Children’s Hospitals” but rather Child Abuse and Mutilation Centres.

Walt Heyer: “The most vulnerable people in our society and adults are tearing their lives apart. It is really beyond my understanding why we are having this discussion because it shouldn’t be happening. I don’t believe any doctor who injects a young person with hormone blockers should have a license to do so...There is absolutely nothing good about affirming somebody in a cross-gender identity because it destroys their life...People are suffering, we are not trying to minimize their suffering, but why do we abuse them with hormone blockers and cut their bodies apart as a way to effect treatment?...It is insanity. When will we finally grasp this?”