RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-murky-business-of-transgender-medicine
The “gender-affirming care” business has always had an aura of madness around it. Wielding the authority of white coats and prestigious degrees, doctors have convinced large swaths of the public that some children are “born in the wrong body.” The solution? Stop puberty, prescribe cross-sex hormones, and then, with the stroke of a knife, remove body parts—most commonly breasts, less frequently genitalia.

These medical practices use scientific rhetoric to affirm what is, at bottom, an ideological program. And gender activists have been successful enough at capturing the legitimizing institutions—medical societies, regulatory bodies, and teaching hospitals—to repel most challenges to the burgeoning child sex-change industry. 

Now, though, the consensus appears to be shifting. European governments have backed away from many of these dubious procedures. In England, the Cass Review has raised grave questions about the scientific evidence behind “gender-affirming care.” In the United States, the public has turned decisively against the use of puberty blockers and gender surgeries on minors, with some state legislatures banning the practice. 

I have reported on one of these programs, the pediatric gender clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital. Last year, I published an investigation demonstrating that, though it had promised to shut down its program, Texas Children’s had continued to administer hormone drugs to children as young as 11. Following the story, the state attorney general launched an investigation, and state legislators passed a bill, SB 14, prohibiting all transgender medical interventions on minors.

While these scandals caught the headlines, another story involving the same institution was brewing in the background: medical fraud. 

According to a new whistleblower, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital were willing to falsify medical records and break the law to keep practicing “gender-affirming care.” Caught in the wave of ideological fervor, two of the hospital’s prominent physicians, Richard Ogden Roberts and David Paul, cut corners and, according to the whistleblower, committed Medicaid fraud to secure funds for the hospital’s child sex-change program.

(Texas Children’s Hospital, Roberts, and Paul did not respond to a request for comment.)

This is a story of fanaticism, hubris, and the murky business of transgender medicine. It would have remained hidden, except for the courage of two people inside the hospital, a surgeon named Eithan Haim and a nurse who has now decided to come forward. Both have risked much to alert the public to the barbarism that is occurring at the nation’s largest, and arguably most prestigious, children’s hospital.

https://doctorsprotectingchildren.org

The American College of Pediatricians just put out a statement calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids. They ask for these groups to “IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.” The full statement
“Therefore, given the recent research and the revelations of the harmful approach advocated by WPATH and its followers in the United States, we, the undersigned, call upon the medical professional organizations of the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the  Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.  Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria. We also encourage the physicians who are members of these professional organizations to contact their leadership and urge them to adhere to the evidence-based research now available.” They link to MANY studies on their site:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/06/anthony-fauci-has-made-a-mockery-of-science/

In Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb, former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner, observed that the six-foot social-distancing rule was ‘probably the single most costly intervention’ recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that ‘was consistently applied throughout the pandemic’.

You might have expected such a significant intervention to have had a strong evidential basis. Yet in remarks made in January before the US Congress, though only made public last month, Dr Anthony Fauci, the lead Covid-19 adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden, described how the social-distancing recommendation came about:

‘It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall, like, a discussion of whether it should be five or six or whatever. I was not aware of studies that in fact [supported the six-foot recommendation]. That would be a very difficult study to do. I think it would fall under the category of empiric. Just an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even data that could be accomplished.’

This was a curious admission coming from the man who described himself last year as ‘fundamentally about science’. In 2022, he said in an interview with a medical journal:

‘There are, in many respects, people who have complete disregard for facts, or distort facts, distort reality, deny data and make statements that are not at all backed by scientific information. What scientists have to do is just stick with the science and stick with the data. It is very frustrating when you’re dealing with individuals, institutions or groups that actually deny the reality or make statements that are not backed by facts. You can’t get rattled; just make sure you stick with the science.’

But did Fauci ‘stick with the science’? Of course not.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-new-medical-coalition-rebuts-the-propriety-of-gender-affirming-care/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

It took too many years, but finally some countries in Europe are pushing back against so-called gender-affirming care that promotes irreversible body-altering interventions to gender-confused children and adolescents. Meanwhile, the thoroughly researched and soberly written Cass Review — authored by a highly respected pediatrician from the U.K. — exposed how evidence supporting the benefits of such drastic measures is scant while the potential harm is demonstrable. There’s no question that, in Europe at least, the tide has turned.

But not here. For some reason — ideology, politics, hubris — the American medical establishment (except for the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has agreed to re-review the data) has barely acknowledged these newest scientific studies and reforms. Neither has the Biden administration.

But now, a new American medical coalition — Doctors Protecting Children — has organized to fight back against the ideological thrall and to restore a more rational and efficacious standard of care for children. It has just issued the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration — authored by the American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with the AAP) — setting forth specifics. (Full disclosure: My think tank, the Discovery Institute, supports the declaration.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dei-will-destroy-our-trust-in-doctors/

In September of last year, I wrote about the University of California system’s truly radical embrace of DEI ideology in every aspect of its hiring, teaching, and administrative processes — an activist commitment so striking that even the New York Times wrote about it with genuine alarm. The issue back then was the barring of an academic from an expected position at UCLA because he had once evinced skepticism about the value of “diversity statements.” But what really worried me was what I saw coming over the horizon:

I am left wondering what our next generation of doctors and scientists will look like . . . where all present have been screened either for their desirable racial and sexual characteristics or their ability to demonstrate fulsome and abject fealty to this approach. Because that is the world these people are constructing.

I am not optimistic. I don’t take the occasionally alarmist gibes I hear about how “in a generation we’ll no longer even know how to build [X]” seriously, if for no other reason than projects involving engineering, mathematics, and the hard sciences tend to have pretty strict metrics for success. . . . But in other fields the decline will be disguised — reflected only indirectly over time in statistics like life expectancy, infant mortality, or suicide and addiction rates. There is no way that scientific (and particularly medical and psychological) fields permeated by these standards . . . will not be negatively and seriously affected in the long run.

My depressing vision of the future is arriving even faster than anticipated. Though I don’t often encourage people to go read someone else, I beg you to check out Aaron Sibarium’s nuclear-grade journalistic bombshell at the Washington Free Beacon about the scandalous state of the UCLA medical school. By the end of “A Failed Medical School,” you will agree with the title’s assessment, which the article copiously documents. Yet you might not even quite believe what you are reading.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-dei-does-to-a-medical-school/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

The DEI advocates always say that their admission policies favoring students just because they have the right ancestry has only the upside of promoting “social justice” and never the downside of wasting space on weak students. They accept only capable students, so goes the claim.

That line will be harder to sell once people have read this Washington Free Beacon piece.

For the past several years, UCLA’s medical school has had a crazed admissions director who won’t tolerate any dissent over her favored students. The result is that some faculty members are now talking covertly to the press about the distressing results.

Here’s a slice: “One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don’t know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.”

Will the school’s governing body do anything?

But look on the bright side. Some of these UCLA Med grads will become lousy doctors, but at least the profession overall will have more “equity,” and that’s what really matters.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/17/report-medical-schools-secretly-defying-supreme-courts-ruling-on-affirmative-action/

A coalition of medical professionals revealed the methods by which medical schools across the country are circumventing the Supreme Court’s ruling outlawing the practice of affirmative action, and employing such race-based policies anyway.

According to Fox News, the group Do No Harm released new research this week revealing that “many in the healthcare establishment nevertheless remain ideologically committed to the principle of racial favoritism and reject the virtue of race blindness.” This comes despite the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which determined that affirmative action, the practice of admitting students or hiring staff based solely on their race, was unconstitutional.

The study, titled “Skirting SCOTUS: How medical schools will continue to practice racially conscious admissions,” states that “efforts to game admissions with an eye toward bolstering racial diversity commonly occur under the moniker of ‘holistic admissions.’”

“In theory, holistic admissions should mean de-emphasizing the metrics that primarily determine admission to medical school (e.g., GPA and MCAT scores) and placing greater focus on other academic qualifications, personality traits, or professional accolades,” the report continues. But “in practice, ‘holistic’ admissions often represent a rebranding or workaround of affirmative action.”

Do No Harm also pointed to the official statements of numerous medical organizations and groups which condemned the Court’s ruling, including the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Following the ruling, AAMC issued a statement saying that “the AAMC believes that a diverse and inclusive biomedical research workforce with individuals from historically excluded and underrepresented groups in biomedical research is critical to gathering the range of perspectives needed to identify and solve the complex scientific problems of today and tomorrow.”

The AAMC even explicitly vowed to defy the court, admitting that “we will work together to adapt following today’s court decision without compromising these goals.”

“They feel that diversity is such an important value in health care that they need to ignore the Supreme Court and go their own way,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of the board of Do No Harm. “There’s really no justification of this. Their responsibility is to the patients, to create the most qualified workforce that they can possibly create.”

The Supreme Court’s 6-2 ruling in Harvard, alongside the parallel case Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, ended 45 years of affirmative action being legal nationwide, as originally determined in the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/lessons_from_covid_totalitarianism.html

The COVID police state revealed Western governments’ zeal for totalitarianism.  Forced masking, forced experimental injections, forced school and business closures, forced isolation, and forced compliance provided Western citizens an opportunity to see the tyrannical inclinations hiding just beneath the surface of their supposedly beneficent “democracies.”

None of it was pretty.  Mass propaganda disguised as medical expertise (remember when Joe Biden and his CDC army of Goebbels clones demanded that we wear three or more masks outside?) and mass censorship of social media conversations (because, we were frequently told, disinformation kills!) proved that — when push comes to shove — Western governments will quickly dispense with protections for free speech.  Wannabe dictators (intent on protecting “democracy” by being authoritarian) embraced their true “Do as we say!” dispositions and branded the public’s rights and liberties as “enemies of the State.”

Officials summarily punished anyone who resisted COVID’s descending Iron Curtain.  Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau seized the bank accounts and property titles of Freedom Convoy protesters.  Videos from Australia and New Zealand showing police forces blocking roads, securing quarantine camps, and pushing citizens back into their homes looked like scenes from a Mad Max movie.  California Democrats buried skateparks in sand, cordoned off jungle-gyms with yellow crime tape, and arrested lone surfers paddling in the ocean.  Abandoning moderation and constitutional constraints, Western totalitarians embraced intimidation, coercion, and surveillance on a wide scale.  

Throughout the West, governments prohibited places of worship from conducting religious services, recorded license plate numbers of congregants, and issued excessive fines to clergy.  Those same governments prevented families from comforting hospitalized loved-ones and forced spouses, parents, and grandparents to die heartbroken and alone.  In other words, Western officials tore families apart, inflicted tremendous emotional pain upon the most vulnerable, and denied the anguished any access to spiritual refuge.  It is no surprise that such intentional government malice produced skyrocketing rates of alcohol and drug addiction, lifelong psychological traumas, and a burgeoning epidemic of suicide.

https://www.pineisland-eagle.com/2024/05/16/guest-commentary-how-to-solve-americas-doctor-shortage/

Doctors appointments will be hard to come by over the next decade, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. By 2036, the organization estimates that the United States will be short as many as 86,000 physicians.

This is a shortage of not just doctors but medical care. In most sectors of the economy, shortages tell suppliers it’s time to boost production. But government regulation has artificially restricted the supply of medical care for years.

We must relax those regulations in order to boost the supply of medical care — and meet the needs of patients.

There are plenty of medical professionals who can help address this shortage of medical care — if only they’re allowed to. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants go through years of training and clinical practice to get qualified. They can diagnose and treat patients, including by prescribing medication. Right now, there are about 280,000 nurse practitioners and 126,000 physician assistants in the United States.

In many areas, “scope of practice” laws prevent these professionals from practicing to the full extent of their training. Nearly half the states have laws limiting nurse practitioners’ ability to practice.

Proponents of these rules argue that allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to practice without restrictions would put patients at risk. Yet research shows otherwise.

A study by researchers at New York University and Boston College concluded that “(s)tate regulations restricting (nurse practitioner scope of practice) do not improve the quality of care.” A study from the University of Central Florida found that broadening nurses’ scope of practice may actually improve quality of care.

And according to a 2023 study from the University of Alabama School of Law, over a 14-year period, expanding scope of practice for nurse practitioners and physician assistants reduced healthcare-related deaths — by 12 per 100,000 people and 10 per 100,000 people, respectively. Rural areas, which tend to have the biggest primary-care shortages, saw even greater improvements.

It’s clearly time for states to get rid of scope-of-practice rules.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-woke-gobbledygook-that-passes-for-erudition-in-medical-journals/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Our most august medical journals are in danger of becoming more woke ideological-advocacy publications than disseminators of learned scientific studies. This is particularly true of the New England Journal of Medicine, which regularly publishes progressive gibberish pushing “equity” that is often nearly impossible to understand.

Here’s the latest example. From “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize — Focusing on Health Care Equity”:

We believe that health care–centric goals — equity in patient experience and clinical outcomes — should be the primary equity-related targets for clinicians, health care administrators, health plans, and payers. The health care sector is best positioned to improve the effectiveness and equity of the care it delivers and has the most control over these factors. To be clear, providing equitable health care includes addressing HRSNs [individual health related social needs] as part of treating illnesses shaped by structural SDOHs [structural social drivers of health]. But provision of acute and chronic care is often inequitable, with suboptimal quality, even for patients without unmet HRSNs.

The key word is “equity,” but can anyone explain what the heck that means? Speak plainly, for goodness’ sake! Oh, here it is:

Screening patients for HRSNs and referring those with such needs to indicated services can be helpful but doesn’t address underlying structural SDOHs, such as income inequality, structural racism, and a lack of robust social services; structural drivers create much of the downstream need captured in HRSN screening.

My brain is itching!