A former worker at a transgender clinic told Dr. Phil that she saw patients who had body parts removed when they were kids, desperately asking to have them reattached.
Jamie Reed, who was involved in admitting and supervising patients at Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, spoke on Dr. Phil Primetime on Thursday discussing why she changed her view on the safety and effectiveness of transgender hormone administration and surgical procedures. talk Reed authored an article last year recounting what she observed while working at the center, including practices that she deemed “morally and medically appalling.”
Reed recounted how the transgender center's approach was based on the belief “that transition would solve everything. That it would solve a child’s mental health problems.”
Reed noted that the transgender center relied on the notion “that transition would resolve all issues, including a child’s mental health troubles.”
“There were very few written protocols or guidelines. One of the providers even said, ‘We were flying the plane as we built it,’” Reed alleged.
In her opinion, “Doctors are acting like they’re God when it comes to medically transitioning children.”
Reed described how children could be prescribed hormones “that would impact and change their bodies” for the rest of their lives.
Reed explained to host Dr. Phil, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, that clinics like the one she worked at see mostly teen girls wishing to become men. She suggested that this occurs because girls are more influenced by social cues and trends within their peer groups.
Reed recounted witnessing “a young person who was begging to have their breasts put back on after having surgery.”
Reed described transgender treatment as an “industry” that employs these life-altering and unnecessary treatments often based solely on a child's whims.
An amazed Dr. Phil asked, “You’re telling me that a 12- or 13-year-old, who can’t decide which pajamas to wear, can come in and say, ‘I’ve decided that I want to transition,’ and with no more than a couple of hours or two visits — not even a couple of hours, two visits — they say, ‘Okay, start taking this, start doing this,’ which alters their biochemistry in a way that you can’t come back from?”
“Correct,” Reed replied.
Supporters of transgender hormone administration and sex-alteration surgery cite data suggesting that these medical procedures do help with mental health problems.
For example, a Stanford-led study concluded that “transgender people who began hormone treatment in adolescence had fewer thoughts of suicide, were less likely to experience major mental health disorders and had fewer problems with substance abuse than those who started hormones in adulthood.”
But speaking with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in February, Dr. Phil argued that transgender procedures have been approved and implemented with very little research into whether they work.
“In fairness, all of the major medical associations have signed off on this, Joe. I have never seen these organizations sign off on anything with less information as to whether or not it does long-term harm of anything in my life,” Dr. Phil said, as reported by Fox News.
He said that those who claim the treatment itself causes long-lasting harm are called “transphobic.”
Dr. Phil stated his reply to that accusation is, “I believed the agreement was ‘First, do no harm.’”
As The Dallas Express has recently reported, the evidence for the effectiveness of sex-altering hormone administration and surgery is increasingly questioned by researchers and doctors.
In a demonstration of how intense the stakes can be regarding the issue of transgender procedures, a Texas father is involved in a legal dispute with his ex-wife over precisely such an issue. Jeff Younger spoke to DX about the custody battle over his 11-year-old biologically male child, whom the mother claims identifies as a girl. She has taken the child to California, where Younger fears she will allow a gender clinic to pursue castration.
Younger informed DX that a Texas family court “removed my parental rights without the option of appeal, simply because I want to raise my son as a boy.”
