Health
AGs Question Pediatricians Pushing Trans Treatment
From Heartland Daily News
In encouraging the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, the AAP claims the treatments are reversible. The AG letter says that is “misleading and deceptive.”
“It is beyond medical debate that puberty blockers are not fully reversible, but instead come with serious long-term consequences,”
Attorney generals from 20 states and legislators from Arizona signed an interrogatory letter to the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) about the group’s support of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
“Often the AAP has exercised its influence responsibly,” states the letter. “… But when it comes to treating children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the AAP has abandoned its commitment to sound medical judgment.”
The AG letter demanded responses to multiple questions about its child gender policies by October 8, and it stated AAP’s conduct is being reviewed further.
Idaho Attorney General Raul R. Labrador sent the letter, and AGs from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia signed it, as did the president of the Arizona State Senate and the speaker of the Arizona House.
Sounding an Alarm
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), an alternative medical professional organization, has spent years sounding the alarm on AAP-approved transgender treatments.
ACPeds organized a coalition of health care professionals to create the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration, a document urging organizations to stop promoting what ACPeds calls unethical, harmful practices in treating children with gender dysphoria. Some 82,500 professionals and concerned citizens have signed the declaration.
“We have personally reached out to the AAP leadership and leaders of the other named organizations, asking them to put a stop to this, and have not received a response,” said ACPeds Executive Director Jill Simons, M.D.
“Unfortunately, the leadership of the AAP and other organizations have silenced their very members from engaging in medical discourse when they have put in question these harmful protocols, and they continue to double down on them even as they stand without evidence-based research to support their current positions,” said Simons.
Questioning What’s ‘Reversible’
In encouraging the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, the AAP claims the treatments are reversible. The AG letter says that is “misleading and deceptive.”
“It is beyond medical debate that puberty blockers are not fully reversible, but instead come with serious long-term consequences,” the letter states.
The letter cites the widely recognized Cass Review commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service and published in April.
“The Cass Review was monumental in demonstrating, through the most thorough review of the research and current protocols and outcomes in England, that the current protocols of social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones do not improve the health outcomes of children with gender dysphoria and in fact there is evidence of causing harm,” said Simons.
“Dr. Hilary Cass’s recommendation has shut down the practice of transitioning kids in England,” said Simons. “Many other European countries are also reversing course and returning to proven medical care, which is supportive mental health and addressing underlying diagnoses.”
Leaked files from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and a recent statement from the American Society of Plastics Surgeons have bolstered the case against surgical and hormonal trans treatments, says Simons.
APA, AMA Uninterested
A growing number of people are recognizing the validity of the studies, says Dr. Tim Millea, chair of the Health Care Policy Committee and Conscience Rights Protection Task Force of the Catholic Medical Association (CMA).
“Physician organizations such as AAP and [American Medical Association] appear to be uninterested in those studies, at the expense of ongoing harm to Americans that they encourage to enter the ‘gender-industrial’ medical system,” said Millea. “It seems to be true that the leadership of these groups prioritize ideology over science, which is a dereliction of duty in the vocation of medicine.”
Doctors Afraid to Speak Out
Most U.S. pediatricians are members of the AAP. Dissent within the organization has led to the development of alternative professional organizations such as ACPeds. The AAP is too radical for most pediatricians, though they are reluctant to say so, says Simons.
“I speak to countless pediatricians who are members of the AAP who disagree with the AAP’s policies and fully support our efforts to put a stop to these unethical protocols, but they are truly fearful of losing their jobs and the harms that will come to them if they speak out,” said Simons. “I unfortunately speak to pediatricians who have been reprimanded and even fired for speaking out.”
Going to Court
The AAP has been named in multiple lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. Members of ACPeds have served as expert witnesses and submitted amicus briefs to fight the AAP’s gender treatment protocols.
ACPeds also filed a lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration for its rule requiring doctors to perform gender transition procedures on minors against their medical judgment.
“The American College of Pediatricians is filing this lawsuit against HHS because doctors should never be forced to violate their sound medical judgment and perform life-altering and sterilizing interventions on their patients,” stated ACPeds news release. “Our doctors take an oath to do no harm, but the Biden administration’s rule forces them to violate this oath and perform procedures that are harmful and dangerous to our patients– vulnerable children. What the Biden Administration is calling for is wrong and unlawful.”
Over the past several years, the CMA has been involved in gender intervention cases around the country and plans to file an amicus brief for the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti, scheduled to be heard during the current session.
Changing the Culture
CMA hosted a two-hour panel discussion on September 8, 2024, in which several de-transitioners recounted the harms they suffered from gender transition procedures as minors. The organization wants to make sex-change procedures among children, teens, and young adults unthinkable, says Millea.
“There are three areas of emphasis to accomplish that goal, and two of them are judicial and legislative,” said Millea. “The third is of greatest importance, and that is cultural. The public needs to learn and understand the negative and lifelong risks and complications of gender transition.
“We remain hopeful that doctors will push back against these protocols and follow their oath to do no harm,” said Simons. “There will be a tipping point when doctors are no longer fearful and will speak out.”
Ashley Bateman ([email protected]) writes from Virginia.
From LifeSiteNews
As Canada expands its euthanasia regime, vulnerable individuals like the homeless, obese, and grieving are increasingly offered assisted suicide, countering claims that ‘safeguards’ ensure the protocol remains limited in its scope.
Canada’s suicide activists and euthanasia advocates promised the public that the path to “medical aid in dying” would be a narrow path with high guardrails. They were lying. It is a four-lane highway, and there’s nobody patrolling it.
Not a week goes by without some grim new development, and our government refuses to listen to those hoarsely sounding the alarm.
On October 16, the Associated Press covered the questions euthanasia providers are discussing on their private forums. One story featured a homeless man being killed by lethal injection:
One doctor wrote that although his patient had a serious lung disease, his suffering was “mostly because he is homeless, in debt and cannot tolerate the idea of (long-term care) of any kind.” A respondent questioned whether the fear of living in the nursing home was truly intolerable. Another said the prospect of “looking at the wall or ceiling waiting to be fed … to have diapers changed” was sufficiently painful. The man was eventually euthanized. One provider said any suggestion they should provide patients with better housing options before offering euthanasia “seems simply unrealistic and hence, cruel,” amid a national housing crisis.
Another featured a doctor debating whether obesity made someone eligible for assisted suicide:
One woman with severe obesity described herself as a “useless body taking up space” – she’d lost interest in activities, became socially withdrawn and said she had “no purpose,” according to the doctor who reviewed her case. Another physician reasoned that euthanasia was warranted because obesity is “a medical condition which is indeed grievous and irremediable.”
And perhaps the most chilling story of all is the case of a woman who was consistently pushed into accepting death:
When a health worker inquired whether anyone had euthanized patients for blindness, one provider reported four such cases. In one, they said, an elderly man who saw “only shadows” was his wife’s caregiver when he requested euthanasia; he wanted her to die with him. The couple had several appointments with an assessor before the wife “finally agreed” to be killed, the provider said. She died unexpectedly just days before the scheduled euthanasia.
Read that carefully: the couple had several appointments with the person assessing their eligibility for euthanasia before the wife “finally agreed” – that is, broke down and assented – to be euthanized. Other providers cited examples of people being euthanized for grief. It should be obvious to anyone looking at what is happening in Canada: there are no brakes on this train.
It just keeps getting worse. Linda Maddaford, the newly elected president of the Regina Catholic Women’s League, is sharing her family’s experience this month at the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan convention.
After her mother passed away, Maddaford’s family moved their father to a care facility in Saskatoon. “The very day after, we got a blanket email inviting us to come to a presentation in the dining room,” she said. The topic? Accessing euthanasia. Maddaford added that there is a “push from the top-down. That if you don’t – if you aren’t open to the idea; you should be. I worry for the people who feel the pressure of: ‘Well my doctor advised it.’ Or ‘someone with a clipboard came around and kept asking.’”
Another story, covered this month by the Telegraph, relayed the experience of a Canadian woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery… who was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room for her mastectomy.
None of these stories appear to give euthanasia activists pause. Instead, they are constantly pushing for more.
On October 16, the Financial Post published an editorial by Andrew Roman titled, “You should be able to reserve MAID service: Quebec is going to let people pre-order medical assistance in dying. Ottawa shouldn’t try to stop it. People should have that right.” Anyone still arguing about “rights” as Canadian physicians euthanize patients for grief, obesity, homelessness, disability, and a plethora of other conditions should not be taken seriously. But here’s Roman, arguing that if we don’t permit this, all kinds of elderly people with dementia will not be killed:
As Canada’s population continues to age, demand for MAiD – medical assistance in dying – will only increase. But, with rates of dementia also increasing, the cognitive ability of patients to consent becomes a barrier. The prevalence of dementia more than doubles every five years among seniors, rising from less than one per cent in those aged 65-69 to about 25 per cent among people 85 and older.
Then, revealing a breathtaking ignorance of how Canada’s euthanasia regime has unfolded, Roman writes this:
There is no good reason why, with the numerous safeguards in Ottawa’s and Quebec’s laws, patients should be precluded from making advance requests before their condition renders them incapable of giving consent; and no good reason why their physicians should become criminals for honouring their patients’ duly stipulated advance requests.
No good reason why? Safeguards? What a joke. He concludes:
MAiD is also regulated under provincial law and by the same medical colleges that regulate abortion. Ottawa should amend the Criminal Code to exempt MAiD altogether and, as is the case with abortion, let the medical profession do its work in accordance with provincial regulation and patients’ wishes.
And there you have it: the final goal of the euthanasia activists. Euthanasia on demand; doctors licensed to kill. We don’t have to ask ourselves what will happen if people like Roman get their way. It’s happening already.
Addictions
14-year old Kamilah Sword died after becoming addicted to diverted “safer supply” opioids. Now her loved ones are speaking up.
By Adam Zivo
New documentary exposes suffering caused by Canada’s “safer supply” programs
It has been widely reported that “safer supply” opioids are getting into the hands of youth and causing new addictions and deaths – but this fact, terrible as it is, can feel abstract to many. That’s why I’ve released this new 28-minute documentary, “Government Heroin 2: The Invisible Girls,” to illustrate the terrible harms being inflicted upon families by this failed policy.
The film focuses on the story of Kamilah Sword, a 14-year-old girl from Metro Vancouver who died of drug-related causes in 2022. Before her death, Kamilah and her friends had been using hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin, that originated from government-funded safer supply programs.
These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by providing addicts with pharmaceutical-grade addictive drugs – typically hydromorphone – as an alternative to riskier street substances. In reality, though, most addicts simply divert (sell or trade) their safer supply to the black market to acquire stronger drugs, such as illicit fentanyl. This then floods surrounding communities with hydromorphone, crashing its street price by up to 95 per cent and fueling new addictions.
Kamilah and her friends were victims of this corrupt system.
In 2021, hydromorphone pills suddenly became popular at their school. The pills, which were colloquially called “dillies,” were abundant and cheap and many teenagers did not believe that they were dangerous to experiment with, as they had originally been prescribed by the government and were marketed as “safe.”
The girls did not understand that they were essentially playing with heroin. Not until it was too late. But they were hopelessly addicted by then and as their opioid tolerances grew, so did their appetite for dillies.
Two of Kamilah’s friends – Amelie North and Madison (a pseudonym) – escalated to using fentanyl and eventually went to rehab. But Kamilah herself was not so lucky. She was found dead, curled up in the fetal position in her bed and with foam on the corner of lips, one warm August morning.
It was only after her death that her father, Greg Sword, learned about how safer supply had destroyed the lives of his daughter and her friends. Amelie and Madison explained to him, for example, how they would sometimes travel downtown and purchase dillies directly from safer supply patients, who gave the cheapest prices.
The Trudeau Liberals and BC NDP have spent years aggressively advocating for safer supply and have repeatedly denied that diversion is a serious issue that harms youth. So when Kamilah’s loved ones went public with their story in the summer of 2023, it caused a national scandal.
The situation was further complicated when the BC Coroners Service, after a considerable delay, released Kamilah’s coroner’s report in late December 2023. The report ruled out hydromorphone as a cause of death and claimed that Kamilah had died of a cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) caused by cocaine and MDMA.
But when several physicians and forensic pathologists reviewed the report, they noticed some concerning irregularities.
As Kamilah’s body was not sent to autopsy (a scandal in itself), it would’ve been impossible to confidently diagnose an arrhythmia as a cause of death. And in complex polydrug cases such as Kamilah’s, the best practice would have been to list every major death as contributing to mortality – including hydromorphone.
Additionally, the coroner claimed that it was unknown from where the hydromorphone in Kamilah’s body had originated – even though Kamilah’s friends and family had been clear, across several media reports, that the drugs were diverted safer supply. It was impossible that the BC Coroners Service would have been unaware of this, but, strangely enough, no attempt was made by the coroner to interview Kamilah’s loved ones about her death, despite such interviews being regular practice.
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Greg Sword, along with Amelie and her mother, recently launched a class action lawsuit against a wide array of defendants – including the governments of British Columbia and Canada – for irresponsibly marketing and prescribing safer supply, and for their “wilful blindness” to the prevalence and dangers of diversion.
The tragedy of this story cannot be adequately captured with words. The tears of a mourning father need to be seen and heard to be grasped. The sobs of a mother who laments her daughter’s fentanyl addiction has no substitute.
This is why Government Heroin 2: The Invisible Girls exists. To give these families a chance to be properly understood. And to better inform the public, through visceral storytelling, of the outrageous failures of Canada’s institutions and addiction policies.
This film is the second in a series. The first installment – “Government Heroin” – focuses on a 25-year-old student in Ontario who purchased thousands of diverted safer supply films. That 19-minute film provides a slightly more technical overview of the safer supply diversion scandal, so while each film stands on its own, the two also pair together very well (with a brisk total runtime of only 47 minutes).
I implore you to watch this new documentary, and its predecessor, too, if possible. They are sad and challenging, and yet vitally necessary for anyone who is concerned about Canada’s eroding public order and, of course, the predations of organized crime.
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