Health
Coalition of doctors warns Supreme Court ‘transitioning’ children causes ‘significant’ damage

From LifeSiteNews
The American College of Pediatricians, Catholic Medical Association, and other pro-family medical groups are defending Tennessee’s ban on ‘gender transitions’ for children and stressing to the Supreme Court that the ban is vital to their patients’ health and welfare.
A coalition of pro-family medical organizations has submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to uphold Tennessee’s ban on surgically and chemically “transitioning” gender-confused minors, presenting a comprehensive case against the practice as contrary to both science and health.
In March 2023, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed SB1, which forbids subjecting minors to surgical or chemical “sex change” interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating surgeries.
LGBT activists sued, and last September a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law could be enforced, finding sufficient evidence linking puberty blockers to harmful effects. The Biden administration appealed the ruling to the nation’s highest court, which confirmed earlier this month it will begin hearing oral arguments on the matter in December.
Among several interested parties to weigh in on both sides of the case, on October 15 an amicus brief was filed on behalf of the American College of Pediatricians, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, American Association of Christian Counselors, Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, Catholic Medical Association, and Christian Medical & Dental Association in support of Tennessee and SB1, citing their “direct interest in the outcome of this case because it affects the vulnerable population” they serve as medical providers.
“Scientific research shows that children with gender incongruence or dysphoria almost always have significant mental health struggles and adverse childhood events that contribute to if not cause their dysphoria,” the brief states. “And multiple studies show that these children almost always grow out of or desist from such gender incongruity while going through puberty. Yet when children are placed on puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones, they almost always proceed to ‘gender transition’ surgeries with life-long adverse consequences.”
It goes on to note that, despite gender activists’ insistence that the evidence for “affirming” transgenderism is so clear as to make opposition “cruel,” in reality, “there are no long-term, reliable studies on the benefits from starting a child on” the pathway of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical mutilation. While failing to improve children’s mental health, “transitioning” also leads to “significant mental health issues in the long-term” and does “nothing to treat the underlying mental health struggles” they face, according to the available evidence.
SB1, the doctors write, is “consistent with sound medical practice: Rather than push a pre-teen to drugs and permanent body-altering surgery, the appropriate medical treatment is to address the child’s underlying mental health issues while allowing the child to go through natural puberty […] upon reaching adulthood, the vast majority of children who were not ‘affirmed’ in a gender-incongruent identity will no longer feel any distress in their sex.”
The amicus brief by medical experts in support of Tennessee follows similar briefs presented to the nation’s highest court by Partners for Ethical Care, representing parents whose children suffered from being misled into “transitioning,” and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which makes the moral case against “transitioning” minors and warns of potential dangers to the freedoms of those who object should the Tennessee law be struck down.
A significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures, including “reassignment” surgery, fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”
“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”
Opponents of transgender ideology are hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule in Tennessee’s favor and set a nationwide precedent protecting every state’s right to make the same decision.
Business
Cutting Red Tape Could Help Solve Canada’s Doctor Crisis

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
Doctors waste millions of hours on useless admin. It’s enough to end Canada’s doctor shortage. Ian Madsen says slashing red tape, not just recruiting, is the fastest fix for the clogged system.
Doctors spend more time on paperwork than on patients and that’s fueling Canada’s health care wait lists
Canada doesn’t just lack doctors—it squanders the ones it has. Mountains of paperwork and pointless admin chew up tens of millions of physician hours every year, time that could erase the so-called shortage and slash wait lists if freed for patient care.
Recruiting more doctors helps, but the fastest cure for our sick system is cutting the bureaucracy that strangles the ones already here.
The Canadian Medical Association found that unnecessary non-patient work consumes millions of hours annually. That’s the equivalent of 50.5 million patient visits, enough to give every Canadian at least one appointment and likely erase the physician shortage. Meanwhile, the Canadian Institute for Health Information estimates more than six million Canadians don’t even have a family doctor. That’s roughly one in six of us.
And it’s not just patients who feel the shortage—doctors themselves are paying the price. Endless forms don’t just waste time; they drive doctors out of the profession. Burned out and frustrated, many cut their hours or leave entirely. And the foreign doctors that health authorities are trying to recruit? They might think twice once they discover how much time Canadian physicians spend on paperwork that adds nothing to patient care.
But freeing doctors from forms isn’t as simple as shredding them. Someone has to build systems that reduce, rather than add to, the workload. And that’s where things get tricky. Trimming red tape usually means more Information Technology (IT), and big software projects have a well-earned reputation for spiralling in cost.
Bent Flyvbjerg, the global guru of project disasters, and his colleagues examined more than 5,000 IT projects in a 2022 study. They found outcomes didn’t follow a neat bell curve but a “power-law” distribution, meaning costs don’t just rise steadily, they explode in a fat tail of nasty surprises as variables multiply.
Oxford University and McKinsey offered equally bleak news. Their joint study concluded: “On average, large IT projects run 45 per cent over budget and seven per cent over time while delivering 56 per cent less value than predicted.” If that sounds familiar, it should. Canada’s Phoenix federal payroll fiasco—the payroll software introduced by Ottawa that left tens of thousands of federal workers underpaid or unpaid—is a cautionary tale etched into the national memory.
The lesson isn’t to avoid technology, but to get it right. Canada can’t sidestep the digital route. The question is whether we adapt what others have built or design our own. One option is borrowing from the U.S. or U.K., where electronic health record (EHR) systems (the digital patient files used by doctors and hospitals) are already in place. Both countries have had headaches with their systems, thanks to legal and regulatory differences. But there are signs of progress.
The U.K. is experimenting with artificial intelligence to lighten the administrative load, and a joint U.K.-U.S. study gives a glimpse of what’s possible:
“… AI technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), predictive analytics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are transforming health care administration. RPA and AI-driven software applications are revolutionizing health care administration by automating routine tasks such as appointment scheduling, billing, and documentation. By handling repetitive, rule-based tasks with speed and accuracy, these technologies minimize errors, reduce administrative burden, and enhance overall operational efficiency.”
For patients, that could mean fewer missed referrals, faster follow-up calls and less time waiting for paperwork to clear before treatment. Still, even the best tools come with limits. Systems differ, and customization will drive up costs. But medicine is medicine, and AI tools can bridge more gaps than you might think.
Run the math. If each “freed” patient visit is worth just $20—a conservative figure for the value of a basic appointment—the payoff could hit $1 billion in a single year.
Updating costs would continue, but that’s still cheap compared to the human and financial toll of endless wait lists. Cost-sharing between provinces, Ottawa, municipalities and even doctors themselves could spread the risk. Competitive bidding, with honest budgets and realistic timelines, is non-negotiable if we want to dodge another Phoenix-sized fiasco.
The alternative—clinging to our current dysfunctional patchwork of physician information systems—isn’t really an option. It means more frustrated doctors walking away, fewer new ones coming in, and Canadians left to languish on wait lists that grow ever longer.
And that’s not health care—it’s managed decline.
Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Addictions
BC premier admits decriminalizing drugs was ‘not the right policy’

From LifeSiteNews
Premier David Eby acknowledged that British Columbia’s liberal policy on hard drugs ‘became was a permissive structure that … resulted in really unhappy consequences.’
The Premier of Canada’s most drug-permissive province admitted that allowing the decriminalization of hard drugs in British Columbia via a federal pilot program was a mistake.
Speaking at a luncheon organized by the Urban Development Institute last week in Vancouver, British Columbia, Premier David Eby said, “I was wrong … it was not the right policy.”
Eby said that allowing hard drug users not to be fined for possession was “not the right policy.
“What it became was a permissive structure that … resulted in really unhappy consequences,” he noted, as captured by Western Standard’s Jarryd Jäger.
LifeSiteNews reported that the British Columbia government decided to stop a so-called “safe supply” free drug program in light of a report revealing many of the hard drugs distributed via pharmacies were resold on the black market.
Last year, the Liberal government was forced to end a three-year drug decriminalizing experiment, the brainchild of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, in British Columbia that allowed people to have small amounts of cocaine and other hard drugs. However, public complaints about social disorder went through the roof during the experiment.
This is not the first time that Eby has admitted he was wrong.
Trudeau’s loose drug initiatives were deemed such a disaster in British Columbia that Eby’s government asked Trudeau to re-criminalize narcotic use in public spaces, a request that was granted.
Records show that the Liberal government has spent approximately $820 million from 2017 to 2022 on its Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy. However, even Canada’s own Department of Health in a 2023 report admitted that the Liberals’ drug program only had “minimal” results.
Official figures show that overdoses went up during the decriminalization trial, with 3,313 deaths over 15 months, compared with 2,843 in the same time frame before drugs were temporarily legalized.
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