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Trump admin directs NIH to study ‘regret and detransition’ after chemical, surgical gender transitioning

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Ample evidence has surfaced in recent years to warrant the White House’s investigation

The Trump administration has made a break with the long-standing government policy of near 100% affirmation of the transgender industry’s efforts and has directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the negative impacts on mental and physical health of so-called “gender transitioning” on adults and children.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees NIH, “has been directed to fund research on a few specific areas” regarding “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children and adults,” according to multiple reports.

In particular, the Trump administration wants to investigate “regret and detransition following social transition as well as chemical and surgical mutilation of children and adults” and “outcomes from children who have undergone social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation.”

The new directives to the biomedical agency were reportedly included in an email to several NIH directors from then-Acting NIH Director Matthew Memoli shortly after Trump took office.

“This is very important to the President and the Secretary (of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.),” Memoli wrote.

Unhappy about the Trump administration’s move to uncover the hidden, shadowy side of the burgeoning transgender industry, pro-transgender activists working within the medical research community were quick to criticize the move.

The term “chemical or surgical mutilation” was “deeply offensive,” said Harry Barbee, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“This terminology has no place in serious scientific or public health discourse,” Barbee complained. “The language has been historically used to stigmatize trans people. Even the phrase(s) ‘regret’ and ‘detransition’ can be weaponized.”

“What they’re looking for is a political answer not a scientific one,” Adrian Shanker, who served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy at HHS under President Biden, told NPR. “That should be an alarm for everyone who cares about the scientific integrity of the National Institutes of Health.”

Many oft-ignored detransitioners 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.”

study published earlier this year in the Oxford Journal of Sexual Medicine found that undergoing sex-change surgery, far from reducing depression rates among the gender dysphoric, substantially increased rates not only of depression but of anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders.

This study, along with scores of others conducted in recent years, explodes the media-enforced narrative that so-called “gender affirming” medical treatments are necessary for the happiness and well-being of the gender-confused.

Short video displays deep regret after sex-change treatments and surgery

A short video – just 34 seconds long – displays the extreme distress and anxiety of those who resorted to surgery and hormone treatments to “transition” earlier in their lives, only to experience deep regret later on.

The video presents a cautionary tale, dispelling the myth that parents need to allow their children to transition in order to be happy.

“Society is marketing a horrifically harmful, fashionable new trend to children that brings about a life of depression, confusion, drug use and STD’s,” the caption reads. “Please inform yourselves and help your children.”

Former transgender: ‘Regret’ and ‘detransitioning’ are the new trans frontier

Walt Heyer, a former “transgender woman” who for many years has maintained a global outreach to those who experience sex change regret, has been sounding the alarm about the one-size-fits-all approach of the trans medical industry for years.

“The science of surgical interventions is not yet settled regarding the long-term consequences of transgender therapy,” Heyer noted during a 2017 Symposium at the University of Hong Kong. “As of today, we don’t have any objective, conclusive research.”

“I feel ‘regret’ and ‘detransitioning’ will become the next transgender frontier,” Heyer said. “So be prepared.”

“There is an ever-increasing number of former transgenders, like myself, who are now requesting gender reversals,” he said.

“As a former female transgender, I can see the exploding social trend that has developed into a significant transgender contagion —now even an epidemic— that has captivated young children as well as young adults who have come to believe they’re the opposite sex on just the weight of social media and feelings … in some cases taking drastic measures to change their bodies,” Heyer said.

“More and more, I get reports from families telling me that their teen children suddenly came out as a transgender without any prior history of discomfort with their biological sex,” said Heyer, describing what has come to be called “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

“Current psychotherapeutic practice involves the immediate affirmation of the young person’s self-diagnosis,” he lamented.

Heyer explained that many surgically transformed men and women suffer from a complex number of sexual, emotional, psychiatric and psychological comorbid disorders such as autogynephilia, dissociative disorders like schizophrenia, body dysmorphic disorder, and a host of other undiagnosed disorders that were not resolved by the recommended therapy of changing genders.

Heyer spoke from his own experience as he explained that if such disorders were considered and treated adequately, sexual transitioning would probably be greatly reduced. The role of these “comorbid” conditions tends to surface later as trans individuals begin to question their decision to transition to the opposite sex.

“We find this out from the ‘regretters,’” Heyer said. “We don’t find it out early on. We find it out afterward when they’re seeking help … and we find out that these comorbid disorders existed early on.”

significant body of evidence now 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 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.

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Brownstone Institute

FDA Exposed: Hundreds of Drugs Approved without Proof They Work

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From the Brownstone Institute

By Maryanne Demasi

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved hundreds of drugs without proof that they work—and in some cases, despite evidence that they cause harm.

That’s the finding of a blistering two-year investigation by medical journalists Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownleepublished by The Lever.

Reviewing more than 400 drug approvals between 2013 and 2022, the authors found the agency repeatedly ignored its own scientific standards.

One expert put it bluntly—the FDA’s threshold for evidence “can’t go any lower because it’s already in the dirt.”

A System Built on Weak Evidence

The findings were damning—73% of drugs approved by the FDA during the study period failed to meet all four basic criteria for demonstrating “substantial evidence” of effectiveness.

Those four criteria—presence of a control group, replication in two well-conducted trials, blinding of participants and investigators, and the use of clinical endpoints like symptom relief or extended survival—are supposed to be the bedrock of drug evaluation.

Yet only 28% of drugs met all four criteria—40 drugs met none.

These aren’t obscure technicalities—they are the most basic safeguards to protect patients from ineffective or dangerous treatments.

But under political and industry pressure, the FDA has increasingly abandoned them in favour of speed and so-called “regulatory flexibility.”

Since the early 1990s, the agency has relied heavily on expedited pathways that fast-track drugs to market.

In theory, this balances urgency with scientific rigour. In practice, it has flipped the process. Companies can now get drugs approved before proving that they work, with the promise of follow-up trials later.

But, as Lenzer and Brownlee revealed, “Nearly half of the required follow-up studies are never completed—and those that are often fail to show the drugs work, even while they remain on the market.”

“This represents a seismic shift in FDA regulation that has been quietly accomplished with virtually no awareness by doctors or the public,” they added.

More than half the approvals examined relied on preliminary data—not solid evidence that patients lived longer, felt better, or functioned more effectively.

And even when follow-up studies are conducted, many rely on the same flawed surrogate measures rather than hard clinical outcomes.

The result: a regulatory system where the FDA no longer acts as a gatekeeper—but as a passive observer.

Cancer Drugs: High Stakes, Low Standards

Nowhere is this failure more visible than in oncology.

Only 3 out of 123 cancer drugs approved between 2013 and 2022 met all four of the FDA’s basic scientific standards.

Most—81%—were approved based on surrogate endpoints like tumour shrinkage, without any evidence that they improved survival or quality of life.

Take Copiktra, for example—a drug approved in 2018 for blood cancers. The FDA gave it the green light based on improved “progression-free survival,” a measure of how long a tumour stays stable.

But a review of post-marketing data showed that patients taking Copiktra died 11 months earlier than those on a comparator drug.

It took six years after those studies showed the drug reduced patients’ survival for the FDA to warn the public that Copiktra should not be used as a first- or second-line treatment for certain types of leukaemia and lymphoma, citing “an increased risk of treatment-related mortality.”

Elmiron: Ineffective, Dangerous—And Still on the Market

Another striking case is Elmiron, approved in 1996 for interstitial cystitis—a painful bladder condition.

The FDA authorized it based on “close to zero data,” on the condition that the company conduct a follow-up study to determine whether it actually worked.

That study wasn’t completed for 18 years—and when it was, it showed Elmiron was no better than placebo.

In the meantime, hundreds of patients suffered vision loss or blindness. Others were hospitalized with colitis. Some died.

Yet Elmiron is still on the market today. Doctors continue to prescribe it.

“Hundreds of thousands of patients have been exposed to the drug, and the American Urological Association lists it as the only FDA-approved medication for interstitial cystitis,” Lenzer and Brownlee reported.

“Dangling Approvals” and Regulatory Paralysis

The FDA even has a term—”dangling approvals”—for drugs that remain on the market despite failed or missing follow-up trials.

One notorious case is Avastin, approved in 2008 for metastatic breast cancer.

It was fast-tracked, again, based on ‘progression-free survival.’ But after five clinical trials showed no improvement in overall survival—and raised serious safety concerns—the FDA moved to revoke its approval for metastatic breast cancer.

The backlash was intense.

Drug companies and patient advocacy groups launched a campaign to keep Avastin on the market. FDA staff received violent threats. Police were posted outside the agency’s building.

The fallout was so severe that for more than two decades afterwards, the FDA did not initiate another involuntary drug withdrawal in the face of industry opposition.

Billions Wasted, Thousands Harmed

Between 2018 and 2021, US taxpayers—through Medicare and Medicaid—paid $18 billion for drugs approved under the condition that follow-up studies would be conducted. Many never were.

The cost in lives is even higher.

A 2015 study found that 86% of cancer drugs approved between 2008 and 2012 based on surrogate outcomes showed no evidence that they helped patients live longer.

An estimated 128,000 Americans die each year from the effects of properly prescribed medications—excluding opioid overdoses. That’s more than all deaths from illegal drugs combined.

A 2024 analysis by Danish physician Peter Gøtzsche found that adverse effects from prescription medicines now rank among the top three causes of death globally.

Doctors Misled by the Drug Labels

Despite the scale of the problem, most patients—and most doctors—have no idea.

A 2016 survey published in JAMA asked practising physicians a simple question—what does FDA approval actually mean?

Only 6% got it right.

The rest assumed that it meant the drug had shown clear, clinically meaningful benefits—such as helping patients live longer or feel better—and that the data was statistically sound.

But the FDA requires none of that.

Drugs can be approved based on a single small study, a surrogate endpoint, or marginal statistical findings. Labels are often based on limited data, yet many doctors take them at face value.

Harvard researcher Aaron Kesselheim, who led the survey, said the results were “disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” noting that few doctors are taught about how the FDA’s regulatory process actually works.

Instead, physicians often rely on labels, marketing, or assumptions—believing that if the FDA has authorized a drug, it must be both safe and effective.

But as The Lever investigation shows, that is not a safe assumption.

And without that knowledge, even well-meaning physicians may prescribe drugs that do little good—and cause real harm.

Who Is the FDA Working for?

In interviews with more than 100 experts, patients, and former regulators, Lenzer and Brownlee found widespread concern that the FDA has lost its way.

Many pointed to the agency’s dependence on industry money. A BMJ investigation in 2022 found that user fees now fund two-thirds of the FDA’s drug review budget—raising serious questions about independence.

Yale physician and regulatory expert Reshma Ramachandran said the system is in urgent need of reform.

“We need an agency that’s independent from the industry it regulates and that uses high-quality science to assess the safety and efficacy of new drugs,” she told The Lever. “Without that, we might as well go back to the days of snake oil and patent medicines.”

For now, patients remain unwitting participants in a vast, unspoken experiment—taking drugs that may never have been properly tested, trusting a regulator that too often fails to protect them.

And as Lenzer and Brownlee conclude, that trust is increasingly misplaced.

Republished from the author’s Substack

 

Author

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

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Health

Red Deer Hospital Lottery 2025 Winners

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The Red Deer Regional Health Foundation is thrilled to announce the winners of this year’s Red Deer Hospital Lottery prizes – including the Dream Home, a $100,000.00 cash prize, and Mega Bucks 50.

James Smith of Spruce View has won the $100,000.00 cash prize.

Montey Brehaut of Red Deer has won the Mega Bucks 50 jackpot, taking home $301,702.50.

The grand prize Sorento Custom Homes Dream Home, including furnishings by Urban Barn and worth $1,074,472 – has been awarded to Oscar Gunnlaugson of Sylvan Lake.

The winner announcements took place at noon on June 26 , 2025 – and was streamed live on Facebook from Red Deer Regional Hospital Center.

“We’re excited to celebrate this year’s winners and deeply grateful to everyone who supported the lottery,” said Manon Therriault, CEO of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. “Funds raised will directly enhance patient care at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.”

This year’s lottery proceeds will fund essential new and replacement equipment, ensuring Red Deer Regional Hospital Center can continue to serve the 500,000 people who rely on it. While plans for the hospital expansion move forward, healthcare doesn’t wait. Patients in our community need access
to life-saving technology today, and supporting Red Deer Hospital Lottery has made that possible.

A full list of winners, including electronics prize recipients, will be posted on July 2 at reddeerhospitallottery.ca.

Winners will also receive instructions on how to claim their prizes by mail.

The keys to the Dream Home will be presented at a special ceremony this summer.

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