Stealth Trans-Medicine on Minors in Texas by Daniel Witt

Whistleblower Reveals Under-the-Table Practices at America’s Largest Pediatric Hospital

A year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate child sex-change procedures as a form of child abuse, following a (nonbinding) legal opinion offered by Attorney General Ken Paxton which indicated that the practice could indeed be considered such under current Texas law. As a result, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston announced that it was ceasing the practice. At the time, the Washington Post provided characteristically dystopian coverage, quoting one mother (name rather dramatically withheld), “If I was in an environment that didn’t allow me or my child to be our authentic selves, I don’t think we could live.”

It turns out they needn’t have been so worried, because Texas Children’s Hospital did not stop the practice. They only pretended to do so. A disturbing whistleblower report by Christopher F. Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, published May 16, reveals that just three days after making the announcement, the hospital implanted puberty blockers in an 11-year-old patient. They have continued the practice up until the present.

The next day, May 17, the Texas State Legislature passed a bill banning child sex-change procedures entirely, and by May 19, Attorney General Ken Paxton had launched an investigation into the hospital. (He was just impeached on May 27, however, so it’s unclear if or how the investigation will proceed.)

Three Kinds of Manipulation

Rufo summarizes the exposé in a well-produced 10-minute video, which is worth watching. It features a clip from an interview with Dr. Patrick O’Malley, a psychiatrist at the Texas Children’s Hospital describing how he advises parents. He says:

[A] mother asked me, “What about my parental rights?” My rights as a parent, you know, really asking me, can you call my child their preferred name and pronouns? Okay. So – and I had a student with me – and I said, “You know, ma’am you do have many parental rights, but I have to adhere to my own ethical standards as a physician. And I know the best thing to do for this child…”

I’m often kind of working with families in the sense that, you know, I’m not here to kind of question your entire worldview or belief system, but to work with you as a consultant. I can tell you both from experience and from research, your child is less likely to both attempt and die by suicide if we use a supportive terminology with them in an open mind, and they’re much less likely to have morbidity from anxiety, depression, and a number of other psychiatric issues if we use this affirming model.

Rufo calls this out as “textbook emotional blackmail.” He goes on to lay out the multiple kinds of manipulation practiced by these healthcare providers – psychological, physiological, metaphysical.

Psychological manipulation: emotionally blackmailing parents by claiming (based on weak scientific evidence) that a child is more likely to commit suicide if they are denied “gender affirming care.”
Physiological manipulation: hormone blockers, cross sex hormones, surgical interventions, making the child “a lifetime ward of the medical industrial complex.”
Metaphysical manipulation: the ultimate goal of all this is to undermine and eventually demolish the gender binary of male and female – “to negate the very basic nature of reality itself, that there are men and women.”

He goes on: “Let’s be clear. These whistleblowers are coming forward – even anonymously – at grave risk to their careers, at grave risk to their status, at grave risk to their financial well-being, because they believe that these children will wake up in ten years – they’re going to be permanently surgically and chemically mutilated, they’re going to be, really, destroyed or ruined, and nobody is looking out for them.”

God-Complexes

Which leads to the question… why? What has possessed these doctors to press on with the program? The simple answer “demons” isn’t quite satisfying.

Rufo provides this explanation: “One source inside Texas Children’s says these doctors are motivated by social status. That is, they want to be seen as ‘cutting edge,’ they want to be seen as the forefront of medicine, they want to be seen as the ultimate arbiters of compassion, healing these so-called transgender children. But another whistleblower I talked to said that this all stems from these doctors’ desires to ‘play God.’”

This is an important insight. I do not believe that (most of) these doctors and counselors are going home to pray to Satan each night. I think they believe – or tell themselves – that they are doing the right thing. There must be a giddy thrill in beneficently exercising divine power – the apparent ability to free a trapped and miserable young person from that most difficult-to-escape prison of all, the very self. But the actions of the self-righteous can be as destructive as – or even more destructive than – the actions of the knowingly evil.

“We, the Problem”

A particularly disturbing thing about this is that we are not talking about some leftist enclave. Texas Children’s is the largest children’s hospital in the nation, and it is not exactly located in a bastion of leftism. As a Texan, I would like to think that the problem is just insidious outside forces seeking to corrupt Texas.

But it isn’t. Without the acquiescence or encouragement of both parents and healthcare providers, we wouldn’t be here. The problem is, We, The People. As of 2021, a majority of my generation (Gen Z) of Americans believe that there are more than two genders. Worse, a 2021 PBS poll indicated that only 28 percent of American adults support “legislation that would prohibit gender-transition related care for minors.”

Soon enough, state legislatures will be comprised of people from Gen Z. So while in the short term, legislation, lawsuits, and executive orders may be able to prevent some of the harm being done to gender-dysphoric young people, they won’t be enough in the long run. The only real solution would be a widescale cultural repentance and renewal.

In the meantime, lives are being ruined.