{"id":195503,"date":"2019-09-29T08:39:35","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T08:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195503"},"modified":"2019-10-02T05:49:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T05:49:51","slug":"doctors-drugs-for-life-big-pharmas-profit-on-the-transgender-craze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=195503","title":{"rendered":"Doctors & drugs FOR LIFE: Big Pharma\u2019s profit on the transgender craze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Bridge \u2013 RT Sept 27, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For trans people, the quest to create the body that matches their perceptions is a life devoted to drugs and doctors. For Big Pharma, the challenge is to serve the interests of this group without being blinded by big profit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Western society is currently witnessing something of a medical revolution, which many have denounced as a dangerous experiment, whereby individuals, acting as their own medical experts, readily self-diagnose themselves as \u2018transgender.\u2019 What often follows is a regimen of powerful drugs and radical surgical techniques in order to \u2018fix the gender\u2019 they were mistakenly \u2018assigned\u2019 at birth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Has mankind finally outsmarted Mother Nature?<\/span><\/p>\n

While it is still too early to answer that question, one thing remains clear: members of the growing<\/a><\/strong><\/span> transgender demographic who opt to undergo \u2018gender confirmation surgery\u2019 inherit a lifetime relationship with the medical industrial complex. And, as is the case with most medical treatment in the United States, those services do not come cheap.<\/span><\/p>\n

A new frontier in medicine \u2013 and profit<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For the uninitiated, the medical techniques now available to transgender men, women and increasingly children will probably sound absolutely shocking, and more so when it is realized how little research is available on the subject.<\/span><\/p>\n

RT reached out to the Kelsey Coalition, a non-partisan group that works<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to \u201cprotect young people from medical and psychological harms,\u201d to better understand the many unseen chutes and ladders a transgender person must pass before acquiring their dream body. The following is a brief primer into this brave new world of gender makeovers, which pushes the boundaries of science to the extremities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, the process starts with puberty blockers (if the young person\u2019s puberty has not been completed); once the young person confirms their decision to transition, they receive cross-sex hormones (and, for males, also a blockade of testosterone produced by the testes), and they may opt for subsequent surgeries (biological males have their testes removed, their penis is inverted and a neo-vagina is constructed, and they could also get breast implants; for biological females, breasts are amputated, the ovaries and uterus removed, while a neo-penis and testes are constructed, often from tissues taken from their forearm or leg).<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of older teens, the process starts with cross-sex hormones and proceeds as described (they don\u2019t get puberty blockers if their puberty is fully completed). The procedures all have formal medical names (e.g., hysterectomy; mastectomy, oophorectomy, etc.)\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And these procedures are not risk-free. According to a report<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by the American Heart Association, \u201cpeople receiving hormone therapy during gender transition had an elevated risk for cardiovascular events, such as strokes, blood clots and heart attacks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With the available data, Kelsey estimates that the total medical bill for gender surgery per year in the United States comes to just over $1.3 billion. That figure, however, is \u201cmost likely conservative,\u201d they say, as it is based on 10,000 known cases; the actual number of cases could be many times higher (This link<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to a US-based transgender surgery clinic provides some idea of the costs involved).<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Curtis Crane, a plastic surgeon who performs<\/a><\/strong><\/span> transgender surgery in Austin, Texas, discussed with RT the cost of gender confirmation procedures. He revealed that a biological female undergoing an operation to \u2018become male\u2019 can cost between $150,000 to $200,000, while the cost for a male-to-female operation is between $80,000 and $100,000. However, these are just the prices of the initial operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

After surgery, patients face a lifetime of purchasing estrogen or testosterone hormones, with all of the inherent risks mentioned above, while routine medical checkups are also a priority. These additional expenses can quickly add up to several hundred dollars per month, depending on each individual case.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked if the pharmaceutical industry stands to profit from the upsurge of interest in the transgender movement, Dr. Crane responded: \u201cYes, I believe so.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGender dysphoria has been a much more common diagnosis in the last few years compared to previously,\u201d he noted. \u201cI think with that we\u2019ll see a demand for cross-sex hormones \u2013 estrogen for a male-to-female patient, testosterone for a female-to-male patient.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Laidlaw, MD, a physician board certified in Endocrinology, wrote that the medical industry stands to gain a \u201cwindfall\u201d from patients seeking out treatment for \u2018gender dysphoria,\u2019 the medical term for the condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBig pharma, big hospital systems, surgical centers and doctors seek to gain huge profits. Lupron [a puberty blocker prescribed to children] monthly is $775 alone. That\u2019s a $27,000 \u2018pause button\u2019 at 5 years [of age],\u201d Laidlaw wrote. \u201cMultiply this together with the huge rise in cases documented or observed in Western nations and a major windfall is to be had.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Incidentally, Laidlaw and his colleagues discovered that in 2017 the Children\u2019s Hospital Los Angeles had lowered the minimum age for cross-sex hormones from 13 to eight years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cImagine giving eight-year-old girls testosterone,\u201d Laidlaw remarked<\/a><\/strong><\/span> during a panel discussion organized by The Heritage Foundation. \u201cThey are in third or fourth grade. This is unbelievable. But this is going on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While the quest for profit is not an inherently negative thing, the spectacle of powerful medical and pharmaceutical companies cashing in on the transgender phenomenon naturally arouses suspicion, especially when so little research data is available into the long-term and even short-term effects of these radical new procedures, which are now available to very young children.<\/span><\/p>\n

And here is where the medical community finds itself at war with itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018No need to be a teen to know your sexual identity\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Still from a BBC program Just A Girl, which depicts an 11-year-old\u2019s struggle to get hormones that stunt puberty in order to make it easier to have sex-change surgery in the future. While parents were understandably irate over the program it begs the question: why was the program even made for kids TV? Was it to deliberately target the most vulnerable? Click to see: Furious parents slam \u2018damaging\u2019 BBC sex change show aimed at six-year-olds<\/p><\/div>\n

Advocates of medical transitioning believe that the associated risks involved in the process do not compare to the risk of living a life trapped inside a body that does not conform to a person\u2019s sexual identity. At the same time, age does not seem to play a factor in the decision-making process.<\/span><\/p>\n

In schools across the country, children as young as five and six years-old \u2013 almost too young to lace up their own shoestrings \u2013 are being told<\/a><\/strong><\/span> stories about individuals who have been \u2018born in the wrong body\u2019. But the issue goes beyond mere books. Although Big Pharma is not directly responsible for what is being taught in the US school system, of course, such early instruction prepares the soil, as it were, for these children to not only accept such ideas as natural, but to pursue \u2018gender reassignment\u2019 later in life. And, as it turns out, \u2018later in life\u2019 is sooner than one might imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n

When \u2018transgender\u2019 children are just eight and nine years-old, they are being placed on puberty suppressors. In the state of Oregon<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, meanwhile, girls as young as 15 years old can have a mastectomy or a hysterectomy without parental approval. Even earlier, with parental consent. After the age of 18, these patients may wish to have so-called \u201cbottom surgeries,\u201d which involve the removal of the penis in born men, and the creation of an artificial penis in born females.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked if there are inherent risks associated with placing children on the fast track for hormone treatment and sex-change operations, Dr. Crane responded that it is possible for extremely young children to know their true \u2018gender identity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey aren\u2019t even teens, but a person knows their gender identity at a very young age,\u201d he claimed. \u201cAt two and three years old you start seeing differences in males and females, and so it\u2019s not necessarily true that you have to wait until someone\u2019s a teen for them to know whether they are truly male or female.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, there is some extremely outspoken criticism of such opinions, especially with regard to children.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Psychiatric counseling is impermissible\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The opponents of \u201cgender manipulation\u201d argue that the medical community is \u2013 much like in the days when frontal lobotomies were considered an acceptable way of treating mental disorders \u2013 attempting to treat a psychological condition with non-irreversible surgical techniques.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins University, believes that the increase in gender confusion is mostly caused by the \u201cpsychological and psychosocial problems these people have,\u201d he said<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, in an interview with The College Fix.<\/span><\/p>\n

One reason why so many people who opt for gender surgery remain unhappy following the procedure, McHugh hypothesizes, is that they discover too late that \u201cthey did not address the primary problem,\u201d which was some unaddressed mental health issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other medical analyses point to similar conclusions. A recent study<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine<\/em>, for example, proved that some 80 percent of US college students who are transgender suffer from some sort of previous mental disorder.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in a letter (Dec. 2018) to The Lancet<\/em>, a prestigious medical journal, the entire notion that sex is an arbitrary notion \u2018assigned\u2019 \u2013 sometimes incorrectly \u2013 by doctors at birth, while only the individual knows with certainty his or her \u2018true\u2019 gender \u2013 was dismissed as essentially bad science.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSex has a biological basis, whereas gender is fundamentally a social expression,\u201d wrote<\/strong><\/span><\/a> Dr. Richard Byng and other members of the Community and Primary Research Care Group. \u201cThus, sex is not assigned \u2013 chromosomal sex is determined at conception and immutable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDistress about gender identity must be taken seriously\u2026 but the impacts of powerful, innovative interventions should be rigorously assessed,\u201d the doctors argued. \u201cThe evidence of medium-term benefit from hormonal treatment and puberty blockers is based on weak follow-up studies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about children who believe they were somehow born in the wrong bodies, however, is that they will not be provided with any psychiatric counseling to address their youthful beliefs. Why not? Because current medical protocol demands it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The child\u2019s self-diagnosis that he or she is the opposite sex must be accepted at face value by the medical practitioner, who is strongly advised<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by leading medical and psychological organizations that \u201ctransgender identities and diverse gender expressions do not constitute a mental disorder.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This non-interventionist approach, known as the \u2018gender-affirmative care model\u2019 (GACM), is arguably the primary cause for so many children entering into a lifetime of expensive treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is what one mother, \u2018Elaine\u2019, whose daughter is in the process of transitioning into a male, had to say about the process, during a panel discussion organized by The Heritage Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take your child to a clinic to seek help, affirmative care means the therapist must follow the child\u2019s lead. Professionals must accept a child\u2019s gender identity. In fact, this is the law in many states. Under \u2018conversion therapy\u2019 bans, questioning a child\u2019s gender identity is now illegal.\u201d The comments in their entirety may be viewed here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without the appropriate psychological counseling to address a child\u2019s possibly confused belief, parents are left with little choice but to begin a highly traumatic and very expensive journey on the road to gender transitioning. And here is where the question of the corporate profit motive playing a role in this highly controversial approach must be revisited.<\/span><\/p>\n

A conflict of corporate interest?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Bruce Jenner winning his Olympic gold in 1976 to the cover of Vanity Fair, 2015. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Even before Caitlyn Jenner, who has been called<\/a><\/strong><\/span> the most famous transgender woman in the world, graced the cover of the May 2015 issue of Variety<\/em> magazine with the headline \u2018Call Me Caitlyn\u2019, there has been an explosion of interest in gender reassignment procedures. Aside from clinics specialized in the operations, regular hospitals are also getting in on the action<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, doctors performed<\/a><\/strong><\/span> 8,304 sex change operations in 2017; in 2018, that number had surged to 9,576. That upward trend is expected to translate into $968 million by 2024, according<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to Market Watch<\/em>, citing the Global Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Forecast. That translates into a compound annual growth rate of 24.5 percent during the projection time period.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, with many millions of dollars in profit on the line, do the medical community and pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to promote risky hormonal treatment, together with the radical surgical procedures, to the public?<\/span><\/p>\n

Something similar is happening now in the United States with the deadly opioid epidemic<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Big Pharma played no small part in getting these powerful painkillers to patients regardless of the safety hazards involved. According to The Kelsey Coalition, the situation with regards to hormone treatment is nearly identical.<\/span><\/p>\n

By way of example, the coalition cited Endo Pharmaceuticals, a pill manufacturer which lost millions of dollars in settling opioid lawsuits and was forced to abandon production of the pill. Instead, as the Kelsey Coalition told RT, the company is now \u201cfocusing on their testosterone line of products.\u201d That may not sound like such a terrible thing, until it is realized that \u201calmost every vocal pro-medicalization \u2018gender expert\u2019 in the US has an association with Endo Pharmaceutical as an advisor,\u201d the group claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Kelsey Coalition specifically mentioned Dr. Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, New York, who speaks out on the purported benefits of puberty suppressors. Safer has reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that he\u2019d received consulting fees from Endo Pharmaceuticals and that his wife is an employee of Parexel, the second largest clinical research organization in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, the organization that\u2019s writing the treatment guidelines for transgender patients, The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), is run by the for-profit company Veritas<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, which also appears<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to have serious conflicts of interest among its members.<\/span><\/p>\n

Veritas sits on the advisory boards for a number of organizations, including Lipocrine<\/strong><\/span><\/a> Pharma, a company that produces hormones, with a particular focus on testosterone. This is significant, considering that, of the one million American youth who currently identify as transgender, many of them are adolescent girls with atypical, adolescent-onset gender dysphoria.<\/span><\/p>\n

Testosterone is the \u2018treatment\u2019 that these young women who suddenly develop a transgender identity are prescribed in order to develop more male-like appearances. And, as mentioned earlier, these hormones place the user at risk of heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Veritas also sits on the Board of Intuitive Surgical, producers<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of robotic assisted surgical devices. This equipment has various medical usages, including the removal of the uterus, ovaries and vaginal canal, in preparation for the construction of the \u2018neo-penis\u2019 (artificial penis) for females transitioning to males. The study is available here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

So here we have WPATH, an organization that has an advisory role in determining what treatments are proven safe, being run by Veritas, a company that acquires large profits when pharmaceutical companies and surgeons implement expensive medicines and procedures provided by the very firms they represent. That certainly sounds like a conflict of interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this the reason WPATH states that psychological therapy is not effective for those who identify as transgender, and instead promotes the unproven belief that sex-reassignment is the only safe and effective way of treating gender dysphoria?<\/span><\/p>\n

As the opponents of transgender reassignment unanimously argue, gender dysphoria remains poorly understood and has never been adequately studied. In other words, there is a very good chance that with the appropriate amount of psychological counseling, gender dysphoria would likely resolve over time with the right amount of psychological support. Yet, for reasons that continue to baffle much of the medical community and the public at large, supporters of gender reassignment have no desire for that approach to become the norm.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, it seems that people will continue to suspect that the real interests of the medical industrial complex are not the health and wellbeing of the transgender community, but rather their own enrichment. That skepticism does the transgender community no favors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Become male\u2019 can cost up to $200,000, while a male-to-female operation can cost nearly $100,000. And that excludes the exorbitant costs for cross-sex hormones <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Health","category-historic-sexual-abuse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195503"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195507,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195503\/revisions\/195507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}