A gender clinic whistleblower named Jamie Reed wrote a detailed article, “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” in The Free Press in February — offering a stunning look at the industry of “transitioning” children’s genders before most have even completed puberty.
“What’s happening to children is morally and medically appalling,” wrote Reed, who describes herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.”
In 2018, Reed took a job as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, which had been established in 2017.
“During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager — I was responsible for patient intake and oversight — around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors,” Reed wrote. “The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences — including sterility. I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.”
She says the clinic lacked formal protocols for treatment, relying on the co-directors as “the sole authority.” Participating doctors knew the gender dysphoria they saw was “a manifestation of social contagion” but proceeded to prescribe testosterone to girls under their care anyway.
Her description is sobering:
“When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable,” Reed wrote. “Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor.”
She continued, “Many encounters with patients emphasized to me how little these young people understood the profound impacts changing gender would have on their bodies and minds. But the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition.”
One tragic example of unexpected consequences involved a 17-year-old biological female patient who was on testosterone. She began bleeding profusely from inside her private parts, and “In less than an hour, she had soaked through an extra heavy pad, her jeans, and a towel she had wrapped around her waist.” The reason? The girl had had intercourse, “and because testosterone thins the vaginal tissues, her vaginal canal had ripped open. She had to be sedated and given surgery to repair the damage. She wasn’t the only vaginal laceration case we heard about.”
Other side effects involving children’s genitalia are too grotesque to relate in a community newspaper but involve gross disfigurement, pain and loss of function.
“[C]linics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals — and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet,” Reed wrote. “They had no idea who they were going to be as adults. Yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.”
She added, “Being put on powerful doses of testosterone or estrogen — enough to try to trick your body into mimicking the opposite sex — affects the rest of the body. I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes.”
Reed also details how a large number of “transitioning” teens came from a hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit and were already suffering from serious mental health issues.
“Yet no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition — even with all the expense and hardship it entailed — as the solution,” she wrote. “Some weeks, it felt as though almost our entire caseload was nothing but disturbed young people.”
She also saw how parental rights were treated as mere obstacles.
“Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents — and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children,” Reed wrote. “My concerns about this approach to dissenting parents grew in 2019 when one of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers. … After the hearing where our doctor testified in favor of transition, the judge sided with the mother.”
Reed concluded, “Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria.” Read the entire article dated Feb. 9, 2023, at thefp.com.
