America's biggest children's hospital HALTS gender reassignment treatment for minors under new Texas law
It has been an energetic mutilator of children -- earning big bucks in the process
America's biggest children's hospital has announced plans to halt its gender reassignment treatment for children as the deadline to comply with a new Texas law looms and damaging claims from whistleblowers emerge.
Mark Wallace, CEO of Texas Children's Hospital (TCH), on Wednesday wrote in an internal hospital memo that it would stop prescribing hormones to minors and help them get gender-affirming care, as it is known, across state lines.
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the Houston-based facility, saying puberty blockers and other trans 'medical experiments' violated state rules.
A whistleblower claims the hospital was rushing transgender kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support. They also alleged that parents were 'scared' into allowing their children to have treatment.
The move to end the transgender treatment program follows Texas Republicans passing a law banning gender reassignment treatments for most minors, which is set to take effect in September.
'Over the next few months, Texas Children's will modify the gender-affirming care we offer to comply with the new law,' Wallace wrote in an email that was shared by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank.
'We will work with patients and their families to manage the discontinuation of hormone therapies or source appropriate care outside of Texas.'
Wallace said ending care for transgender youth was 'painful' and 'immensely heart-wrenching.' His staff would instead offer 'psychosocial support and any form of care we can within the bounds of the law.'
'I understand that there are many viewpoints and opinions related to this matter, but I want to remind everyone that our mission is to create a healthier future for all children,' he added.
The massive hospital received nearly 5 million patient visits in 2022, but staffers declined to answer questions about how many trans minors obtained drugs or surgical procedures through its clinics.
Texas senators last week voted for a bill to block transgender minors from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies, and Gov Gregg Abbot, a Republican, says he plans to sign it into law.
Christopher Rufo, the right-wing intellectual who led the Manhattan Institute's research into TCH, has in recent days published damaging testimonies from two whistleblowers about alleged transgender procedures at the hospital.
The first insider provided medical records showing TCH staff had been providing sex-change treatments to kids in recent months, even after officials said they had stopped doing so in March 2022.
The second whistleblower, whose allegations were also published on Wednesday, said TCH doctors were rushing trans kids onto puberty blockers and hormones when they would have been better off with mental health support.
'In our hospitals, they have completely gone full-blown woke and changed people's sex to whatever they identify as instead of their biological sex,' the latest whistleblower said, according to a transcript published on Wednesday.
The unnamed medical professional painted a bleak picture of care at TCH, with ideologically-driven doctors rushing children onto cocktails of sex reassignment drugs while racking up bills of tens of thousands of dollars.
'Transgender medicine is hugely lucrative,' said the hospital insider. 'It's like $70,000 to $80,000 dollars per kid if they go through with the whole thing — all the pharmacology drugs, all these companies that are making millions of dollars.'
The way the whistleblower tells it, children with depression, autism, other mental health issues and histories of anguished suicide bids latch onto the idea that they've been 'born in the wrong body'.
They're exposed to transgender ideology on Reddit.com and other sites, where they're 'coached on exactly what to say' to meet the trans medical criteria and let doctors greenlight sex-reassignments, it is claimed.
'They're looking for affirmation,' the whistleblower said. 'They're seeking the validation and approval of the adults in their lives. They're insecure.'
TCH doctors were among the pro-trans 'activists' who nowadays dominate the medical field, and who readily affirm any child that fits the criteria without properly weighing any other mental health problems, the insider claimed.
'I think they believe that they're making their mark on history, and they're wanting to play God,' the whistleblower said. 'Everyone's on their side: the media is on their side, big tech is on their side. And everyone is applauding these providers who do this.'
The whistleblower gave examples of parents of being 'shut down' by doctors if they did not immediately affirm a child's new gender identity. Some were told their child was at risk of killing themselves, it was claimed.
'They're scared of being reported to Child Protective Services,' the whistleblower said. 'They're intimidated by these doctors that are on the side of their kid and have a lot of power.'
The whistleblower said sex-reassignments leave adolescent patients appearing 'externally happy,' but questioned if pediatric health bodies were right to push an affirmation-on-demand model of care.
'They're going to wake up in 10 years and discover that they're infertile, that they can't have children, that their sexuality is completely dysfunctional,' said the insider.
Advocates of gender-affirming care say it is necessary treatment for suicide-prone minors. Critics say kids are too young to opt for irreversible sex change treatments, and often just need mental health counselling instead.
A TCH spokeswoman told DailyMail.com that doctors had provided 'high-quality care for all patients … within the bounds of the law.' The hospital did not immediately provide any details about Wallace's statement.
TCH last March said it had stopped gender-affirming therapies after Gov. Gregg Abbott, a Republican, ordered the state's child welfare agency to probe reports of gender-confirming care for kids as 'child abuse'.
Rufo says TCH 'secretly restarted its child sex-change program three days later.'
He published documents from a first unnamed whistleblower showing TCH doctors provided gender procedures to kids within days of the hospital's decision, and continued to do so throughout 2022 and into 2023.
They appear to be photos of a hospital computer screen showing TCH medical records. The images have been redacted to remove the names of the young patients, as medical records are confidential.
Texas Attorney General Paxton, a Republican, last week launched a probe into what he called transgender 'science experiments' at TCH over its alleged 'mutilative and irreversible gender transitioning procedures.'
The TCH scandal underscores how sex-reassignment treatments for children have become a frontline in America's culture wars, and how hospitals providing such care in red states increasingly operate in a gray area.
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Tough New Hate Crime Law Has Irish Fearful Their Luck's Running Out on Free Speech
Holy Ireland has gone to the Devil
Ireland is on the verge of passing the most aggressive hate crime law in the European Union, which includes the first legal protections in the EU for transgender individuals. Government officials say the bill offers necessary protections at a time when immigration is on the rise and traditional ideas about sex and gender are being challenged.
Critics counter that the bill’s vague language could be used to enforce the increasingly progressive Irish government’s increasingly woke agenda and forcibly muzzle critics of unpopular government policies.
The legislation, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act, underscores a divide between Ireland’s leaders and many of its people. The bill is making its way through Parliament, winning approval last month in the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower chamber, by a vote of 110-14.
But Irish citizens, in a 2019 consultation phase, overwhelmingly expressed a worry that the proposal was an unnecessary expansion of the country’s existing hate crimes law. Seventy-three percent of respondents took issue with the bill’s potential for encroachment on free speech and questioned what qualifies as “hate speech,” particularly asking who crafts that definition. Less than 25% of those polled approved of the legislation.
Underscoring this divide, critics of the bill note that fewer than 50 cases have been brought since the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act was signed into law in 1989. A supporter of the proposed law, former Justice Minister Helen McEntee, has cited that same statistic as evidence of the existing law’s “ineffective” nature.
The ongoing controversy opens a window into how quickly Ireland, which only legalized abortion in 2018, is moving from its long religious traditions at a time when leaders in other European countries and the United States are seeking to create laws that punish not just deeds but thoughts.
Over the past 30 years or so, the Irish nation has become increasingly progressive. In 2015, the Emerald Isle legalized gay marriage, just two years after the progressive vanguard of France did the same. That same year, Ireland was ranked among the top 10 most LGBT-friendly nations in the world, and the present taoiseach (Ireland’s word for prime minister) Leo Varadkar is openly gay. The proposed law would expand the 1989 law’s purview by adding gender, sex, descent and disability to the list of protected categories, which already includes race, color, nationality, religion (including “the absence of a religious conviction or belief”), national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, or disability.
The bill treats not just public presentation or dissemination of material deemed hateful, but also private preparation or even storing of material deemed hateful, such as memes on your phone or books on your shelf. Individuals convicted on such charges face fines of up to €5,000 (about $5,400) and anywhere from six months to two years in prison. Furthermore, as McEntee noted, a conviction “will allow for the ‘hate criminal’ label to follow an offender in court, in garda [police] vetting, and so on… ”
Paul Murphy, a member of the left-wing People Before Profit-Solidarity coalition, even warned the bill will legislate “the creation of a thought crime.” Conservative chairman of the Irish Freedom Party Michael Leahy told RealClearInvestigations that the bill “represents the most far-reaching and invasive attack against civil and religious liberty enacted in any Western democracy since the Second World War.”
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Uber's Diversity Chief Forced to Take Leave After Employee Outrage Over 'Don't Call Me Karen' Event
Must not defend any white woman
Because you can never be woke enough Bo Young Lee, Uber’s Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, has been temporarily put on leave by the tech behemoth from Silicon Valley after facing internal backlash over an event she presided over, entitled “Don’t Call Me Karen“.
This discussion centered on the negative implications of the commonly invoked white woman stereotype.
A number of employees were distressed, believing the event diminished minority experiences, leading to the company’s acknowledgment, “We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session.”
As reported by The New York Times, Bo Young Lee, an Asian woman leading diversity, equity, and inclusion at Uber, has been asked to step back temporarily due to staff complaints regarding an event she led, perceived as neglectful towards minority sentiments.
Lee is the most recent executive to feel the heat from the socially conscious wave she helped nurture.
Some employees voiced worries that emphasizing the ‘Karen’ stereotype’s pejorative connotations shifted focus from what they believe are more pressing issues – systemic racism.
The event was meant to provide a platform for discussions around white women’s experiences and the ‘Karen‘ stereotype.
Nikki Krishnamurthy, Uber’s Chief People Officer, addressed the issue in an email to the staff, stating, “We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session. While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”
The ‘Don’t Call Me Karen’ event, according to the invitation, was intended to foster “an open and honest conversation about race.”
However, employee responses suggested that instead of a broader dialogue on race, they felt subjected to a sermon on white women’s tribulations.
In current social lexicon, ‘Karen’ has become shorthand for a privileged, often entitled white woman, infamous for unnecessary complaints and creating discord.
Employees contended that the event’s focus on this term trivialized the presence and impact of racism on minority groups.
One employee, preferring anonymity, commented, “I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities that don’t look like them. Why can’t bad behavior be called out?”
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been shifting the company’s previously aggressive ethos towards greater diversity and inclusivity, is experiencing firsthand the challenges posed by progressive consciousness in Silicon Valley companies.
In the wake of the uproar, Uber spokesperson Noah Edwardsen confirmed in a statement, “I can confirm that Bo is currently on a leave of absence,” without providing additional details about the length or implications of the leave.
The workforce hailed this decision as a sign of Uber management’s responsiveness to their concerns.
An employee, expressing relief, noted that the executives “have heard us, they know we are hurting, and they want to understand what all happened too.”
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The myth of New World genocide
Shortly before the coronation of Charles III, a group of indigenous leaders from around the commonwealth released a statement. They called on the King ‘to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples,’ including ‘the oppression of our peoples, plundering of our resources, (and) denigration of our culture.’ Charles was told to ‘redistribute the wealth that underpins the crown back to the peoples from whom it was stolen.’ Yet the argument that Britain should pony up for its historical sins is based on a number of rickety assumptions.
One of these is that a substantial portion of the wealth of the UK, or the British Crown, derives from slavery or colonial exploitation. Famously, empire often cost more than it brought in. And, like the rest of northwest Europe, the UK was already wealthy before colonialism or the slave trade. Western Europe would have remained rich even in the absence of overseas adventurism. Germany, for example, was one of the world’s richest areas, long before it gained any colonies. It’s true that overseas resources were exploited; but this was not the sole source of Europe’s wealth. Far from it.
Even more questionable than the call for reparations are the claims of ‘genocide’ in the context of New World colonialism. Until a few years ago, only a tiny fringe of historians believed that European colonialism in the New World was ‘genocidal’. In the six-volume, 3,000+ page Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas (published 1996-2000) several dozen specialists saw fit to mention genocide precisely twice. In both of these instances, the scholars in question do so only to reiterate that it did not apply.
There are many reasons why historians long shied away from using the term ‘genocide’. There was a recognition that the word should be reserved only for extreme cases, such as the Nazis’ attempt to eliminate Europe’s Jews. Using the word to describe the activities of European colonisers and their respective governments surely falls short of this, because the elimination of native populations was seldom – if ever – a deliberate or sustained policy.
There are many reasons why historians long shied away from using the term ‘genocide’
The Spanish government, for example, went to great lengths to protect natives. In 1542, it passed the ‘New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians’. It also established self-governing Republicas de Indios, where Europeans were not allowed to own land. All of this was done with the purpose of increasing Indian population levels – and, by all accounts, it worked: native population levels began to recover soon after. Even when policies came closest to something we would recognise as ‘genocidal’, as during the American Trail of Tears debacle, context reveals a host of reasons why, even here, historians have been reluctant to use this term.
Native casualty rates across the New World were too low to justify calling what happened a ‘genocide.’ In the United States, where the native population might have approached 2,000,000 individuals prior to Christopher Columbus’ arrival, widely-accepted tallies show that the total number of natives massacred by whites prior to 1848 amounted to less than 8,000 individuals. Since populations renew themselves every generation, the total number of natives who were born, lived, and died in the territory of the United States between 1500 and 1900 was likely over 10,000,000.No matter how you do the maths, the number of natives who died by massacre was far less than one per cent of the population. Clearly any incidents like this were appalling, but such killings fall short of genocide.
In recent years, the study of history has become increasingly politicised. Claims of genocide across the New World have subsequently emerged – but these are riddled with demographic exaggerations. New Left darling Howard Zinn acknowledged that Hispaniola, the island where Columbus first landed in 1492, likely had about 250,000 people. However one academic dyad, named Sherburne F. Cook and Woodrow Borah, infamously posited the absurd number of 8,000,000. This figure has since been taken up by those who wish to maximise the apparent damage done by Europeans to the New World. A historian named David Stannard, in his widely-cited book American Holocaust used this figure to suggest that what happened to the natives on Hispaniola was ‘the equivalent of fifty Hiroshimas’. Logic dictates, howvever, that the true population figure on Hispaniola in 1491 must have been far lower than one million, let alone seven or eight million. The island is only about 60 per cent the size of England and the population of England in 1491 was likely about two million. England in 1500 had one of the most advanced agricultural regimes on Earth. Hispaniola, by contrast, remained mostly forested; as a result, the land would have been able to sustain a much smaller number of people. Genetic studies have suggested that Hispaniola only had ‘a few tens of thousands’ of people in 1491. All evidence therefore suggests that Stannard’s ‘fifty Hiroshimas’ figure is a wild exaggeration.
Claims of ‘genocide’ are even harder to justify when you consider that the major population nuclei of Columbus’ day have survived and thrived into the present. In 1491, the New World held only about 10 per cent as many people as the Old World. Central Mexico and environs held roughly 50 per cent of the entire New World population, and greater Peru held another 25 per cent. By contrast, most of the future United States and Canada were thinly populated, and were home to only about 10 per cent of the New World population. In all of the modern-day countries corresponding to pre-Columbian population nuclei – including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc. – the population remains more than 80 per cent mixed-race or indigenous, and less than 20 per cent European.
Most of these people died hundreds of miles from any European
If Europeans set foot in the New World with the aim of replacing indigenous people with European stock via the doctrine of ‘settler colonialism,’ they appear to have failed rather miserably. Recent genetic studies have revealed Mexico to be one of the most genetically diverse countries in the world. The survival of over 60 indigenous languages in Mexico also makes it difficult to argue that Spanish attempts at cultural genocide were as devastating as some pundits suggest. In fact, historians recognise that much of the indigenous cultural suppression in Mexico occurred in the nineteenth century, after the country became independent.
It is universally acknowledged (even by Stannard) that the vast majority of natives who did die after contact died of disease, rather than massacre or abuse. Most of these people died hundreds of miles from any European, and so claims of smallpox-blanket-spreading have been circulated in a disingenuous effort to make Europeans look culpable for a natural biological process over which they had no control.
Such claims of biological warfare are widely believed but have almost no basis in fact. According to the historians Paul Kelton and Philip Ranlet, the single unambiguously recorded instance of an attempt to spread smallpox to Native Americans via contaminated blankets or clothing occurred in the vicinity of Fort Pitt in 1763. What’s more, the commanders in question (Jeffery Amherst and Henry Bouquet), are on record as saying that this might not be a great idea – not only because it was dishonourable, but because it might result in the spreading of smallpox to their own troops.
Rather than spreading smallpox on purpose, as soon as they did gain a modicum of control over this and other diseases, Europeans actually set about protecting native populations against them. The United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, and other New World governments spent the majority of the nineteenth century funding vaccination programmes – vaccination programmes which are seldom researched by modern historians, but which eventually reached hundreds of thousands of individuals. This saved far more native lives than Europeans are accused of massacring during the same century.
These programmes were inaugurated as soon as relevant medical advancements were made. Edward Jenner perfected a smallpox vaccine in 1796, improving on an earlier technique known as variolation. Jenner was personally moved by the plight of the indigenous Americans, and in 1807 corresponded with the Chief of the Five Nations in an effort to facilitate vaccination amongst his people. He received a letter of thanks from the chief for his assistance in ‘driving the fatal enemy of [our] tribes from the Earth.’
In the United States, Thomas Jefferson arranged to have the vaccine sent west with Louis and Clark, with the hope it could induce Indians to get themselves vaccinated in greater numbers in the future. Andrew Jackson, the same president accused of genocide for the Trail of Tears debacle, is also responsible for the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832. Not to be outdone, the Spanish government had, by 1803, sent Dr. D. Francisco Xavier de Balmis to oversee the vaccination of the native population of the Spanish New World. De Balmis later reported that he had vaccinated some 50,000 natives in Peru alone, and established vaccination programmes as far north as Sonora.
The myth of New World genocide is a novel take on European colonialism that almost no historian agreed with prior to 2010. Originally propagated by a handful of left-leaning academic radicals, it has recently moved into the mainstream, despite the fact that the evidence has barely changed. This crisis of historical understanding is, in turn, being taken advantage of by a handful of people, who stand to profit enormously from a sense of public shame based on these historical misconceptions.
In order to ground this debate in reality once more, we must stop imagining that ‘native leaders’ are somehow unimpeachable. We must further shed the illusion that native leaders all think the same thing, simply because they are ‘natives’. In reality, native leaders hold a wide spectrum of political beliefs, and they are just as fallible, and liable to political machinations, as anyone else. The group who signed the petition to Charles III represent a tiny minority of the most vocally antagonistic such leaders, yearning for a bit of publicity. It is a serious mistake to take theirs as a representative opinion.
Furthermore, those native leaders who insist on obviously political and potentially damaging courses of action – such as massive reparations payments, or the repatriation of artefacts that were only saved from oblivion by the stable institutions of certain Western countries – must expect to be held to account. Many of the artefacts held in British museums, for example, were sold by indigenous elites to British explorers. How, precisely, does this constitute ‘plunder’? In the present academic climate, genuine scrutiny is nearly impossible. Some are taking advantage of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw untold riches from the public purse towards themselves and their allies, before the woke zeitgeist is finally put to rest.
Those who call for reparations often base their arguments on the writings of politically-motivated genocide scholars. These (mostly white, comfortably middle-class) individuals might imagine they are helping modern-day victims of ‘systemic racism’. But such stories of perpetual victimisation are likely to do more harm than good to modern native populations: they might well encourage native youth to drop out of mainstream society in despair, rather than participate in it with an aim to self-improvement. Generations of Native Americans, for example, have turned their peoples’ warrior traditions into a career in the US military – but will this proud tradition continue under the current social climate? As long as only one side is allowed to air their views of native history, then the real, potentially lifesaving data about the true causes of modern native social ills will be submerged – to the detriment of the very people those on the left claim to be defending.
Instead of helping the victims of past genocides, self-appointed genocide scholars are, in some cases, inadvertently facilitating real-world, real-time crackdowns. They do this, in part, by bolstering autocratic leaders’ confidence that the West’s moral posturing is hypocrisy of the highest order – which is music to their autocratic ears. Despots, in turn, broadcast the hyperbole churned out by genocide scholars because its veneer of academic rigour lends it credence as propaganda. This can be used to convince subject populations that democracy is a sham.
According to an article called ‘The American Genocide of the Indians – Historical Facts and Real Evidence,’ posted to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China:
‘Peter Burnett, the first governor of California, proposed a war of extermination against Native Americans, triggering rising calls for the extermination of Indians in the state… From 1846 to 1873, the Indian population in California dropped to 30,000 from 150,000. Countless Indians died as a result of the atrocities.’
What happened to the California natives from the later 1840s was undoubtedly one of the most shameful incidents in US history. But the true death toll by massacre in California was less than a tenth of what is alleged here. One does not need to look far to deduce from whence the Chinese authorities plucked this idea: it is likely taken from Benjamin Madley’s 2016 book An American Genocide. This book makes unprecedented claims about genocide in California, but American award presenters have been falling over themselves to festoon it.
It is vital then that historians robustly challenge novel write-ups that claim ‘genocide’, where no historian saw them before. For this to happen, both the historical establishment at large, and the university administrators who appoint historians to their posts, must actively guarantee researchers full freedom to challenge these novel interpretations. One wonders how genocide scholars can feel proud of their accomplishments, when they know that no practising historian would dare to criticise their arguments in a robust manner. Without the possibility of valid criticism, science becomes impossible, and ‘proofs’ become nothing more than dogma dressed up in clever words.
If we manage to restore a modicum of balance to historical discussions of colonialism and European genocide, we will quickly realise that much of what is currently being claimed is exaggerated, and that the opinion of the majority of historians prior to 2010 or so is closer to the truth. Until then, we can expect to be bombarded with opportunist claims for artefact repatriation, reparations, and official apologies. And we can expect that many of our greatest institutions – institutions that have done an unprecedented amount of good for all of humanity, such as when the British monarchy repeatedly helped to end the scourge of global slavery – will continue to be pelted with rhetorical rubbish
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-myth-of-new-world-genocide/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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