Watch now | Texas Children's Hospital was intentionally misdiagnosing patients in order to get "gender affirming care" covered by federally funded insurance programs.
I’ll be honest this episode was hard to listen to. As much as I am opposed to youth gender medicine, I am equally opposed to religious morals being used as a way to decide how treatment standards are developed and carried out.
This is by far the most bad-faith episode I've heard. This woman is a right-wing trumpist ideologue with a huge agenda, her characterization of her interaction with the FBI is grossly distorted, and any connection between the federal investigation and her eventual termination is pure conjecture on her part. I am sure she did see really bad medical practice, but not to challenge her motivation (instead of coddling her "deep faith") is bad journalistic practice.
For the record, Sasha and Stella are not (and have never claimed to be) journalists. Also, in the United States religious beliefs are protected in employment law. Additionally, she spoke about how her faith gave her courage and strength to go against the grain, but what she blew the whistle on was what appeared to be illegal practices, insurance fraud, and bad medical ethics. She was not "blowing the whistle" on something that was religious in nature.
To be fair Sasha did ask and gently pressed about this issue, but the response dodged the question. I understand they are having friendly discussions and have conversations with people regarding this issue allowing them to share their views, experiences and inside information.
I do wish Stella and Sasha had addressed this in the intro or outro to the episode and personally I don’t think rises to bad faith.
I do hope that these types of religious views and the influence on medical care are handled with more intention in the future and if the hosts don’t feel like they have the ability to navigate or just don’t want to navigate that aspect of this issue (which I think is valid) that they don’t seek out medical practitioners with this as a primary concern.
Interesting that you heard so much about her faith while I heard a great deal about medical malpractice in this episode. The suggestion that this was bad journalistic practice because they didn't challenge her on her religious beliefs (which seemed more explaining where her bias might be) is in no way is about their journalistic professionalism. I also wonder how you know that her experience with the FBI is distorted??
Amazing interview! And thank you for mentioning DI-AG.org (Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender), Sasha. I've sent this episode to two MD friends who've recently indicated a willingness to hear some of this, as I think Vanessa is the one who might finally break through to these good doctors. Well done, as always!
Thank you to all the whistleblowers. I can personally attest that there are doctors giving false diagnoses in order to have insurance cover cross sex hormones. For us, it was private insurance. My daughter’s medical team claims on her records that she has an endocrine disorder. As far as I know, it’s still there. This is false. They ignored her extremely low weight at an intake appointment at a gender clinic until I screamed about it and they reluctantly agreed to refer her to an eating clinic. When we took her to the eating clinic, associated with a public university, they tried to pressure us to give our daughter cross sex hormones in the first appointment even though they had no idea why she was underweight other than to say that T would make her hungry and she would kill herself otherwise. We left and never went back. We later learned that she has ARFID from autism and she is thankfully better due to me hiring a private dietitian 2x a week to help heal her at home. She should have been hospitalized immediately, according to her pediatrician. Instead, the clinic wanted to put her on T, send her home and see us after three months. That’s not how you treat ARFID. This is a medical scandal beyond imagination. No one cares to hear what we have been through. I’ve lost friends over this. It boggles my mind why no one wants to listen to our true stories. We left the country. Even my daughter refused to hand over her medical records to her new doctor in the EU because in her words ‘there were so many lies’.
I’ll be honest this episode was hard to listen to. As much as I am opposed to youth gender medicine, I am equally opposed to religious morals being used as a way to decide how treatment standards are developed and carried out.
This is by far the most bad-faith episode I've heard. This woman is a right-wing trumpist ideologue with a huge agenda, her characterization of her interaction with the FBI is grossly distorted, and any connection between the federal investigation and her eventual termination is pure conjecture on her part. I am sure she did see really bad medical practice, but not to challenge her motivation (instead of coddling her "deep faith") is bad journalistic practice.
For the record, Sasha and Stella are not (and have never claimed to be) journalists. Also, in the United States religious beliefs are protected in employment law. Additionally, she spoke about how her faith gave her courage and strength to go against the grain, but what she blew the whistle on was what appeared to be illegal practices, insurance fraud, and bad medical ethics. She was not "blowing the whistle" on something that was religious in nature.
To be fair Sasha did ask and gently pressed about this issue, but the response dodged the question. I understand they are having friendly discussions and have conversations with people regarding this issue allowing them to share their views, experiences and inside information.
I do wish Stella and Sasha had addressed this in the intro or outro to the episode and personally I don’t think rises to bad faith.
I do hope that these types of religious views and the influence on medical care are handled with more intention in the future and if the hosts don’t feel like they have the ability to navigate or just don’t want to navigate that aspect of this issue (which I think is valid) that they don’t seek out medical practitioners with this as a primary concern.
Interesting that you heard so much about her faith while I heard a great deal about medical malpractice in this episode. The suggestion that this was bad journalistic practice because they didn't challenge her on her religious beliefs (which seemed more explaining where her bias might be) is in no way is about their journalistic professionalism. I also wonder how you know that her experience with the FBI is distorted??
Look it up.
Amazing interview! And thank you for mentioning DI-AG.org (Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender), Sasha. I've sent this episode to two MD friends who've recently indicated a willingness to hear some of this, as I think Vanessa is the one who might finally break through to these good doctors. Well done, as always!
Thank you to all the whistleblowers. I can personally attest that there are doctors giving false diagnoses in order to have insurance cover cross sex hormones. For us, it was private insurance. My daughter’s medical team claims on her records that she has an endocrine disorder. As far as I know, it’s still there. This is false. They ignored her extremely low weight at an intake appointment at a gender clinic until I screamed about it and they reluctantly agreed to refer her to an eating clinic. When we took her to the eating clinic, associated with a public university, they tried to pressure us to give our daughter cross sex hormones in the first appointment even though they had no idea why she was underweight other than to say that T would make her hungry and she would kill herself otherwise. We left and never went back. We later learned that she has ARFID from autism and she is thankfully better due to me hiring a private dietitian 2x a week to help heal her at home. She should have been hospitalized immediately, according to her pediatrician. Instead, the clinic wanted to put her on T, send her home and see us after three months. That’s not how you treat ARFID. This is a medical scandal beyond imagination. No one cares to hear what we have been through. I’ve lost friends over this. It boggles my mind why no one wants to listen to our true stories. We left the country. Even my daughter refused to hand over her medical records to her new doctor in the EU because in her words ‘there were so many lies’.