‘We were wrong’: Transgender clinic founder regrets her role in the mutilation of children

Dr. Susan BradleyDr. Debra Soh / YouTube

A gender clinic founder and former professor at the University of Toronto recently said that she regrets helping kids “transition,” and acknowledges that most gender-confused kids will grow out of their dysphoria by adulthood.

Dr. Susan Bradley “came out against the popular model of affirming children’s transgender identities and putting them on puberty blockers,” according to an interview published by the Daily Caller. She is the latest medical professional to confirm that transgender drugs and surgeries are dangerous, although she maintains the false idea that someone can switch genders.

She created the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic and led the University of Toronto’s Division of Child Psychiatry.

“Bradley, who is now in her early eighties, expressed regret that the clinic had participated in the administration of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria, which she now believes can cement a child’s sense of confusion out of which they would likely otherwise grow,” the Daily Caller reported. “She also expressed concern about the drugs’ side effects.”

“We were wrong,” Bradley said. The puberty blockers are “not as reversible as we always thought, and they have longer term effects on kids’ growth and development, including making them sterile and quite a number of things affecting their bone growth.”

“We thought that it was relatively safe, and endocrinologists said they’re reversible, and that we didn’t have to worry about it,” she further told the Daily Caller “I had this skepticism in the back of my mind all the time that maybe we were actually colluding and not helping them. And I think that’s proven correct in that, once these kids get started at any age on puberty blockers, nearly all of them continue to want to go to cross sex hormones.”

Bradley also “chaired the Subcommittee on Gender Dysphoria for the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official manual of the American Psychiatric Association” and “produced research, along with other clinic doctors, showing that 87.8% of boys referred to their clinic for gender identity issues eventually ‘desisted,’ meaning they stopped believing they were actually girls and came to terms with their sex,” according to the Daily Caller.

This comports with an analysis by endocrinologist Dr. Michael Laidlaw that found puberty blockers generally lead people to more hormones and surgeries, even though “[a majority of] children who experience gender dysphoria but are allowed to go through puberty normally,…do not persist in identifying with the opposite sex.”

She also, based on her research, came to the understanding that most gender-confused patients are actually on the autism spectrum, a position that is backed by evidence.

“These kids are not faring well with the current affirmative approach,” she also said. “I don’t know that any kids actually could, given the capacity of a 10 or 12, or even 14 or 15 year old to understand the complexity of the decision that they’re making on their long term sexual and life function. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Bradley is not the only former insider to testify to the dangers of injecting kids with hormones or severing their reproductive ability.

Recently, a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital blew the whistle on what she saw as unethical behavior by her former co-workers.

 

“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,’” Jamie Reed said. “Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.” She called the situation she witnessed “morally and medically appalling.”

Bradley’s statements add to body of evidence critical of drugs and surgeries

While establishment medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association push transgender drugs and surgeries, Bradley’s testimony, based on her long academic and medical career, add to the growing body of evidence that disproves the safety and benefits of injecting kids with puberty blockers and removing healthy organs. It is not possible for someone to change his or her gender, but regardless, the evidence continues to show that the drugs and surgeries meant to affirm someone’s gender delusions are not safe and are not beneficial.

For example, two medical boards in Florida recently affirmed that children should not be receiving transgender drugs and surgeries, in line with a meta-analysis conducted by the state’s health department and Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo that questioned the data behind the push to chemically and surgically mutilate kids.

The Florida Department of Health (DOH) Guidance stated:

Based on the currently available evidence, ‘encouraging mastectomy, ovariectomy, uterine extirpation, penile disablement, tracheal shave, the prescription of hormones which are out of line with the genetic make-up of the child, or puberty blockers, are all clinical practices which run an unacceptably high risk of doing harm.

The guidance document pointed to a “a lack of conclusive evidence” for “gender transitioning” and “the potential for long-term, irreversible effects,” and noted that analysis of the benefits of hormonal interventions “show a trend of low-quality evidence, small sample sizes, and medium to high risk of bias.”

The conservative Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) also recently released a set of statements warning against the chemical and surgical mutilation of kids, sometimes called “gender-affirming care.”

The medical professionals said transgender drugs and surgeries are “medically and ethically contraindicated because of a lack of informed consent” and warned of “inherently unknown and unknowable long-term risks, and the consequences of removing normal, healthy organs are irreversible.”