MRC Hasn’t Retracted Discredited Attack On Transgender Clinic

The Media Research Center’s chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, hyped in a Feb. 10 post:

The left needs to consider this a warning.

In an op-ed for The Free Press, Jamie Reed, a queer woman with a trans husband, explained her deep regret and guilt after treating transgender kids with life altering medicines and procedures. Her piece titled, “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” should serve as a wake-up-call to the left that thinks gender-affirming procedures aren’t harmful.

Reed worked as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She claimed that the center’s “working assumption” was that the sooner you treat kids’ gender dysphoria with life altering measures, the better. Reed’s specific role at the clinic was patient intake and oversight and she saw around 1,000 confused kids during her four year employment at the center. 

After seeing the kids leave with “life-altering consequences — including sterility,” Reed quit. “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 said.

Reed claimed her testimony puts her at personal and professional risk but noted that what’s happening to kids is “morally and medically appalling” and is “far more important than” her “comfort.”

As it turns out, Reed is also at “personal and professional risk” because her story appears not to be true. As Erin Reed wrote in a detailed debunking of Jamie Reed’s claims: 

Delving into Jamie Reed’s allegations and story makes it clear that she is not an ideologically neutral individual on the care and respect of transgender people. Her statements and omissions reveal a clear ideological bias, and the organizations and representation she has chosen to work with contradict her claim that she “supports transgender people.”

Throughout her story, she frequently misgenders her patients. In fact, I am not aware of a single case where she genders her trans patients correctly. Out of the thousand or so patients she has seen, she only references a half dozen specific anecdotes of what she relays as poor experiences for transgender youth patients – anecdotes I will cover in detail. Even in these anecdotes, she often omits long term net harm. She leaves out the stories of what must be the rest of the thousand patients who, as we have seen in numerous testimony in hearings this year, saw their mental and physical health improve dramatically. Ultimately, she calls for stopping gender affirming care for trans youth – something that would result in actual harm and death to this patient population.

She is not a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and does not have direct medical diagnostic experience with patients. She is a case worker, someone who navigates insurance claims and takes intake calls. Throughout her story, she places her own interpretations of events above those of medically educated providers, therapists, and the families and patients that work with them. She claims to know better for these patients, and has acted to sabotage their care.

Mandelburg hyped Jamie Reed claiming that “many of the patients were on the autism spectrum or claimed that they had other disorders like Tourette syndrome, tic disorders or multiple personalities, all of which she said they didn’t.” Erin Reed responded:

Here Jamie repeats anti-trans talking points here blaming gender dysphoria on all other things than being trans. Bizarrely, she includes obesity here. While many transgender people have concurrent disorders, there is no established research showing being “trans” is caused by anything else. Furthermore, research into autistic transgender individuals has stated that being prevented from transitioning due to an autism diagnosis could “cause increased levels of depression and anxiety.” The idea that autistic individuals cannot be LGBT+ unfairly targets autistic people who have pushed back hard against the idea that their diagnosis means they cannot experience genuine gender identities or seuxal orientations.

Mandelburg repeated Jamie Reed’s claim that “The center literally prescribed a cancer drug as a puberty blocker for boys who wanted to be girls”; Erin Reed responded by pointing out that the drug in question, bicalutamide, “is also used to treat hair loss and excessive facial hair in cisgender females.”

Mandelburg also repeated Jamie Reed’s claim that “She encountered a situation where a mother convinced her daughter that she was trans when the child’s father protested, the woman went to court in a custody battle over the 11-year-old after . A doctor at the center sided with the mother and so did the court.” Erin Reed responded that “Jamie is upset that the doctors testified on a patient’s behalf that the best medical practices were followed. An entire court case happened around this proceeding where a judge weighed all of the evidence and statements and came to a verdict. We are supposed to put all of that aside because of a vendetta that Jamie has with her own place of employment.”

Even the parents of children who attended the clinic have debunked Jamie Reed’s claims.

Mandelburg concluded by claiming: “At the end of the op-ed, Reed pointed out that this isn’t a political matter. This shouldn’t be a divisive issue. This deals with the safety of our children and shouldn’t result in culture wars.” In fact, as Erin Reed pointed out, Jamie’s testimony was withheld in order to have maximum impact on anti-trans bills in the Missouri legislature, meaning that Jamie is totally cool with playing politics with this issue — just as Mandelburg is.

Mandelburg has not updated her post to reflect how Jamie Reed’s claims have been discredited, nor has she written a new one retracting her earlier post. Remember, narratives are more important than facts.