Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast, and if
you listen to this show, you have probably heard me
complain about the fact that after my kids turn twelve
in my state, I no longer have control over their
medical records and it drives me crazy. They have to
sign me over as medical proxy, and I still have
very little information about their medical records as compared to
(00:22):
what I have before they turn twelve. So we said,
we need to have a doctor that can talk about this,
and we found a great doctor, doctor Kurt Masselli. He
serves as the medical director for a medical watchdog, Do
No Harm. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Doctor, It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for
having me.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
So do you hear this complaint a lot that parents
are irritated that they lose control of their kids' medical records.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
We have heard this complaint over and over, and just
to sort of step back for a moment, as you noted,
I work for an organization called Do No Harm, and
one of our key missions and focuses as part of
Do No Harm is really getting under politics, gender ideology
out of pediatric care, and so we focus on those
less than eighteen years old. And one of the things
that many parents have come to us about is the
(01:10):
fact that all of a sudden, when their child turns twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
just as you said, they're losing access to the electronic
health record that they once had access to. And maybe
they can see appointments, but even that sometimes is not clear.
And frankly, we've even had one of our senior fellows
who brought her child into an emergency room as a
result of a broken bone, and she didn't have any
(01:30):
access again to that child's record because he had crossed
the magical threshold for whereby that hospital system had determined
that access was not allowed, and that we should maintain
this sort of veil of silence over the record so
that the adolescent is really the one in charge. And
what you noted again is so very true that then
parents have to actually ask their child for permission to
(01:52):
look at their record to regain that proxy access. And
we've offered numerous examples in our report as to where
we've where parents have actually encountered that, and it's really
a terrible challenge. I mean, these are children, these are
children that we have to remember, and these are parents
who have a responsibility to care for their child. As
much as we don't let children buy cigarettes or a
(02:15):
drink alcohol or even vote right, we maintain that there
are certain things that parents really should be helping informing
and guiding and with healthcare, it is just so very
complex and so important for parents to really be involved,
and that's certainly within their lawful right.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
We have tried many times in the state of Michigan
to figure out where is this coming from. I've talked
to legislators. I've talked to people former legislators. We've talked
to people who are running for office. I've talked to
people in other states. I know this is the same
in Iowa. I know it's in New York. I've heard
there are many other states that have California has the
(02:52):
same situation. But I just want people to know that
this is not a blue state situation. This is happening
in multiple states. But is it a law or is
it a rule coming from AHHS? We don't really know
why it's happening.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's a great question that you ask, and I think
much of this goes back really probably to the nineteen
seventies or so, and that relates to family planning and
the like, and related to contraceptive care. And part of
the thought was that these are sensitive topics that a
child may not want their parent to be aware of
or such, and the thought being that, well, we would
rather have the child get access in terms of their health. Again,
(03:31):
this is viewed from the lens of more of a
preventive type of philosophy, and we would rather that the
child get access where they feel uncomfortable with talking about things,
perhaps related to contraceptive care, perhaps related to sexually transmitted infections,
and as such, at a certain age, states have allowed
those children, those adolescents to be able to access that care,
(03:52):
consent for it themselves, without parents than knowing about it.
And that's extended a bit too. Also tridden for substance
use disorders, so whether it might relate to again a
child who might be addicted to alcohol or opiates or
the like, and even then to some mental health and
so you know, each state has laws on its books
typically related to those issues. Again, there's variation, there's different
(04:13):
ages and the like, but it's a sort of a
narrow window. And I think what we've seen happen is
that this is with an electronic record become much broader
than just the sort of narrow issues. To the point,
I was just on the University of Michigan website Michigan Medicine,
and it specifically says that notes for primary care for
psychiatry are really not accessible by an adult unless they
(04:37):
have their child after the age of eleven give them
access to those records. And so that's sort of a blanket,
this allowance of a parent right. It's not related to
these specific carve outs that are within the confines of
state laws. It's this blanket. And when you have an
EHR we've seen we've looked at vendors like Epic, major
vendor probably controls forty percent or so of the of
the market in terms of the electronic health record market,
(04:59):
with with the hospitals, Oracle and other big player in
the field controlling about twenty or so percent of the market.
There are examples thereby in Oracle where they would provide
guidance to a hospital and say, hey, you know what,
typically thirteen is the default that we use for proxy access. Well,
again there's variation in state law. This is sort of
a blanket recommendation that's coming through health systems. We've seen
(05:21):
oftentimes go along with that recommendation, and the consequence is
that parents then get locked out of all of the
records to the point of really being in the dark
with what's going on with their child. And again, from
the perspective of what's going on in terms of pronouns
and social transition and as it relates to gender ideology,
that is definitely a concern that we have. It do
(05:41):
no harm. And again, parents one of the reasons that
parents have really voiced this issue in a rightfully in
a very loud way. I mean, I'm a parent of
a seven year old, a five year old, and an
eighteen month old, and I want to do obviously the
very best for them, and I want to make sure
that they're getting the very best in healthcare. And I, frankly,
and prior to really looking in to this and hearing
from parents, I wasn't as aware either that you know
(06:03):
it is me.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You don't know until it happens to you. And that
is also a complaint that I have. I see people
running for office who are like, oh, I want to
bring all of these services into the high school, and
then you ask them, well, how do you make sure
parents are aware that these medical services are being offered
to their child in high school. Well, we'll have parental consent.
But you don't have parental consent. You already have a
(06:25):
law that says the parent has no vision into what
is happening with the child, which is crazy to me.
And like you said, it happens overnight. So this recently
happened to us. I have two twins that just turned twelve.
They went in. One of them had a medical procedure
at the hospital in grend Rapids. We go in, have
the medical procedure, I go to get the results. She
(06:48):
had turned twelve the day before the appointment. Wow, immediately
shut out of her record. This was in June. I
called the office and I said, okay, I forgot that
she was turning twelve. Now can't see her records. And
they said, we won't make an appointment specifically for your
child to come in and just sign this paper and
(07:10):
she can't sign unless the doctor is there to have
a conversation with her. So you can wait until her
well child visit in September. Are you kidding me? You
can see her chart in September.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd, right, I mean, this is a
point where you want to be involved. You want to
help your child, and your child again, it's twelve years old,
and my.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Child can't make a decision on what we find out
from this medical test, and yet I cannot see what
happens for months because of the stupid law.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, it's absolutely absurd, and I think unfortunately, with an
electronic health record, it even allows the bureaucracy to really
dig in by just sealing off those records and cutting
them off, which I imagine you know, would be very
different if perhaps that bureaucracy wasn't there keeping in line
with this crazy system that's just been entailed. And it
is just so important, whether you know from the state
(07:58):
side or even the federal sidey important guidance and clarity
that potentially could come in terms of enforcing the privacy rule,
because again, parents, you do have a right to help
support your child and understand their protected health information, especially
if it's within those lawful means, Like you're not talking
about these things that perhaps are related to you substance
(08:20):
use and such. This is related to the routine medical
course of care, and that's just totally.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Me Let me give you a flip side situation to
substance abuse and STDs. Because when I'm in the midst
of this and I am very frustrated by it, as
you can tell. I talked to a nurse at a
pediatrician's office and she said, Oh, you think it's bad
that you can't see your daughter's test that your daughter
is allowing you to see. She said, let me tell
(08:46):
you what else is happening. She said, I've got kids
in the practice right now who have active STDs, and
they have been tested and it is positive, and they
are going to have permanent harm if they do not
get something done to treat these STDs. But they don't
want their parents to see the medication, so they're going
without treatment and we can't call mom and dad and
(09:08):
say your kid is sick.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Wow. Wow, I'd a real unintended consequence, right. I mean,
the goal initially of these types of laws, again, if
I sort of aim to look at it from that perspective,
was to encourage kids to get access. But what you're
describing as certainly kids then not even taking that access
because of what's to come. And I would think that
(09:30):
any child wants that support from a parent in terms
of making sure that yeah, let's get the treatment. Let's
make sure you don't have those those harmful consequences. I mean,
even within the confines. When I was looking at the
Michigan mental Health law, it looks like that actually applies
from age fourteen and above and not necessarily this sort
of twelve thirteen cutoff. But yet the record is just
(09:51):
being withheld from you as an example of given from
age twelve onward and again more that is just inappropriate.
And even within the confines of that related to mental
health in Michigan, the use of psychotropic medications, if they
were indicated, still requires parental consent. So you know, I
think we unfortunately have gotten to a point where we've
(10:13):
probably implemented way beyond the scope of the law, and
certainly in EHR has allowed that to go to a
degree you know, unforeseen beforehand. And unfortunately, much as you've noted,
we're and up harming children as opposed to to really
helping them, which again every parent would certainly want to
make sure that their child is getting the very best
in healthcare and just be aware and to be cognizant
(10:34):
of what they can do to help their kid well.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
And at a certain point, I mean, this has been
a confusion to me, if your child is going in
to see the doctor and having tests done, it's showing
up on the insurance that I pay, So am I
not going to see it? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You will see those those that come on the explanation
of benefits and the like. And frankly, this is one
of the concerns that we've seen with gender medicine and
specifically related to the codes that are used there in
terms of the diagnostic codes. And very typically the diagnostic
code one would use is typically gender identity disorder, gender dysphoria,
(11:10):
but we have seen other codes that are being used
like endercrim disorder unspecified, And so I could imagine if
apparency is endercrom disorder unspecified, they might think, well, what
if my child have diabetes or do they have a
thyroid disease or something else. They're not necessarily thinking that, Wow,
they're receiving a treatment for gender affirming care so to speak.
So is yeah, you're absolutely right, you would see those
charges as those claims are filed. But then it has
(11:33):
gotten into this question of well, what are the codes
that folks are actually using. And again in the gender space,
which we've focused on at Do No Harm it's that's
one of the things that we're certainly curious to continue
to look into more and more and understand because if
anything using codes that are just completely inappropriate is really fraudulent.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Stick around for more coming up with doctor Kurt Mascelli.
But do not leave if you are over fifty and
you're worried about your heart health, because you need to
listen to this. We've got this sixteen year study of
over thirty thousand people that found that Nato kaines this
is an ancient Japanese superfood that can help you reduce
your heart attack risk and improve your cardiovascular health. And
(12:17):
you might not know this, but Japan has the world's
second longest life expectancy for this reason because they've used
this powerful natural enzyme for thousands of years. You might
have never heard about it, but Lumin Nutrition has perfected
a powerful Nato kaines formula. They are making it in
the USA. It is third party tested for purity and quality,
(12:39):
and you should be buying your supplements from a source
you can trust, so Luma Nutrition is the place to go.
They were founded by a former US Army officer and
they're on a mission to provide the highest quality natural
supplements made right here in the USA. So you want
to get your heart and shape, try Nato Kaines today
for up to forty percent off when you visit Luma
(13:01):
Nutrition dot com. That's Luma Nutrition dot Com. Again, it's
Luma Nutrition dot Com. They're veteran owned and proudly made
in the USA, so check it out today, but stick
around for more after this. The gender space, to me,
is one of the most criminal things we've ever seen
(13:23):
happen to children. I mean, I think about a few
years ago, we saw that there was female genital mutilation
happening in a city in Michigan, and it was like
rated by the police. I mean, this was this was
considered criminal. And yet you have children in schools being
taken into a side to a gender clinic. You know,
(13:45):
this is actually happening to kids, sterilizing someone's child without
them knowing. How can this possibly? First of all, I
think that the whole idea of cutting off children's body
parts and stopping them from going through pure pretty and
all of these things, I think it's all totally insane
and horrible. It should never happen. But the fact that
(14:07):
it's happening behind parents back is even more sinister.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You're absolutely right, and there's a huge challenge that we have,
whether it's with the school system or the healthcare system.
And the reality is that social transition is not innocent
by any means. In fact, it's leads one to be
more likely to then be on a path towards puberty blockers,
towards hormones, towards surgeries and the like, and so pronouns
social transition. These are things that a parent wants to
(14:32):
be aware of and certainly again for schools to be
doing such, or for doctor's offices to be doing such,
it just goes against any grain in your body to
be a parent to help advocate for your child and
to truly help them at a time of need, at
a time of confusion, and that's oftentimes what we've seen
that you know, there is much confusion puberty adolescens. It's hard, right,
(14:53):
I mean, heck, we've all gone through it and the like.
But at the same time, our treatment should really be
much more from a psychotherapy supportive modality and not from
all of a sudden moving to allowing someone to move
into a different realm where again where they were just
alying the confusion to take hold as opposed to truly
trying to find out what is the ideology behind it,
(15:14):
because oftentimes what we see as many of these children
have comorbid psychiatric issues. They're struggling for other reasons depression, anxiety, autism,
and the like, and we really should be focused on
treating those entities to allow them to get the health
and the wellness that they need, not go with the
gender affirming mindset and an aim to affirm folks and
then lead them on this path that just leads to
terrible harms. And you're right, I mean, these are again
(15:37):
innocent children. They're vulnerable, and certainly when they're being subject
to these messages and this influence, whether they're getting it
on social media, whether they're getting it in their school,
whether they're getting it in their medical practice office, it's
something that really does require parents to step in embrace
their child, to obviously love them as they do, and
(15:58):
to really care for them and help them mature them
through a challenging time in their life, not lead them
out on their own to to really the devices of
a medical system that has just gone off the rails.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I mean, it's not even that's it's not on their own.
They have a manipulat and I cannot understand what kind
of doctor decides that this is an acceptable thing to do.
Gender affirming would be to affirm that you are you
are the gender you were at birth. Like this idea
that you're this is delusion affirming. This is trying to
(16:30):
create something that doesn't exist. And coming from my perspective,
I've told people this many times. I'm a cancer survivor.
I had a double mastectomy. I know what that's like.
I knew the risks. I also knew that the risk
of me not doing it was death. I would not
have ever done it had that not been the risk.
I know the changes in my body since then. I
(16:53):
also was put on hormone blockers because of my cancer,
so I know what that does to your body, and
it's terrible. It's terrible. I mean the only reason you
would do this is to make sure that you don't
die from something worse. And yet they are doing this
to kids, putting them on hormone blockers. What in God's
(17:14):
name do they think they are doing to these children,
stopping them from going through puberty. So you're going to
take away the human experience from these children, no chance,
their children. They can't make this decision, this idea that
a twelve you know, is total blowy, and they're going
to take away their chances of having a relationship. They're
(17:36):
not only going to take away their chances of having
a relationship, but they're now forever harmed by this. They
have either had they're either sterile or they've had their
body parts removed. And if they've had their body parts removed,
then they don't have any feeling in those areas, none whatsoever.
It's not a pleasant way to live. And then you
have these other situations where when you've had part of
(17:58):
your body removed, you have like phantom feelings in other
parts of your body that are constantly annoying you. I'm
not talking about this from an expert from things I've read.
I'm talking about this from my own life what I've
gone through, and I know it is a wicked, wicked,
terrible treatment, and yet they're doing this to kids that
(18:20):
aren't sick.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
It's bewildering. And your testimony is extraordinarily powerful as someone
who is a cancer survivor, and to think that, right,
these are healthy kids with healthy body parts, and we're
hurting them in so many ways, and we're even telling
them that it's reversible, or we're not even discussing what
the potential is from exactly. It's absolutely insane and it's
just completely wrong. And I think at a time when
(18:43):
we need to really restore trust into the medical system
and restore that honor of the doctor patient relationship, we
as a medical community really need to really work on
this issue, and we have it. I mean, unfortunately many
of the medical societies and the like have been captured
by this ideology as opposed to really look at at
what is truly best for the child, and unfortunately we've
(19:03):
sold these lies to parents by telling them that their
child is going to be at a higher rate of
committing suicide, when that's again just not true if you
look at the data, it's related to the comorbid psychiatric
illness that the child is suffering from, not to the
gender dysphoria, and not that these treatments in any ways
actually helped resolve those issues. In fact, oftentimes that make
them worse.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
And there is this weird protection of information or like
the hiding I would say of information, because for those
of us who know what this experience is like, and
I will say that I was. I went through all
these treatments because I had hormone receptive cancer, which means
my cancer grows on hormones, which is why they blocked
(19:44):
the female hormones, which is why they did the double massectomy.
But when it came down to having a hysterectomy, my
doctor said, you are too young to have a hysterectomy
because the benefits do not outweigh the risks. You would
have so many problems at thirty eight if you had
a hysterectomy, And we're going to say we'll monitor you
rather than take that, take your uterus out, take or
(20:07):
do the hysterectmy and cause you all these other harms
that are going to cause you to have brittle bones,
cause you to be depressed, cause you to go through
a menopause immediately. And yet they're doing this too young girls.
And I'm just like, how is it possible that me
at thirty eight, who had cancer and has a true reason.
They weighed that and they said your health would be
(20:30):
so horrible if we did this to you that we
will not even take that risk to save your potentially
save your life. We're going to monitor you for a child.
They're telling parents, you will end up with a dead
daughter if you do not allow her to become a
son and have her go through one of the most
challenging experiences of your life, to have to go through
(20:54):
menopause overnight as a child. It's just so so sick.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
I could agree more. And it's one of the things
that we've seen in our Stop the Harm database that
we've done it Do No Harm is to actually look
at the claims data from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three,
and we saw over fifty seven hundred surgeries on innocent,
vulnerable children and it is just absolutely awful and tragic.
And that's throughout the nation. It's not isolated to a
(21:19):
certain region the sword, it's throughout the nation, and it
really speaks to the concerns and well, what we need
to really do to do much better for our children,
for our society, because you're right, these harms are real.
And you speak to detransitioners and they will also tell
you firsthand of the horrors that they've been through and
how the medical system just so let them down.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And that's another thing. They're silenced. It's like they are
not allowed to speak they have betrayed the cult and
they are not allowed to speak about it, and they
are They're not right, this is not happening. And yet
I say, you see surgeries, I call these experiments. The
fact that that many children have been caught a part
like Frankenstein, this is so sick.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, you're absolutely right and I and I think it
really goes to the courage of those detransitioners who are
able to speak out and to provide that really their
story and and they're just heart reaching. They're absolutely horrible
stories to hear because of what medicine has has done
to them. And certainly as a psychiatrist, I I it
(22:24):
makes me squirm because I think that my association, the
American Psychiatric Association, to actually endorse this kind of model
of care is just completely absurd, when when we really
should be using our our talk, therapy, our our therapeutic
techniques and such to really help children and to recognize
that you're absolutely right they affirming your affirming your biological sex,
(22:46):
of who you are, and embracing who you are and
to be able to have comfort with that as opposed
to thinking that you need to be something that you're not,
and it is. It is just so absolutely critical and
to the point of the electronic health record. Unfortunately, in
many regards with you know, with the the WPATH, the
World Professional Association of Transgender Health, it was back in
(23:06):
twenty eleven or so, they were recommending different types of
guidance of what to actually add into the electronic health
record related to an organ inventory or this idea of
sex assigned at birth, and you know, ultimately in twenty fifteen,
I believe HHS then did sort of mandate that, yeah,
we need to actually have this gender identity within embedded
in the electronic health record. And by twenty eighteen you
(23:28):
find that EPIC is doing a trial basis of again
an organ inventory, sex assigned at birth pronouns the whole line.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Yard mean, an organ inventory.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
To actually account for the organs that one has, so
to note the sex organs that one has, because apparently
we can no longer really trust the sex marker. So
now we're going to do an actual organ inventory of
folks to note that they have the uterus or they
have what ovaries and the like, And it's just it's
become absurd and I don't think you don't need to
(23:58):
be a doctor anyone of the story. You just need
to recognize that there is male and there is female.
And yet we've gone into this world where we've just
ignored that ignored that biological reality to the point that
an organ inventory actually exists in electronic health records.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. There are mental disorders that exist
but are extremely rare, like extremely rare, and gender dysphoria
is one of those that is extremely rare. This idea
that this is common and suddenly all of these kids
(24:35):
have this. What is the root cause of this? And
that seems to be the problem is that it's not
necessarily that they have come to decide this. It's that
they don't. They feel something's off and maybe it is
autism or something like that, but they tend to go
to somebody for care. And there these d trendsition often
(25:00):
have stories that they were told, well, you're probably in
the wrong body. Come on, I mean you went to
school for this. You know that that's not what you
were taught. Like, Oh, there's just a massive amount of
people that feel uncomfortable. They don't know this, they're actually
in the wrong body.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
You're absolutely right. If you look at the DSM, so
the manual that psychiatrist typically we use, and I could
look at the fourth edition as opposed to the fifth edition,
which is the current one. But the fourth edition actually
shows rates of maybe one in thirty thousand to one
in one hundred thousand have gender identity disorder as it
was called in the DSM four, and even in the
DSM five those prevalence rates aren't much more common. But
(25:38):
we have seen this sort of social contagion phenomenon really
in the past I guess decade that has mostly affected girls,
adolescent girls, and traditionally gender identity disorder was typically boys,
often at a young age, who sort of had some
confusion four or five, six years old, they might sort
of be experiencing such confusion that then for most of them,
(25:59):
the vast majority, like eighty to ninety percent, actually desists
and goes away, but for some it sort of remains
and again very rare in its occurrence. But now we've
come to this point where we have all of these
adolescent girls and oftentimes again in social clusters typically related
to social media or perhaps school clicks and the like,
and we've also seen this idolization of the trans status,
(26:21):
and so it has just had this tremendous boost of
almost one thousand percent higher in terms of what we see.
And also for many of those folks, there's this idea
of being non binary, so not even necessarily being a
woman or a man, but being something in between, which
again I think perhaps speaks more to the social conchangeing
aspect of it, because it's sort of pointing to something
(26:43):
that is completely not biological by any means, but this
sort of gray area that again just sort of really
proves the point of a social conchangi and phenomenon. And
it's something that we again in society where where you
have schools that may silently transition kids or hospital systems
(27:04):
doing the same or encouraging these thought processes within other
clinical venues. We've got to change that. We've really have
to refocus on who is before us look at the
child and help that distressed child, not put them on
a pathway and just sort of label them in this
gender distory of mindset that leads to hormones, puberty blockers,
and surgeries.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Well, so my audience probably knows where I'm going to
go with this but we've had people on recently who
have been harmed by SSRIs, and as a psychiatrist, you
know that the system has sort of changed from when
from when I was in college, it was like you
went to school for therapy, or you went to school
for psychology, you went to graduate school for psychiatry, and
(27:47):
then you ended up treating patients but also having those
conversations like you said, that talk, that discussion, and now
it's like have the psychologists they do the discussion. I
have the medical doctor, the psychiatrist who goes to medical school,
and they just prescribe, and there seems to be a
(28:08):
disconnect there. Well, I've had these patients on who have
talked about and the FDA just had a panel a
few months ago about this that these ssri in many
cases causing people to become a sexual, they are castrating them.
They have no feeling, they have no sexual desire if
this and this one patient that we had on made
(28:30):
a very interesting point. She was like, look, this happened
to me when I was twenty, I was sexually active,
I went through depression during the pandemic. I was on
this for six weeks. I am permanently castrated. My emotions
are permanently stunted. My ability to have any type of
sexual arousal totally gone. And she said, I can't imagine
(28:50):
for these children who are put on this at six, eleven, twelve,
fourteen years old, who have never had a sexual relationship before.
Then they get to puberty and they don't feel anything
because these drugs have changed them. I mean, why aren't
we looking at the potential of this is not just
a natural occurrence. What is the medical history of these children?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Your point is one that any good clinician would certainly take,
and that's to really assess and understand who the patient
is that's before them. And I think, unfortunately our