Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Doctor Leonard Sachs has an MD,has a PhD. He graduated from MIT
when he was nineteen uh and he'sa very interesting thinker and writer, broadly
speaking in the area of raising childrenand the differences between boys and girls.
And you can read a lot moreat Leonardsachs dot com and that's Leonard sax
(00:25):
dot com. We're going to talkabout a couple broad topics today. So
Doc, first, thanks for makingtime. I know you're busy and much
in demand, so I appreciate thatyou're back on the show with me in
writing me, so I want toactually start with what we hadn't planned on
talking about, but I wanted toask you, in the context of someone
who has written about raising children,and in the context of your book called
(00:49):
The Collapse of Parenting, what doyou make of the protests on college campuses
around the country. And I'm notasking you for a political opinion or a
view about what Israel or anything aboutthat. I'm asking you as a psychologist
and an expert on raising kids.So in my book The Collapse of Parenting,
I begin by talking about the cultureof disrespect and I talk about how
(01:15):
American kids are now immersed in aculture from the Disney Channel to Nickelodeon,
most popular TikTok videos and YouTube videos. A culture that teaches them that it's
cute and funny to be disrespectful toone another, to be disrespectful to parents.
And I think that's what we're seeingwhen you actually watch the videos of
these kids at Columbia and at othercollege campuses. They really think they're cool.
(01:42):
They really think they're cool for beingdefined and disrespectful at ignoring what the
authorities say. And again, wecan put the politics, we can discuss
the politics separately, but what's ofinterest from a psychological perspective is how these
kids perceive them so else as beingcool, as being heroic because they are
(02:05):
defying authority. That defying authority isby itself virtuous in the minds of these
kids, and that really reflects whatI'm talking about in the collapse of parenting.
These kids have not been taught torespect or honor authority, or even
to be charitable to the opinions oftheir elders, or even to listen to
them. On the contrary, theythink they know it all at twenty years
(02:29):
of age, and they have nointerest in what the grown ups have to
say, they assume that they knowbetter, all right, So I'm gonna
play devil's advocate a little bit.So, I mean, I basically agree
with you, but I'm gonna playdevil's advocate in the sense of saying,
but, doctor, is that reallynew? I mean, it seems to
me I wasn't conscious of the newswhen I was just a little kid,
(02:53):
when the protests against the Vietnam Warwere going on, including at Colombia,
including other places, and those people, you know, the hippies and those
students at the time, they alsothought they knew at all, and they
also had no respect for authority,and they also didn't want to hear what
any old person had to say,old meaning like over forty And so is
(03:15):
this actually something different? And ifso, how is it different? Well,
I think it's different in the extentto which it is prevalent the student
unrest beginning at University California, Berkeleyin the early sixties and then spreading it
to other campuses throughout the sixties.When you actually read the historians, it
(03:38):
was a tiny fraction of college studentseven at those colleges, and very little
sympathy from the same age kids elsewhere. Remember we're talking nineteen sixty eight.
We're talking about the era of theAndy Griffith Show, where the Andy Griffith
Show was the most popular TV showfor teenagers. The Andy Griffith Show is
(04:01):
a show where Andy Sheriff. Andyis knowledgeable, competent, reliable, productive,
worthy of respect and respect it andneed all the main adults on the
shows of that era. My threesons the Dick Van Dykes Show are knowledgeable,
competent, and worthy of respect.In writing my book The Collapse of
(04:25):
Parenting, I reviewed the one hundredand fifty most popular TV shows in the
United States right now to see howmany of them consistently or at least occasionally
depict a parent as knowledgeable, competent, and responsible. Out of one hundred
and fifty shows, I found one, Blue Blood starring Tom Selleck, which
at least occasionally depicts a parent ascompetent. Blue Bloods is now a unique
(04:46):
outlier in American television. Much moretypical American show would be Modern Family,
where the straight dad is always abumbling idiot is three kids are wiser and
more insightful than their stupid dad.The Disney Channel, you've got shows like
with the blog where the father,supposedly a school psychologist, a child psychologists,
knows nothing about what kids want orwhat kids need. The talking dog
(05:08):
is always wiser and more insightful thanthe dumb dad or Disney Channel show Live
in Maddie, where the two girlsare very different, but they agree that
their mother, also supposedly a schoolof psychologist, knows nothing about the behavior
or motivation of teenagers. So Ithink the difference is that in the nineteen
sixties, definant and disrespectful young peoplewe're seen as an aberration as unusual.
(05:32):
Today, defined and disrespectful young peopleare pretty much the norm, and they
don't see themselves as being outside themainstream. On the contrary, they insist
that they are the mainstream. SoI think there's been a big cultural shift
in how we perceive defiant and disrespectilkids. So I think you're right,
(05:54):
and I think speak for me personally, I think I'm more part of the
problem. I've been more part ofthe problem than part of the solution.
I find one of my kids inparticular, not so much the other one,
but a little disrespectful to me.And I hadn't thought about this before,
but the way he interacts with hisfriends and they interact with him.
(06:14):
They are very disrespectful to each other. I mean, they're laughing about it,
they're joking about it, but theytalk to each other in ways that
you know, when I was akid, even if I was RAS and
a friend of mine, I wouldn'thave talked to him like that. So
it's an interesting it's an interesting thing. And I think that I have done
a bad job making my kid afraidof me. I really do. I've
(06:36):
been working on it, you know, But yeah, I don't agree that.
Look, good parenting is not aboutmaking your kids afraid of you.
I don't agree with that at all. But I do think that good parenting
requires kids to respect you. Respect. It's a better way to put it,
a very different true and kids needto learn to respect their parents because
(06:59):
as a parent you a unique job. You've got to teach your kid right
and wrong, and that requires thatyou teach from a position of authority.
You know, if you're talking toyour kid about not cheating on a test
and you say, well, youknow, personally, I don't think I
would cheat because that's not my thing, but hey, you do you whatever,
flats You're both obviously you're not teachinganything. In order to teach right
and wrong, which is the firsttask of the parent, you have to
(07:21):
teach from a position of authority.Need to know how to establish that authority
in a loving way, not ina fear based way. And again that's
a big focus of my book,The Class of Parenting. One more on
this. So we just talked alittle bit from the perspective of the child.
(07:41):
I want to talk just briefly,from the perspective of the adults,
or the people who are supposed tobe the adults. And what I want
to use to frame this conversation isthe agreement that Northwestern University just made with
the protesting students there. And inthis agreement there are a couple of things.
The university says that they're going tore establish an advisory committee about the
(08:05):
way the university invests, and they'regoing to put students on that committee.
Another thing they say they're going todo is they're going to create a building,
an actual building, to put anArab student group. And then they
say they are going to fund thetuition for five Palestinian students. They don't
(08:26):
say anything about you know, theyou know Jewish students, let's say,
and it seems to me that thatwhat Northwestern University is doing is exactly the
opposite of what doctor Leonard Sachs wouldtell them to do. Well. One
of the main themes that I talkabout in my book is how there has
(08:48):
been a transfer of authority from parentsto kids over the last thirty years,
and that transfer of authority to kidsletting kids de sign things that years ago
the parents would have decided it isreally has really been harmful to kids.
It's not a guess. So onevery concrete example fat kids. In nineteen
(09:09):
seventy one, four percent of kidswere obese in this country. Today,
more than twenty percent of kids areobese in this country, a fivefold increase.
Why. Well, there's a bunchof reasons why, and I'd vote
a chapter it's understanding those. Butone of those is parents letting kids decide
what's for supper. And I sharea conversation I had after I spoke to
(09:31):
parents in Chaplica on New York,which is a suburb north of New York
City. My husband and wife madea healthy, nutritious supper and son and
daughter came home. They said,yuck, we don't eat that. We
just ordered pizza. And so Dadgot out his Domino's app and son ordered
pizza that his specifications, with hispreferred toppings, and daughter ordered a personal
(09:52):
pizza with her preferred toppings. AndI said to Dad, why'd you do
that? Why didn't you just tellthem this is what's for supper. And
he said, well, believe inusing starvation as a means of punishment.
I said, look, they're notgoing to starve. Fifty years ago,
if mom made a healthy, nutritioussupper and the kids didn't like it,
she did not run out and buythem a pizza. She would say,
this is what's for supper. Ifyou don't like it, you can go
to bed hungary. But today manyparents let kids designe what's for supper.
(10:18):
And if you let a twelve yearold decide what's for supper, there are
some twelve year olds who will choosebroccoli, Russ's bout the cabbage, cauliflower,
spins, asparagus, and kel Butthere are many twelve year olds who
will choose pizza, French fise,potato chips, and ice cream. And
that is one part. It's notthe whole story, but it's a significant
part of the answer to the questionof why there has been a fivefold increase
(10:39):
in the proportion of American kids whoare now obese. Yeah, and look,
another part parents, that's right,And another part is probably those same
parents not telling the kids to getoff the computer screen. We're talking with
doctor Leonard Zachs his book The Collapseof Parenting, How we hurt our kids
when we treat them like grown ups. He's actually written a bunch of really
(11:01):
excellent books and you can see themall at Leonard Sachs. That's sax dot
com. And we're going to switchgears now, by the way, because
just tell me briefly, you've gota new edition of this book coming out,
because what because things have gotten alot worse in a sense, that
(11:22):
Collapse of Parenting was a prophecy thatif parents don't regain their authority, the
culture is going to go off thedeep end. And that's pretty much what's
happened over the last eight years.So the publisher invited me to write a
new edition, which comes out inOctober, where we talk about how much
worse things have gotten and what parentsneed to do to reclaim their authority in
(11:43):
a loving way. Not a fearbased way in order to help their kids
to thrive and force and fors otherpotential. All right, we're talking with
doctor Leonard Sacks, and we havefive or six minutes left, and I
want to get to this other thing. You wrote a note the other day
titled the end of transgender Craziness witha question mark at the end and just
(12:05):
an interesting time. I'm going tojump right into this. So there was
a study done by doctor Hillary CassCiss in England, former president of the
Royal College of Pediatrics, and I'mquoting from you, to review all the
research on transgender kids and issue areport and recommendations. The report came out
(12:26):
to just give us what you thinkwe need to know. Briefly about the
content of the report, and thenwe'll move on to how the medical establishment
is reacting and then to how societyis reacting to doctor Cass. Sure,
So before doctor Cass, transgender activistswould cite their studies showing how great it
(12:46):
is when kids transition, and opponentslike myself would site our studies and case
histories of kids who regretted transitioning,and we were deadlocked. Well, Hillary
Cass spent four years in her teamspent four years reviewing every study from every
country on the planet, in everypossible circumstance, interviewing kids all across the
(13:07):
spectrum, and issued their comprehensive reportthree hundred and eighty eight pages, as
in addition to six scholarly reviews ofall the literature, and they said stop.
The evidence does not support medical transitionfor kids under eighteen. They did
not look at people eighteen and over. But the evidence shows no evidence of
(13:28):
benefit of hormone blockers or cross sexhormones or surgical intervention of any kind for
kids under eighteen. It needs tostop. And their report was so comprehensive
and so well done that the NationalHealth Service in England has immediately implemented it
and has said there will be nomore cross sex hormones, no more puberty
(13:50):
blockers. So England is joining Swedenand Finland among European countries that have said,
look, the evidence doesn't support it, We're not going to allow it.
It's time to stop. Do youthis is a tangential question, but
do you see any possible nuanced differencein the answer between let's say seventeen and
(14:13):
eighteen year olds versus twelve and thirteenyear olds, or do you think the
answer is the same. No,for seventeen year olds, I would say
the answer is exactly the same asit is for twelve year olds. Look
in every state in the United States, a seventeen year old cannot get a
tattoo without their parents' consent. Ichecked that there's no state that allows a
(14:33):
seventeen year old to get a tattoowithout their parents' consent. It is crazy
for a seventeen year old to beallowed to transition and begin opposite sex hormones
without their parents' consent. That isa much more serious change than getting a
tattoo. It is much less reversible, we now know. We didn't know
(14:54):
that until a few years ago.But it is not reversible the effects of
these medications. So yeah, ifwe're not going to allow seventeen year olds
to get a tattoo without their parents'consent, we should not allow them to
transition. What about with a parent'sconsent of their sex with it? What
about with a parent's consent? Again, what we've learned is that a lot
of these seventeen year olds are strugglingwith anxiety or depression. They're confused.
(15:22):
I myself was involved in the casewhere a teenage girl was depressed and she
saw a TikTok video that said onlygirls are depressed. If you transition to
being a boy, you won't bedepressed. Obviously, this is nonsense.
There's plenty of boys who are depressed. But she believed it and wanted to
transition, and even if her parentsagreed, they are mistaken. As doctor
(15:46):
Cash pointed out in her report,most of the guidance is based on a
single Dutchess study from the nineteen ninetieswhich explicitly excluded any kid with any psychiatric
disorder and any kid who didn't havejersure prior to onset of purity. In
other words, the great majority ofcases we're seeing, which is teenagers with
(16:07):
anxiety and depression who want to transition, would have been excluded from the one
and only study that is used asthe basis for these recommendations because the Dutch
scientists thirty years ago realized if akid decides at fourteen that she's actually a
boy, look that's probably something elsegoing on, and so the whole science
(16:32):
has no foundation. We're talking withdoctors should be experimenting on your kids.
We have no research to show thatthese interventions are any benefit for that teenager.
We're talking with doctor Leonard Sachs's authorof, among other things, Why
Gender Matters. I have literally oneminute left. Doctor. I wonder if
you could just take a moment andtell us this is sort of non medical.
(16:55):
But what the reaction to doctor Cassafter writing this report has been in
public in England. Well, youshared with me a story that she can't
take public transportation anymore because people wantto attack her. But generally it's been
very well received, even that transgenderactivists in England have been very muted in
(17:17):
Most of them have been muted intheir criticism. Was one activist who claimed
falsely that she had left studies outof her review. She did not.
Her review was comprehensive. But Ithink it's quite telling that the National Health
Service, the official government agency thatadministers health insurance across England, has said
(17:37):
yeah, we're convinced we're doing this. Yeah. Remarkable, truly comprehensive,
And the NHS is not exactly aconservative organization for them to take a step
to go to move so aggressively,so quickly, so dramatically, changing every
thing they've been doing for the lastseveral years. They must have found this
(17:59):
report or to be as credible asa report could ever be. Yeah,
and it really illustrates how the UnitedStates is an outlier were our leading organizations
are very far leftist center, unfortunatelydriven by ideology more than by evidence.
And you know, I think wegot to wrap it up here, but
I would say there may be anaspect of this that ties into what we
(18:22):
were talking about before, with adultsletting children make the decisions, and maybe
that's part of what's going on too. Doctor Leonard Sachs's website is Leonard Sachs.
That's sax dot com. You cansee his books, you can read
about him, and all this ison my blog. If you miss any
of it, if you go toRosskominsky dot com links to everything we talked
about today. Doc, always sogood to talk to you. Thank you
(18:44):
very very much for taking time outof your schedule for us. Thanks again
for inviting me
Doctor Leonard Sachs has an MD,has a PhD. He graduated from MIT
when he was nineteen uh and he'sa very interesting thinker and writer, broadly
speaking in the area of raising childrenand the differences between boys and girls.
And you can read a lot moreat Leonardsachs dot com and that's Leonard sax
(00:25):
dot com. We're going to talkabout a couple broad topics today. So
Doc, first, thanks for makingtime. I know you're busy and much
in demand, so I appreciate thatyou're back on the show with me in
writing me, so I want toactually start with what we hadn't planned on
talking about, but I wanted toask you, in the context of someone
who has written about raising children,and in the context of your book called
(00:49):
The Collapse of Parenting, what doyou make of the protests on college campuses
around the country. And I'm notasking you for a political opinion or a
view about what Israel or anything aboutthat. I'm asking you as a psychologist
and an expert on raising kids.So in my book The Collapse of Parenting,
I begin by talking about the cultureof disrespect and I talk about how
(01:15):
American kids are now immersed in aculture from the Disney Channel to Nickelodeon,
most popular TikTok videos and YouTube videos. A culture that teaches them that it's
cute and funny to be disrespectful toone another, to be disrespectful to parents.
And I think that's what we're seeingwhen you actually watch the videos of
these kids at Columbia and at othercollege campuses. They really think they're cool.
(01:42):
They really think they're cool for beingdefined and disrespectful at ignoring what the
authorities say. And again, wecan put the politics, we can discuss
the politics separately, but what's ofinterest from a psychological perspective is how these
kids perceive them so else as beingcool, as being heroic because they are
(02:05):
defying authority. That defying authority isby itself virtuous in the minds of these
kids, and that really reflects whatI'm talking about in the collapse of parenting.
These kids have not been taught torespect or honor authority, or even
to be charitable to the opinions oftheir elders, or even to listen to
them. On the contrary, theythink they know it all at twenty years
(02:29):
of age, and they have nointerest in what the grown ups have to
say, they assume that they knowbetter, all right, So I'm gonna
play devil's advocate a little bit.So, I mean, I basically agree
with you, but I'm gonna playdevil's advocate in the sense of saying,
but, doctor, is that reallynew? I mean, it seems to
me I wasn't conscious of the newswhen I was just a little kid,
(02:53):
when the protests against the Vietnam Warwere going on, including at Colombia,
including other places, and those people, you know, the hippies and those
students at the time, they alsothought they knew at all, and they
also had no respect for authority,and they also didn't want to hear what
any old person had to say,old meaning like over forty And so is
(03:15):
this actually something different? And ifso, how is it different? Well,
I think it's different in the extentto which it is prevalent the student
unrest beginning at University California, Berkeleyin the early sixties and then spreading it
to other campuses throughout the sixties.When you actually read the historians, it
(03:38):
was a tiny fraction of college studentseven at those colleges, and very little
sympathy from the same age kids elsewhere. Remember we're talking nineteen sixty eight.
We're talking about the era of theAndy Griffith Show, where the Andy Griffith
Show was the most popular TV showfor teenagers. The Andy Griffith Show is
(04:01):
a show where Andy Sheriff. Andyis knowledgeable, competent, reliable, productive,
worthy of respect and respect it andneed all the main adults on the
shows of that era. My threesons the Dick Van Dykes Show are knowledgeable,
competent, and worthy of respect.In writing my book The Collapse of
(04:25):
Parenting, I reviewed the one hundredand fifty most popular TV shows in the
United States right now to see howmany of them consistently or at least occasionally
depict a parent as knowledgeable, competent, and responsible. Out of one hundred
and fifty shows, I found one, Blue Blood starring Tom Selleck, which
at least occasionally depicts a parent ascompetent. Blue Bloods is now a unique
(04:46):
outlier in American television. Much moretypical American show would be Modern Family,
where the straight dad is always abumbling idiot is three kids are wiser and
more insightful than their stupid dad.The Disney Channel, you've got shows like
with the blog where the father,supposedly a school psychologist, a child psychologists,
knows nothing about what kids want orwhat kids need. The talking dog
(05:08):
is always wiser and more insightful thanthe dumb dad or Disney Channel show Live
in Maddie, where the two girlsare very different, but they agree that
their mother, also supposedly a schoolof psychologist, knows nothing about the behavior
or motivation of teenagers. So Ithink the difference is that in the nineteen
sixties, definant and disrespectful young peoplewe're seen as an aberration as unusual.
(05:32):
Today, defined and disrespectful young peopleare pretty much the norm, and they
don't see themselves as being outside themainstream. On the contrary, they insist
that they are the mainstream. SoI think there's been a big cultural shift
in how we perceive defiant and disrespectilkids. So I think you're right,
(05:54):
and I think speak for me personally, I think I'm more part of the
problem. I've been more part ofthe problem than part of the solution.
I find one of my kids inparticular, not so much the other one,
but a little disrespectful to me.And I hadn't thought about this before,
but the way he interacts with hisfriends and they interact with him.
(06:14):
They are very disrespectful to each other. I mean, they're laughing about it,
they're joking about it, but theytalk to each other in ways that
you know, when I was akid, even if I was RAS and
a friend of mine, I wouldn'thave talked to him like that. So
it's an interesting it's an interesting thing. And I think that I have done
a bad job making my kid afraidof me. I really do. I've
(06:36):
been working on it, you know, But yeah, I don't agree that.
Look, good parenting is not aboutmaking your kids afraid of you.
I don't agree with that at all. But I do think that good parenting
requires kids to respect you. Respect. It's a better way to put it,
a very different true and kids needto learn to respect their parents because
(06:59):
as a parent you a unique job. You've got to teach your kid right
and wrong, and that requires thatyou teach from a position of authority.
You know, if you're talking toyour kid about not cheating on a test
and you say, well, youknow, personally, I don't think I
would cheat because that's not my thing, but hey, you do you whatever,
flats You're both obviously you're not teachinganything. In order to teach right
and wrong, which is the firsttask of the parent, you have to
(07:21):
teach from a position of authority.Need to know how to establish that authority
in a loving way, not ina fear based way. And again that's
a big focus of my book,The Class of Parenting. One more on
this. So we just talked alittle bit from the perspective of the child.
(07:41):
I want to talk just briefly,from the perspective of the adults,
or the people who are supposed tobe the adults. And what I want
to use to frame this conversation isthe agreement that Northwestern University just made with
the protesting students there. And inthis agreement there are a couple of things.
The university says that they're going tore establish an advisory committee about the
(08:05):
way the university invests, and they'regoing to put students on that committee.
Another thing they say they're going todo is they're going to create a building,
an actual building, to put anArab student group. And then they
say they are going to fund thetuition for five Palestinian students. They don't
(08:26):
say anything about you know, theyou know Jewish students, let's say,
and it seems to me that thatwhat Northwestern University is doing is exactly the
opposite of what doctor Leonard Sachs wouldtell them to do. Well. One
of the main themes that I talkabout in my book is how there has
(08:48):
been a transfer of authority from parentsto kids over the last thirty years,
and that transfer of authority to kidsletting kids de sign things that years ago
the parents would have decided it isreally has really been harmful to kids.
It's not a guess. So onevery concrete example fat kids. In nineteen
(09:09):
seventy one, four percent of kidswere obese in this country. Today,
more than twenty percent of kids areobese in this country, a fivefold increase.
Why. Well, there's a bunchof reasons why, and I'd vote
a chapter it's understanding those. Butone of those is parents letting kids decide
what's for supper. And I sharea conversation I had after I spoke to
(09:31):
parents in Chaplica on New York,which is a suburb north of New York
City. My husband and wife madea healthy, nutritious supper and son and
daughter came home. They said,yuck, we don't eat that. We
just ordered pizza. And so Dadgot out his Domino's app and son ordered
pizza that his specifications, with hispreferred toppings, and daughter ordered a personal
(09:52):
pizza with her preferred toppings. AndI said to Dad, why'd you do
that? Why didn't you just tellthem this is what's for supper. And
he said, well, believe inusing starvation as a means of punishment.
I said, look, they're notgoing to starve. Fifty years ago,
if mom made a healthy, nutritioussupper and the kids didn't like it,
she did not run out and buythem a pizza. She would say,
this is what's for supper. Ifyou don't like it, you can go
to bed hungary. But today manyparents let kids designe what's for supper.
(10:18):
And if you let a twelve yearold decide what's for supper, there are
some twelve year olds who will choosebroccoli, Russ's bout the cabbage, cauliflower,
spins, asparagus, and kel Butthere are many twelve year olds who
will choose pizza, French fise,potato chips, and ice cream. And
that is one part. It's notthe whole story, but it's a significant
part of the answer to the questionof why there has been a fivefold increase
(10:39):
in the proportion of American kids whoare now obese. Yeah, and look,
another part parents, that's right,And another part is probably those same
parents not telling the kids to getoff the computer screen. We're talking with
doctor Leonard Zachs his book The Collapseof Parenting, How we hurt our kids
when we treat them like grown ups. He's actually written a bunch of really
(11:01):
excellent books and you can see themall at Leonard Sachs. That's sax dot
com. And we're going to switchgears now, by the way, because
just tell me briefly, you've gota new edition of this book coming out,
because what because things have gotten alot worse in a sense, that
(11:22):
Collapse of Parenting was a prophecy thatif parents don't regain their authority, the
culture is going to go off thedeep end. And that's pretty much what's
happened over the last eight years.So the publisher invited me to write a
new edition, which comes out inOctober, where we talk about how much
worse things have gotten and what parentsneed to do to reclaim their authority in
(11:43):
a loving way. Not a fearbased way in order to help their kids
to thrive and force and fors otherpotential. All right, we're talking with
doctor Leonard Sacks, and we havefive or six minutes left, and I
want to get to this other thing. You wrote a note the other day
titled the end of transgender Craziness witha question mark at the end and just
(12:05):
an interesting time. I'm going tojump right into this. So there was
a study done by doctor Hillary CassCiss in England, former president of the
Royal College of Pediatrics, and I'mquoting from you, to review all the
research on transgender kids and issue areport and recommendations. The report came out
(12:26):
to just give us what you thinkwe need to know. Briefly about the
content of the report, and thenwe'll move on to how the medical establishment
is reacting and then to how societyis reacting to doctor Cass. Sure,
So before doctor Cass, transgender activistswould cite their studies showing how great it
(12:46):
is when kids transition, and opponentslike myself would site our studies and case
histories of kids who regretted transitioning,and we were deadlocked. Well, Hillary
Cass spent four years in her teamspent four years reviewing every study from every
country on the planet, in everypossible circumstance, interviewing kids all across the
(13:07):
spectrum, and issued their comprehensive reportthree hundred and eighty eight pages, as
in addition to six scholarly reviews ofall the literature, and they said stop.
The evidence does not support medical transitionfor kids under eighteen. They did
not look at people eighteen and over. But the evidence shows no evidence of
(13:28):
benefit of hormone blockers or cross sexhormones or surgical intervention of any kind for
kids under eighteen. It needs tostop. And their report was so comprehensive
and so well done that the NationalHealth Service in England has immediately implemented it
and has said there will be nomore cross sex hormones, no more puberty
(13:50):
blockers. So England is joining Swedenand Finland among European countries that have said,
look, the evidence doesn't support it, We're not going to allow it.
It's time to stop. Do youthis is a tangential question, but
do you see any possible nuanced differencein the answer between let's say seventeen and
(14:13):
eighteen year olds versus twelve and thirteenyear olds, or do you think the
answer is the same. No,for seventeen year olds, I would say
the answer is exactly the same asit is for twelve year olds. Look
in every state in the United States, a seventeen year old cannot get a
tattoo without their parents' consent. Ichecked that there's no state that allows a
(14:33):
seventeen year old to get a tattoowithout their parents' consent. It is crazy
for a seventeen year old to beallowed to transition and begin opposite sex hormones
without their parents' consent. That isa much more serious change than getting a
tattoo. It is much less reversible, we now know. We didn't know
(14:54):
that until a few years ago.But it is not reversible the effects of
these medications. So yeah, ifwe're not going to allow seventeen year olds
to get a tattoo without their parents'consent, we should not allow them to
transition. What about with a parent'sconsent of their sex with it? What
about with a parent's consent? Again, what we've learned is that a lot
of these seventeen year olds are strugglingwith anxiety or depression. They're confused.
(15:22):
I myself was involved in the casewhere a teenage girl was depressed and she
saw a TikTok video that said onlygirls are depressed. If you transition to
being a boy, you won't bedepressed. Obviously, this is nonsense.
There's plenty of boys who are depressed. But she believed it and wanted to
transition, and even if her parentsagreed, they are mistaken. As doctor
(15:46):
Cash pointed out in her report,most of the guidance is based on a
single Dutchess study from the nineteen ninetieswhich explicitly excluded any kid with any psychiatric
disorder and any kid who didn't havejersure prior to onset of purity. In
other words, the great majority ofcases we're seeing, which is teenagers with
(16:07):
anxiety and depression who want to transition, would have been excluded from the one
and only study that is used asthe basis for these recommendations because the Dutch
scientists thirty years ago realized if akid decides at fourteen that she's actually a
boy, look that's probably something elsegoing on, and so the whole science
(16:32):
has no foundation. We're talking withdoctors should be experimenting on your kids.
We have no research to show thatthese interventions are any benefit for that teenager.
We're talking with doctor Leonard Sachs's authorof, among other things, Why
Gender Matters. I have literally oneminute left. Doctor. I wonder if
you could just take a moment andtell us this is sort of non medical.
(16:55):
But what the reaction to doctor Cassafter writing this report has been in
public in England. Well, youshared with me a story that she can't
take public transportation anymore because people wantto attack her. But generally it's been
very well received, even that transgenderactivists in England have been very muted in
(17:17):
Most of them have been muted intheir criticism. Was one activist who claimed
falsely that she had left studies outof her review. She did not.
Her review was comprehensive. But Ithink it's quite telling that the National Health
Service, the official government agency thatadministers health insurance across England, has said
(17:37):
yeah, we're convinced we're doing this. Yeah. Remarkable, truly comprehensive,
And the NHS is not exactly aconservative organization for them to take a step
to go to move so aggressively,so quickly, so dramatically, changing every
thing they've been doing for the lastseveral years. They must have found this
(17:59):
report or to be as credible asa report could ever be. Yeah,
and it really illustrates how the UnitedStates is an outlier were our leading organizations
are very far leftist center, unfortunatelydriven by ideology more than by evidence.
And you know, I think wegot to wrap it up here, but
I would say there may be anaspect of this that ties into what we
(18:22):
were talking about before, with adultsletting children make the decisions, and maybe
that's part of what's going on too. Doctor Leonard Sachs's website is Leonard Sachs.
That's sax dot com. You cansee his books, you can read
about him, and all this ison my blog. If you miss any
of it, if you go toRosskominsky dot com links to everything we talked
about today. Doc, always sogood to talk to you. Thank you
(18:44):
very very much for taking time outof your schedule for us. Thanks again
for inviting me
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