NC Family Staff | August 17, 2024 | SHARE: 
It used to be that medicine was guided by a simple principle: do no harm. Now, as philosophical agendas are determining more within the practice of medicine, some in the medical community have started allowing harmful procedures, such as gender transitions, on children. In response, other medical professionals across the country are rising up to protect children and the integrity of the medical profession.
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Dianna Lightfoot and Emily Saunders from NC Physicians for Freedom to talk about the “Doctors Protecting Children Declaration” that they recently signed and their work to prevent children from being harmed by transgender “care.”
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TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. What if your elementary school child or grandchild decided he or she wanted to change genders? What if your family doctor, or simply a doctor referred by a school counselor, said they recommended puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and even surgeries, and you as their parent had no say in the matter, it’s a nightmare that too many parents have had to live through due to a trend in American medicine that is pushing a gender ideology in the face of a lack of evidence that it’s helping children and mounting evidence that it’s causing harm. Fortunately, an impressive array of medical professionals and groups are calling on prominent medical organizations to cease harmful interventions on children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. One of the first organizations to sign the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration was NC Physicians for Freedom. Well, we’re joined today by their policy director, Dianna Lightfoot, and their network director, Emily Saunders, to discuss what the declaration says and why it’s important. Dianna Lightfoot and Emily Saunders, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: Thank you.
EMILY SAUNDERS: Thank you so much for having us, Traci.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Tell us first of all about this Doctors Protecting Children Declaration. What is the crux of it?
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: The declaration was initiated by the American College of Pediatricians, and then it was joined by medical organizations around the country, representing 75,000 physicians. The goal was to confirm or affirm the fact that there are only two distinct sexes, and that that determination is made at conception, and that recognizing those differences are critical for good medical practice, that gender cannot be changed by emotion or feeling, and that most children with gender confusion resolve that during puberty, and also one of the most important aspects was to document medical information on the harms of what is called gender affirming care.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Okay, so was there anything specific that happened? Or is it just that this trend doesn’t seem to be going away? Why the declaration now?
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: There were several things. There was this national trend or agenda that is becoming very mainstream, or has become very mainstream, and the gender dysphoria issues and all of the surrounding promotion of it is presented as fact. That was very concerning to all of these medical entities. But I think the release of the Cass Review out of England, commissioned by the British Department of Health and then the World Professional Association of Transgender Leaders in England. That release of the leak of the tapes from that organization agreeing that children were not able to provide informed consent and that they were practicing pseudoscience. At about the same time, the Cass Review came out and said, there is weak to no evidence that these sorts of interventions have any impact on the mental health and well-being of children.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: We’ve heard a lot of talk about the fact that countries in Europe, who we traditionally, I think, think are more liberal on some of these issues, are far less liberal or becoming that way. Tell us, if you would a little bit more about that Cass Review and how important that was.
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: I think that, in conjunction with the information that Dr Miriam Grossman provided in her book, Lost in Transnation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness, and then with the growing incidents of legal issues around transgender, we call it mutilation. The Cass Report put a punctuation mark on this, because, not only did it point out what she called remarkably weak evidence to support puberty blockers or hormone treatments had any effect on the mental well being of children, but the report went on to say there are many interventions, including addressing the comorbidities that probably almost always are existing and dealing with other emotional disturbances, and also the peer pressure, because the social pressure, the cultural influence, has driven numbers of those identifying with gender dysphoria from a very low percentage to, in some countries, over 50%. But then you have the Scandinavian countries, England, Scotland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, recognizing that they were not seeing a significant impact on these actual medical treatments, they were actually seeing it worsen, and so they agreed with the Cass Report.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Right, right. Well, thank you Dianna. Emily, what kind of response have you all seen to this declaration?
EMILY SAUNDERS: Across the country and the world, we’ve seen a huge response. There have been millions, I think, of re shares and views, especially when Elon Musk re shared it on Twitter, that kind of begun the flurry of it just being shared everywhere, just all over conservative media, but also a little bit in the larger media, maybe not so much with the legacy media that we are used to calling media, but it was shared so many different places, many thousands of times, and I think that that is a testimony of how important and timely the declaration is.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Does it surprise you that it was found to be, I guess, so refreshing or so radical by so many people. It seems common sense. I think to most of us.
EMILY SAUNDERS: We are so used to a narrative coming from the accepted, I use that in quotation marks, medical professionals and organizations that speak contrary to the declaration that seeing so many medical professionals and organizations speak out with the truth of what’s actually happening to children is maybe something that a lot of people found refreshing, and we’re grateful that the truth is being spoken by medical professionals in such a direct, profound, and documented manner.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: You know, I was interested to see that the NC Physicians for Freedom, for a while, was the only state specific medical organization to sign on to this declaration. Who is NC Physicians for Freedom? And why do you suppose that you guys were on the forefront of that in North Carolina.
EMILY SAUNDERS: North Carolina Physicians for Freedom was created and began in a waiting room of a local physician’s office here in Winston Salem, and it was comprised, of the time, about 15 medical providers at the height of Covid, at the beginning of mandates. Sitting around, each person feeling that they were maybe crazy, but definitely not okay with the way that things were going, and quickly found, while we went around in a circle and shared concerns, that everyone’s concerns were similar. And those four primary concerns that became a part of our mission statement are the right to treat, informed consent, respecting opinions and patient rights, and medical privacy. And this issue speaks directly to pretty much all of them, the right to treat, also the refusal to treat, which it’s interesting that on some issues, you’re able to do that, but on this one, it seems that providers are often coerced, if not forced, to go along with the narrative and the accepted treatment. Informed consent. Parents and children are not receiving full informed consent about the long-term consequences of these treatments. And respecting opinions. I think that’s exactly what the declaration is. It’s a counter opinion to the accepted norm that these larger pediatrics, especially organizations, have been pronouncing. And patient rights. This truly is a right of the patient to actually know and understand what’s going on and to be treated for the issues they’re having, not with band aids that can’t ever be removed. And how did North Carolina Physicians for Freedom be the first to sign on? Dianna Lightfoot, our policy director, has the most incredible connections to so many other organizations nationwide, medical organizations and so forth, and she has really built an incredible network that we get to be a part of at North Carolina Physicians for Freedom. So I give all of that to Dianna, and I’m sure she can share a little bit more about the specifics of those connections.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: All right. Well, let’s do that. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re seeing, Dianna, with your connections, are you seeing some hope? Are we starting to see a shift in thinking in this regard, as we’ve seen, of course, in Europe?
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: Yes. So, to build on to what Emily was saying, it is not only that people are coming around. It’s why. Because, as we’ve seen from the Texas Children’s Hospital incident where the whistle blower was not only fired and vilified and made to be the cause of the problem. That is a snapshot of what is going on around the country. Anyone who dares to speak out and talk about what is not a medical treatment, is not gender affirming, it’s gender mutilating. They have been attacked. They have been the point the focus of a personal demolition. So as people stand up with courage, like our amazing network of doctors here in North Carolina, that voice is heard around the nation, and people are not so fearful once someone else has the courage to speak, once someone says we are backed medically factual, scientifically provable, evidence that this is built on emotion is a money driven agenda, and it’s terribly harmful to the health and well-being of our families. It’s amazing how many others say thank you. Thank you, American College, thank you NC Physicians, for leading so we can also speak out.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: So, are we starting to see some benefit for young people and families here in North Carolina that might be different from other states based on the presence of this North Carolina group of physicians?
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: I’d like to say how honored I am to be a part of this network. Yes. You know, research consistently proves that among the top five most respected professionals in the nation are physicians. So, when one speaks out, I’ve had many governors, I’ve had presidential candidates, tell me when we hear from one physician, we listen when we hear from hundreds, we set up and we act so when we address issues, when we are able to speak to issues here, backed by the trust and the reputation of this strong medical community, we are thanked a lot, and our thanks is to the medical professionals who we coordinate and support. But yes, I think it’s making a big difference. And we aren’t stopping with Covid. We’ve gone on to many other issues. This gender dysphoria issue being one of our main topics.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: What about policies? Do we need to cement some policies to put some of this into law?
EMILY SAUNDERS: From the provider standpoint, I do feel that it seems like providers are often walking on a tightrope, and unfortunately, we live in a culture, in a world now where most medicine is run by very large companies and not by practicing physicians. And that’s something that I wish would change, and we would move more in that direction. But meanwhile, those organizations have lots of power over the physicians who work for them, and so physicians that want to practice more with their conscience or even try things that are the right to treat, as is one of our pillars, oftentimes, that can become potentially career ending, because we’ve seen, as Dianna mentioned, lots of people that not only get fired, but then are turned into medical boards and all of that kind of thing. And so the more protections that we can have to allow our physicians to be physicians and to make decisions that are between the doctor and the patient and that relationship that also fit in with ethics, of course, the better that the care that North Carolinians and those elsewhere will receive.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Unfortunately, we’re about out of time now. Where can our listeners go to learn more or to read this Doctors Protecting Children Declaration, and also to learn more about NC Physicians for Freedom?
DIANNA LIGHTFOOT: The Doctors Protecting Children Declaration is at the website American College of Pediatricians. They also have a site on biological integrity, that’s the best I’ve ever seen anywhere, and that addresses these issues also. And for us, you simply search for North Carolina Physicians, or you can contact any of the staff, and we, of course, work with our board very closely. We can answer any questions, and we are an available resource anytime you need it.
TRACI DEVETTE GRIGGS: Well, thank you so much for your good work. Dianna Lightfoot and Emily Saunders with NC Physicians for Freedom. Thank you so much for being with us today on Family Policy Matters.
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