The commercial scam of transgender treatments

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next: a creative new approach to protecting children and adults from transgender procedures.

Back in April, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey invoked a state law called the Merchandising Practices Act.

That’s a Missouri law that protects consumers from unfair or deceptive businesses. It normally comes into play for cases involving scams or fraud. But now Bailey is using this anti-fraud law to regulate transgender medical interventions.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Under his emergency rule, individuals who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria would be required to attend therapy sessions for 18 months and be screened for other mental health issues before pursuing hormone injections or surgery.

Well, as you can imagine, the opposition was swift.

KSDK: A Saint Louis County judge has just granted a temporary restraining order preventing an emergency rule on transgender care from taking effect. The ACLU filed the lawsuit to block it. The restraining order is in effect until May 15th unless it's extended by the court.

Audio there from newschannel 5 in St. Louis. With a temporary restraining order in place, a St. Louis court is set to hear oral arguments later in June on the merits of the case.

What’s at stake if this rule goes through?

Joining us now to talk about it is Walt Heyer. He’s a man who at age 42 agreed to so-called sex reassignment surgery to live as a female. Eight years after that he de-transitioned having realized that the destructive surgery in no way resolved his distress.

Since then, he became an author and speaker drawing attention to the widespread reality of what he did and why he regrets it.

REICHARD: Good morning, Walt. It’s good to have you back.

WALT HAYER: Good morning.

REICHARD: Walt, when we spoke back in 2020, you said that a doctor diagnosed you with gender dysphoria at age 40 and you underwent sex reassignment surgery as a result. Can you tell us how your doctor came to that conclusion?

HEYER: Yeah, that's an excellent question. My doctor was the guy who wrote the standards of care, drafted him in 1979. He was the author of the standards of care that are in place today. So I think diagnosing gender dysphoria, to be polite, is medical malpractice, I have worked with 1000s of people and I know my own story quite well. And nobody has gender dysphoria. This is this is where this went off the rails. People are suffering from comorbid disorders, and not gender dysphoria. And so this whole thing about gender dysphoria is really nothing but a social contagion if they don't have the kids I've worked with as young as 10 years old men is older 73. And once we work with them, we find out that they never had gender dysphoria, but we can sit back and find out what caused them to begin to identify this way. And it has nothing to do with their gender has nothing to do with gender dysphoria. It has everything to do with being addicted to something on the internet. They were playing sort of dress up games, because it was popular with their friends. They changed the DSM in 2013, from identity disorder to dysphoria. And that was when this whole thing cracked open, and we begin to see this explosion, because when you have a diagnosis that tells you there's a disorder then the therapist is required to look for the disorder. The comorbid disorders are body dysmorphia, is it depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, are they do they on the autism scale? What what is going on this? So once you find these things out, and you realize they're more associated with some underlying disorder, you realize this is not gender dysphoria.

REICHARD: Okay so that’s kind of a sketch of diagnoses and what’s going wrong. Now you mentioned that what happened to you was medical malpractice. But here in my state of Missouri, the Attorney General is saying doctors like the one you had, they are committing something else, namely, consumer fraud. Does that sound like a stretch to you?

HEYER: I think any anytime the lawmakers can find a way to provide anybody or protect anybody from these reckless diagnosis, we're doing the right thing. And and I think they're creative in doing this. I think I'm proud of them for diving into this because what they've tried before, in many states hasn't work. And so I think it's quite brilliant. And every, every time somebody goes into, quote, gender clinic and is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, I think they're committing fraud, and they're sending them into medical treatments, that they do not need medical treatments that by the way, all these children and their treating will never be able to be parents, they won't be able to produce the boys sperm, or girls bear children. So this is sort of an abortion 2.0 By giving them hormone blockers that prevent them from being able to produce children.

REICHARD: Another thing that’s significant about this Missouri law is that it wouldn’t limit the ban to only children, but ban transgender procedures for people of all ages. Is this the best way to deal with the transgender issue, or is there a better approach you can think of?

HEYER: Well, I think it’s the best way right now. You know, I'm fortunate in working with people who contact me who have regret. And so they're willing to listen to what I have to say. But the people that are going into the clinics today oftentimes have been convinced that they're suffering and need hormone therapy, and so forth. So we have to approach it in a different way than I do from the people who are admitting that they have regrettable outcomes. So this is really a creative approach. I think it's an excellent and by the way, I had my surgery, as you mentioned it 42 I would have liked to have had that law in place to protect me.

REICHARD: Well you mention comorbidities and other underlying problems that are not uncovered prior to doing life-altering surgeries and alterations on a person’s body. What are some of the other underlying disorders have you found? You mentioned a few of them but what are some of the other ones. And what should doctors do about those things?

HEYER: Many of the individuals are just simply cross dressers. You know, in the old days, they called him transvestites. And if you were a transvestite, you know, you didn't get hormones, you didn't get surgery. So they, they had to get creative and give it a new name, which one time it was transsexual. Now it's transgender, they keep changing the names, to try to stay ahead of the lawmakers so that they can keep pumping hormones and giving people surgery who by the way, don't need them. And I've always said that, I will stop doing this when people stop writing me at my sex change. regret.com I've got over 10,000 emails in my inbox. Over 2 million people have come to my website, it's still a big problem. There's the regret is huge. And that's why these places that are putting things into place to protect people are so badly needed. And anything that lawmakers can do to prevent anyone from having access to these hormones and surgeries, is absolutely the best thing to do because the regrettable outcomes have been coming since 1979. That's the first time they were reported. And they're continuing to escalate, the more surgeries they do the more regrettable outcomes. And so yeah, I'm proud of them for diving into that.

REICHARD: Walt, anything else listeners should know about this situation in Missouri and then the much larger struggle over transgenderism in this country?

HEYER: Well, I’m celebrating what Missouri is doing. I think there's a huge problem with the way that our media has been pushing these ideas and getting people to think that they can change genders. By the way, not one person in the history of mankind has ever biologically changed your gender. The only thing we've done, these people who identify as transgender are just identifying as transgender or in a different gender. They haven't made a different gender in anyone yet.

REICHARD: Walt Heyer is an author and speaker who helps people who want to de-transition. You can find his work at sex-change-regret-dot-com. Walt, thank you for your time.

HEYER: Anytime. Thank you for having me on again.

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