Dr. Cretella on Transgenderism: A Mental Illness Is Not a
Civil Right
Nov 15, 2017
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the exclusive interview:
John Ritchie (TFP): Could
you please give us a little background on your professional training and your
position in the American College of Pediatricians?
Dr. Michelle Cretella, MD: Yes,
certainly. I received my medical degree from the University of
Connecticut and completed my internship and residency in pediatrics at the
Connecticut Children's Medical Center. I did some additional training in
adolescence at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and had
the privilege to practice general pediatrics for fifteen years before going on
full-time with the American College of Pediatricians in advocacy for children.
I am entering my second term as president with that organization.
John Ritchie: You've stated
that the transgender ideology is responsible for large-scale child abuse. Could
you please explain why you call it child abuse?
Dr. Cretella: Essentially,
transgender ideology holds that people can be born into the wrong body: It's
simply not true. We can demonstrate this by looking at twin studies. No
one is born in the wrong body. So to take that lie and essentially indoctrinate
all of our children from preschool forward with that lie, we are destroying
their ability for reality testing.
This is cognitive and psychological abuse. I want to say just a
little more about that. The reason it destroys reality testing is because
most children at age three (pre-school age) can correctly identify themselves
by saying "I am a boy" or "I am a girl" and most children
will not understand that a boy grows into a man and stays a man and that a girl
grows into a woman and stays a woman. So when many seven-year-olds see a man
get into a dress and put on makeup, they may believe that he just became a
woman. The other side is not being honest and not acknowledging that.
This happened most recently in Rocklin, California. It was the
end of the kindergarten school year and the teacher called the whole class
together, at the behest of the boy's parents, and had the children sit down and
she read them two stories. I will call them "gender bending stories."
One was The Red Crayon in which you have a crayon that's actually blue wrapped
in red paper. That primes the kids to think, "Oh, what's on the outside
doesn't have to match the inside."
The next story the teacher read was I Am Jazz, which is about a boy
whose parents helped him impersonate a girl from the age of three. He's
17 now, has his own television program and looks like a girl from the waist
up. After these two stories were finished, a boy (I'll call him Joey)
left the classroom, presumably to use the bathroom and came back in a dress.
The teacher said: "Boys and girls, Joey is actually a girl just like
Jazz. From now on we need to call her Josephine" (again I'm making
the names up). This was very confusing to the other children in kindergarten
and it terrified one girl in particular, which was clear from something that
happened when she was home with her mother. Her mom had wrapped her up after
she had go out of the tub and she was going by the mirror when she saw her hair
slicked back. Then, she burst into tears, saying, "Mommy, am I turning
into a boy? I don't wanna turn into a boy! Joey turned into a girl, am I gonna
turn into a boy?"
Now, I know this because the mother called me. As the president of the
College of Pediatricians I've been outspoken and parents reach out to me. This
mother is being told that she is the one who's crazy and that her daughter is
the one who's having a problematic reaction.
So transgender ideology -- yes, it's child abuse because we are gaslighting
our children. And now that they're thoroughly confused they will think that
they really are the opposite sex and will be sent down a medical pathway.
As they approach puberty, they will be put on puberty blockers and then on
cross-sex hormones. That combination will permanently sterilize most, if
not all, of those children and also puts them at risk for heart disease,
diabetes, and various cancers. If girls have been on testosterone, which is
their sex change hormone, for a full-year, by age 16 they can get a double
mastectomy.
So, gaslighting, pubertal castration and surgical mutilation: It's institutionalized child abuse.
So, gaslighting, pubertal castration and surgical mutilation: It's institutionalized child abuse.
To make matters worse you must realize that prior to transgender
ideology, these children were treated with watchful waiting, because for many
kids it may be a passing phase. Sometimes the girls may just be tomboys.
So with either watchful waiting or family and individual therapy the vast
majority, 75-95% of kids, would accept their biological sex by young adulthood.
This is child abuse!
If the parents find that their child is questioning their sex, if
things on your own at home are not going well, I encourage all parents to seek
out a local therapist who will work with them to find underlying family
dynamics or conflicts. If the only therapist you find locally says, "You
must accept them as transgender," you can reach out to us at bestforchildren.org,
that's our website. We can recommend some therapists who will work with families.
If they're not in the local area, they can even do it by Skype.
John Ritchie: College students are pressured more
and more to let go of reality, accept the transgender narrative and even use
transgender pronouns. If you were in medical school today, how would you
respond to that pressure?
Dr. Cretella: (Laughs.)
That's a good question. I would hope that I would cling to reality and sound
reason. Words matter... biology is reality, not bigotry.
We're at a point now in which we have documented at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. Men and women cannot be treated the same in medicine. Because of these genetic differences women are more prone to autoimmune diseases than men are. We must approach our patients in accordance with their biology, not in accordance with their perceptions which are delusional.
We're at a point now in which we have documented at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. Men and women cannot be treated the same in medicine. Because of these genetic differences women are more prone to autoimmune diseases than men are. We must approach our patients in accordance with their biology, not in accordance with their perceptions which are delusional.
I hope I would be able to respond in that fashion, but it would be very
difficult because just as we are seeing this tyrannical enforcement of newspeak
on our college campuses, it is the same within the highest levels of medicine.
At our office at the American College of Pediatricians, I receive e-mails and
phone calls even from physicians and therapist, psychologists on the left who
are clearly against us because we're pro-life, and they're even LGB[T]
affirming, but they will thank me for speaking out because they say, "We
wish we could, but we can't because we'll lose our jobs. We'll get death
threats."
I receive emails from concerned parents throughout the nation asking me
to review health curricula because it has now become "transphobic" to
teach middle school students that women have ovaries and men have testes.
That's transphobic!
I have not received any death threats. I have been accused of
being the "leader of the skinheads of pediatricians" and a lot of
other things that you wouldn't repeat in polite company. One of my greatest
fans who goes by the name of "Slowly Boiled Frog" has decided that
I'm not even licensed to be a doctor. He or she writes to imply that I'm some
sort of charlatan, or maybe that I did something illegal. So for the
record: Yes, I still am licensed. I've chosen not to do clinical
practice because I believe advocacy requires a full-time commitment.
John Ritchie: Can a person ever be "trapped
in the wrong body"? What does science tell us about this?
Dr. Cretella: The argument, if you can even call
it that -- I'll just call it a claim -- the claim by the activist physicians on
the other side is that when a child persistently and consistently insists that
he (I'll use he for ease of example) is really a girl, well then that's it --
that's how you diagnose transgender. That is proof that they have the
brain of the opposite sex in their body. They say, "We have proof, we have
studies that prove changes or differences between adult transgender brains and
the brains of their biological peers who are not transgender."
Okay, so let's unpack that:
#1. The definition of a delusion is a fixed false belief. So if I
persistently and consistently insist that I am Margaret Thatcher, or
persistently consistently insist that I am a cat, or that I am an amputee
trapped in a normal body -- I am delusional. In fact, there are people
who believe they're amputees trapped in a normal body and they are
appropriately diagnosed as having Body Identity Integrity Disorder, a mouthful,
but you get my drift. So if you want to cut off an arm or a leg you're mentally
ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts and genitals then you are
transgender and you don't have a mental illness. That's completely
unscientific. That's no diagnosis.
#2. Let's talk about the brain studies. There have been
several. Many have found no brain differences, but "we don't talk
about those." There are a few that have found some differences on what's
called functional MRIs and they prove nothing. The reason they prove nothing is
because the brain changes due to behavior. We have documented in numerous
studies that behavior changes the appearance, the physiology and function of
the brain. So to have a few studies that are very small, have never been
replicated, say, "Hey, there are brain differences." More than
likely, the fact that the person has lived transgender is what caused those
differences, if they're even real.
You may ask, "So how do we know, Dr. Cretella, that what you said,
that no one's ever born this way, is true? How do we know that?" If
a brain were somehow the wrong sex, due to factors before birth, every single
identical twin would have the same gender identity all the time, but they
don't.
Why? Identical twins have identical DNA. So if it were in the
genes and solely in the genetic DNA, then 100% of the time they would both be
transgender or both be non-transgender. The best twin study we have shows that
the vast majority do not match. If you have one identical twin who's
[considered] transgender, 72% of the time the other twin is normal. That tells
us that it's post-birth effects that primarily impact your identity --
post-birth effects, not pre-birth.
John Ritchie: If I told you
that my Ford was really a Ferrari, you'd question my mental sanity. So why do
some medical doctors validate the idea that a man can become a woman.
Dr. Cretella: Ideology. Really, it comes down to
an ideology and worldview. I mean, it's been that way since the beginning.
Gender as a term, prior to the 1950s:
#1. Did not refer to people;
#2. Was not in the medical literature.
#2. Was not in the medical literature.
Sexologists were PhDs and MDs in the 50s who were taking people who
believed they were transsexuals (the term was transsexual at the time), mostly
men who wanted to be women, and basically invented the so-called "sex
reassignment surgery." Amongst themselves in the 50s, they said,
"What are we treating? How are we going to justify this?" because
they knew full well even then that sex is in the DNA and that mutilating the
body does not change a person's sex. They basically looked at the word gender,
which meant male and female referring to grammar.
So in the 1950s, one of the sexologists at the time was Dr. John Money.
And they said, "We're gonna take gender and say that for people it means
"the social expression of an internal sex identity." That's what
we're treating. They pulled it out of the air to justify lining their pockets
to do mutilating surgeries. And this is the very same definition that the
activists are using. It has no basis in reality.
John Ritchie: So what you're saying is that even
radical surgery cannot change a man into a woman?
Dr. Cretella: Right,
radical surgery... no. NO surgery will change the DNA which is imprinted in
every single cell of the body. Again, this is a combination of reason and
science. They meld. They go together.
Human sexuality is binary, okay. We know this because in nature, reproduction is the rule and human beings engage in sexual reproduction. You need a man and a woman to do that.
Human sexuality is binary, okay. We know this because in nature, reproduction is the rule and human beings engage in sexual reproduction. You need a man and a woman to do that.
Chromosomes: women are XX, those are the sex chromosomes. Women
have two Xs and men have an X and a Y. Those are genetic markers, they are
genetic markers for female and male respectively -- binary. That's the
rule and it's self-evident. Biological exceptions to the rule do not
invalidate the rule, and by that I am referring to intersex conditions. We live
in an imperfect world. We live in a world with disease and disorder.
There are a variety of very rare biological genetic disorders that
result in disorders of sex development. These individuals have a true
physiological, genetic, biological problem, so it may be appropriate
within those cases to give them surgery or they may need hormones. But
that's a case-by-case basis and they are the exception, not the rule. Why do we
refer to them colloquially as intersex? Because they are between the norms.
Many people with intersex conditions can lead very happy and healthy
lives, but their treatment is very personalized. Someone who identifies as
transgender, however -- that's not a problem in their body. Gender identity...
all identities are in our thoughts and feelings. Those are not hardwired, they
develop and they may be factually wrong or factually correct. Individuals
with disorders of sex development are being used as pawns in the fight for
basically a civil right to a mental illness. There's no such thing as a
civil right to a mental illness, but that is in fact what we are dealing with
in the transgender rights movement.
John Ritchie: Now a lot of liberal professors
claim that the male-female binary is only a social construct, that you grow up
learning that men and women are different, but it's really something that's
entirely fluid. How would you refute that?
Dr. Cretella: Well, we
started to in the last question. Again, to believe that, you have to be
completely ignorant of genetics. There are 6,500 genetic differences
between men and women. Now the fact that it's a binary as I said, comes
down to the fact that the reality is we have sexual reproduction in the human
species and reproduction is the rule in biology. Okay, number one: We have a binary.
To rationalize outside of that, you have to rationalize away the entirety of
medicine, because with 6,500 genetic differences between the two, it impacts
how we treat disease.
Women are not small men! That is how women used to be treated. Science
used to do research predominately on men and then look at women and say,
"Oh, you're just a smaller body mass, so we're gonna treat your heart
attack the same way and your high blood pressure the same way." And
now we're realizing, "Wow! No wonder we had different results with women,
look at this. Now we can prove and understand why!" And there's a big push
to get more women into pharmaceutical studies than ever before because we are
different.
Transgenderism is a social construct. The "fluidity" of sexuality: That's a social construct. They have it exactly backwards. And the word gender, as I said earlier, is nothing more than a linguistic engineering term and should have no place in medicine.
Transgenderism is a social construct. The "fluidity" of sexuality: That's a social construct. They have it exactly backwards. And the word gender, as I said earlier, is nothing more than a linguistic engineering term and should have no place in medicine.
We have biological sex, we have sex differences, some of which are
purely biological and others that develop as a result of nature and nurture.
Women have loads more oxytocin and oxytocin receptors than men do. That is the
hormone that is associated with nurturing. It is released during labor,
breast-feeding and is so key and important in the first three years of the
mother and infant bonding. It's the bonding hormone. Although men
have oxytocin as well, they have far fewer receptors in their brains. Every
organ of the body is "sexed," if you will, genetically speaking and
it's utterly ridiculous to make that assertion.
John Ritchie: So it seems
to me that you're saying that at a very deep level, the transgender movement is
attacking the order that exists in human nature. Would you go that far and say
that human nature is under attack?
Dr. Cretella: Oh,
certainly! If my feelings alone determine who I am, then there really is
no such thing as a man or a woman.
We're essentially promoting doping. Men are doping on estrogen to
become handicapped men. Women are doping on testosterone to become
handicapped men in a sense.
This whole "Oh, what do we do in sports?" I mean, really...
doping is illegal, period. The end! That's it. Giving a woman
testosterone does not make her a man, giving a man estrogen does not make him a
woman, the estrogen makes a man a handicapped man. And the testosterone makes
the women the equivalent of a handicapped man. Well, I shouldn't even say a
handicapped man because you can't change sex.
And in fact, in the Olympics, if a woman were extremely excelling, they
[officials] would be concerned about doping and they would be looking in her
system for testosterone, high levels of it. So this is utterly ludicrous.
In the past, a man puts on a dress, he's wearing drag. Well now, the
drag is no longer made out of cotton and silk. Now the drag is hormones and
surgery: It's still drag!
John Ritchie: It seems to me like it's a
refinement of the radical idea of total equality.
Dr. Cretella: The error is to equate equality with
sameness... they're not. Same does not mean equal. Because we're equal in
human dignity, but being male or female, that is the ultimate diversity we
should be celebrating. There is no greater diversity than female and male. That
is our innate identity and it's written on every cell of our body at the level
of our DNA.
I would agree, we're making the mistake of equality meaning same. If
that's what you believe, then ultimately we're eliminating: There's no
such thing as a woman, there's no such thing as a man.
John Ritchie: Finally, could you say something to
encourage more Americans to stand up for the sacred institution of the family?
Dr.
Cretella: Absolutely. I would say, the natural
family, meaning a loving marriage between a man and a woman, is the most
pro-child institution we have. So if you love children, nurture your marriage
first of all. It's the greatest gift you can give a child. We must stand
up for that, because our children are hurting. Decades, decades of social
science demonstrates that this is the most important thing we can do in terms
of children's physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. It's the
family... it's the family.
