A whistleblower has dropped even more damaging claims against the Missouri Children’s Gender Clinic, where she used to work, saying officials lied to lawmakers about the breast removal surgeries performed there on minors.
Jamie Reed, 42, said on a podcast this week that politicians were kept in the dark about mastectomies in adolescent girls and the age at which they could get male testosterone hormones.
This adds to explosive claims she made last month that doctors at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been drugging trans children despite signs they had mental health issues or had been pressured by other teenagers or social media.
Her claims have fueled a debate about whether on-demand confirmation is the only cure for suicidal trans children and whether the increasingly distributed puberty blockers and hormones are doing more harm than good.
Jamie Reed (above left), 42, revealed in a recorded podcast all about the online attacks she has suffered from the LGBTQ community after exposing the shady mentoring of Missouri trans children
A young woman displays the scars from breast removal surgery she underwent as a teenager and now deeply regrets
Speaking on a Gender Dysphoria Alliance podcast, Reed said lawmakers were misled about whether breast removal procedures or “top surgeries” were performed on children at legislative hearings at the Capitol in Jefferson City.
“The way my clinic was represented to our legislature was that some outright falsehoods were given,” said Reed, who worked as a case manager at the clinic.
“They would go to the legislature and say there’s no surgery on minors … and yet I would be at the clinic knowing they were just looking at the top surgical scars of someone who is 16 or 17 years old healing.”
Reed said they were also duped about the age at which trans teenage girls could start getting testosterone, a male hormone that leads to facial hair, bigger muscles, a deeper voice and a stronger sex drive.
“The age at which people at our center started taking testosterone wasn’t 16 like the standard said, it was 13,” she said
The guidelines stated that people under the age of 16 must have a “compelling and specific reason” to use testosterone, she added.
Reed, who worked at the clinic for four years until November 2022, did not say when those hearings were held or which hospital officials made the false claims. Her attorney, Vernadette Broyles, did not respond to our request for further details.
Likewise, the hospital, which is part of Washington University, did not respond to our emails and calls.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey launched an interagency probe into the hospital after Reed made her initial allegations in The Free Press last month, seeking to restrict the care of transgender youth statewide.
In this week’s podcast, Reed also distanced himself from Republican lawmakers’ push to ban transmedical procedures in many red states this year, saying guidelines should be written by medical experts, not politicians.
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She accused the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which sets guidelines for children’s medical care in the United States, of sticking to an outdated model of gender-affirming care and called for an urgent policy review.
The AAP was designed to collect data from America’s estimated 100 pediatric sex clinics about their patients’ medications and surgeries, and whether treating trans people has eliminated any gender dysphoria and improved their mental health.
“You collect everything and then you can post it online so we can see what’s actually happening,” she said.
The Academy did not respond to our request for comment. Last year, revealed how some AAP members were similarly pushing for a policy rethink, but said they were blocked from raising the issue for debate.
Reed, a queer, tattooed mother of five who is married to a trans man and describes herself as “politically to the left of Bernie Sanders,” was the hospital’s admissions officer between 2018 and November 2022.
The trans clinic at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, part of Washington University, has been at the center of controversy since former employee Jamie Reed exposed what was happening there
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (left) and activist advocate Vernadette Broyles, founder of the Children’s and Parents’ Rights Campaign
The AAP leadership (some of whom can be seen in this undated promotional file image above) has been criticized for hooking trans youth on drugs. The AAP says its guidelines — to bolster the gender a youth chooses, including through drugs, gender-crossing hormones and even surgery — are evidence-based
She took the job believing she was “saving” trans kids, but became disillusioned with what she describes as a conveyor belt that put teenagers on puberty blockers and hormones after only superficial mental health checks.
Gradually, she realized that many of the patients were teenage girls with autism or other mental health problems caught up in a dangerous fad who may very well regret their irreversible procedures, she said.
After four years, she says, she was convinced the clinics were doing “permanent harm” to children and their families, who often had little understanding of the drugs they were being prescribed or their side effects.
Missouri Attorney General Bailey has launched an investigation into the clinic and this week unveiled an emergency rule to extend the time it takes minors to access gender-affirming care.
Children seeking puberty blockers and other trans treatments must complete an 18-month waiting period, 15-hour therapy sessions and treatments for mental health issues before Missouri doctors can give the green light to intervention.
Parents of children treated at the clinic have since come forward and say they have been satisfied with the treatment provided, including the availability of therapists and psychiatrists.
Erin Reed, a prominent female-to-male trans activist, has accused Reed of having a “clear ideological bias” and ignoring the many youth who are seeing their “mental and physical health improve dramatically” thanks to trans medicine.
So-called gender-affirming care includes everything from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones and, in rare cases in trans minors, to surgery. Trans activists, major medical groups in the US and the Biden administration say it can save lives in a suicidal group.
Opponents of trans ideology say that gender is determined at birth and cannot be changed, that medical groups have been hijacked by trans activists, and that politicians must step in and stop parents, doctors or therapists from permanently harming children.
Many are alarmed by the surge in teenage girls with autism and other mental health issues seeking sex-reassignment drugs in recent years, and new studies linking puberty blockers to weaker bones and osteoporosis.
Trans activist Erin Reed (left), who accuses Jamie Reed of overlooking trans success stories, with Zooey Zephyr, a trans representative for Montana’s 100th house district, at the White House