DoubleTake: The edge of accountability - Part I

Summary

Podcast Summary: DoubleTake: The Edge of Accountability - Part I The World and Everything in It | Host: Les Sillers | Date: July 18, 2026

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Overview

This episode of DoubleTake explores the growing debate over transgender medical interventions for minors in the United States, focusing on the story of Vanessa Savage, a Christian nurse and whistleblower at Texas Children’s Hospital. The episode examines the cultural, medical, and legal landscape surrounding transgenderism, highlighting the role of “detransitioners” (individuals who regret transitioning) and the mounting push for accountability among medical providers. Vanessa’s personal account is woven through broader observations on ideology, policy, and the human cost of the current medical consensus.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction to Vanessa Savage’s Story

• FBI Visit: The episode opens with the tension of an FBI visit to Vanessa’s home, painting her as an unlikely but courageous whistleblower ([00:22–02:31]).
• Job & Discovery: Vanessa, a nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital (since 2021), realizes her workplace is providing gender transition treatments for children ([00:38–01:47]).

2. Vanessa’s Ethical Dilemma

• Personal Conflict: Vanessa feels the weight of her conscience (“It’s a huge weight on my conscience, but how do you fight back? It’s literally in my job description. I have to do it. I can’t pawn it off to someone else.” — Vanessa Savage, [02:00]).
• Deciding to Whistleblow: Faced with institutional pressure and the scale of what she witnessed, Vanessa eventually chooses to speak out ([02:43–02:50]).

3. Cultural and Ideological Background

• Trans Movement’s Momentum: Host Les Sillers narrates the dramatic cultural shift—the rise of transgender issues in politics, media, and law, including policy declarations from President Biden ([00:48–01:38]).
• Conservative Pushback: Some states begin passing laws to limit transgender medical interventions, but those like Vanessa face cultural and professional reprisals ([01:47–02:00]).

4. Detransitioners and “D Trans Awareness Day” Conference

• Largest Gathering: Les attends “D Trans Awareness Day 2026,” with 70+ detransitioners and allies ([04:46]).
• Personal Accounts: Multiple attendees share stories of regret, medical harm, and social isolation.
  • “I transitioned at the age of 26. I had surgery two days before my 31st birthday and I regretted it immediately.” ([04:54])
  • Johnny Skinner, another speaker, describes how vulnerabilities and social pressure led to his transition as a teen, later realizing he’d been manipulated ([06:04–09:12]).
• Legal Developments: Lawsuits from detransitioners are highlighted, including a $2 million verdict for a woman in New York ([10:10]).

5. Medical Establishment and the Role of Ideology

• Medical Records Falsification: Vanessa uncovers patient records listing gender, not biological sex, seemingly to hide the reality of treatments ([13:04–14:16]).
• Ideological Capture: Influential bodies like WPATH drive the rapid adoption of transgender treatment protocols, often sidelining dissent and labeling them as standards of care.
  • “Ordinary doctors feel like they're not able to contradict professional societies... It has produced what he called ideologically purified associations, and they intimidate into silence those who disagree.” — Host summarizing Dr. Kurt Micelli ([22:06]).

6. Societal Pressures and Parental Rights

• Custody Threats & Parental Loss:
  • Parents risk losing custody for refusing to affirm a child’s transgender identity; real cases from California (the Lyashchenko family) and Arizona (the Kirwans) are recounted in heartbreaking detail ([29:35–33:08]).
  • “We lost the dependency court a month ago. Our daughter is in the clutches of the corrupt dependency judge of Shasta County, California.” — Alexandra Lyashchenko ([29:44])

7. Breaking the Silence

• Vanessa’s Public Stand: Vanessa publishes an article criticizing the medical establishment’s approach to gender, risking her career ([34:30–34:54]).
• Hospital Obfuscation: Despite official pauses on transgender treatments after state intervention, Vanessa and another whistleblower, Dr. Eitan Heim, reveal that the hospital continued “paused” treatments ([36:06–37:26]).
• Emotional Toll:
  • “You feel like you’re going crazy. Everyone is reciting the same stuff...and I'm over here like, you're sterilizing children.” — Vanessa Savage ([38:57])

8. Legislative Response and Fallout

• Senate Bill 14: Texas passes a law banning gender-affirming care for minors immediately after Rufo’s investigative reports, with Vanessa believing her ordeal is over ([40:28–41:16]).
• Continuing Threats: Vanessa’s relief is short lived; shortly after, the FBI visits her home ([41:24–41:47]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Institutional Pressure:
  • “If you don’t collaborate with us, if you don’t help us, then we can’t protect you. Your livelihood is at risk. Your safety is at risk.” — Vanessa recalling FBI warning ([02:31])
• On Medical Harm:
  • “They are destroying the lives of these children. They are putting them down a road where they become a chronic medical patient that they can never come back from, especially the surgical complications.” — Dr. Eitan Heim ([37:12])
• On Conscience:
  • “This was the only way that I could express and voice my convictions and my concerns that at minimum, the First Amendment should protect me, at minimum. But if not, I was willing to accept the consequences...” — Vanessa ([34:54])
• On Systemic Failure:
  • “Ordinary doctors feel like they're not able to contradict professional societies... It has produced what he called ideologically purified associations, and they intimidate into silence those who disagree.” — Host summarizing Dr. Kurt Micelli ([22:06])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Vanessa confronted by FBI / Ethical crisis: [00:22–02:43]
• D Trans Awareness Day / Detransitioner stories: [04:39–11:05]
• Medical establishment’s slant and parent losses: [13:04–33:08]
• Vanessa’s article and whistleblower moment: [34:30–38:53]
• Texas legislative ban on gender care for minors: [40:28–41:16]
• Cliffhanger: FBI at Vanessa’s door (again): [41:24–End]

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Episode Tone and Style

The episode uses a calm, narrative-driven storytelling style, focusing on in-depth personal accounts, investigative journalism, and expert commentary, all within a framework of Christian worldview and concern for truth and conscience.

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Summary

This episode places Vanessa Savage’s courageous stand at the crossroads of one of the most contentious battles in contemporary American culture: whether and how children should receive medical interventions for gender dysphoria. It spotlights the real-world consequences of ideological capture in medicine and government, the pain of families and detransitioners, and the cost of speaking up. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with Vanessa facing federal investigation, setting up Part II.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Les Sillers]

Additional support comes from the Equip program by Unbound. Equip offers courses for life and study skills, hands on projects for career interest testing and peer connection in a coaching environment. More at Bunbound US World. From World Radio, this is Double Take. I'm Les Sillers.

[FBI Agent]

Hello. Hi.

[Les Sillers]

I'm looking for Vanessa Savage.

[Vanessa Savage]

Okay,

[Les Sillers]

I'll make some FBI agent. Are we interrupting dinner? I'm really sorry.

[Vanessa Savage]

All right, what's going on?

[Les Sillers]

Vanessa Sivage is a Christian and a nurse.

[Vanessa Savage]

I've always wanted to be a nurse.

[Les Sillers]

In July of 2023, she was working at Texas Children's Hospital, a very prestigious children's hospital. She's not the kind of person who normally attracts the attention of the FBI. She started the job in 2021 and soon discovered that she was helping provide transgender transition treatments for minors. For about two years. She didn't say anything, just did her job. Transgenderism had exploded in law and culture over the previous decade. People encountered boys in girls bathrooms and on girls sports teams, trans characters all over Netflix and prime trans public officials. Pro trans legislation. In 2022, President Joe Biden declared a transgender day of visibility. And we're committed to advancing transgender equality in the classroom, on the playing field, at work, in our military, in our housing and healthcare systems, everywhere, simply everywhere. And it was simply everywhere, including Vanessa's hospital.

[Vanessa Savage]

It's like they're playing God in the sense that they think that you can change your biological sex.

[Les Sillers]

There had been conservative pushback. By this point, maybe a dozen red states had passed bills limiting so called transgender rights. But Vanessa was sure that opposing medical transgender interventions would bring reprisals.

[Vanessa Savage]

It's a huge weight on my conscience, but how do you fight back? It's literally in my job description. I have to do it. I can't pawn it off to someone else.

[Les Sillers]

But eventually, she'd had enough. We'll get into the details later. But in May of 2023, she helped blow the whistle on a gender transition clinic at Texas Children's Hospital. A few weeks later, the FBI was knocking at her door. Let me start at the beginning. Vanessa tried not to show it, but she was pretty rattled. They told her, you know, if you

[Vanessa Savage]

don't collaborate with us, if you don't help us, then we can't protect you. We don't, you know, your livelihood is at risk. Your safety is at risk.

[Les Sillers]

Vanessa found herself. No, that's not quite right. She put herself in the crosshairs of the transgender movement, one of the most aggressive ideologies this culture has ever seen. She didn't exactly mean to, but she did this week. And next we're going to tell Vanessa's story here on Double Take. But it's not just her story. This is about a lot more than just one woman's fight to keep her integrity. Although it is that. Her experience is a window into the battle over transgenderism. It involves one of the most critical spiritual and cultural issues of our age, the nature of human beings. And it's about how to live according to the truth amid a storm of lies. To provide some context for Vanessa's story though, first we're going to attend the world's largest ever gathering of people who thought they could change their biological sex but had a change of heart. D Trans Awareness Day 2026 Vanessa wasn't there, but many of the attendees knew Vanessa or knew of her. This conference happened because of the courage of detransitioners and people like Vanessa. They have this in common. They choose to live not by lies. In fact, the people at this conference and their allies have shoved a descent crushing, body wrecking, soul bending juggernaut up to the edge of accountability. Now it's crouched there, heels dug in, and nobody knows what'll happen next. One wet, snowy day In March of 2026, I walked into the Regency Hyatt in downtown Washington, DC. I shook off my umbrella and rode two escalators down to the basement. A security team ran a wand over me, then let me into a small, darkish conference room where I found a modest crowd, maybe 120 people in total.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

Hello everyone. My name's Richie Herron and I come from the UK. Unfortunately, subtitles are not available.

[Les Sillers]

A group called Genspect had gathered more than 70 detransitioners from all over the country and a few from Europe to connect and share stories.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

I transitioned at the age of 26. I had surgery two days before my 31st birthday and I regretted it immediately.

[Les Sillers]

Detransitioners stop taking cross sex hormones and try to live according to their biological sex. Never before had so many assembled in one room. For decades, transgender advocates have insisted that detransitioning is either impossible or or incredibly rare, maintaining that those who say they have are either frauds or were pressured into it. But Jesse Harris told the audience that she transitioned in 1987. But by the 90s, anyone who knew

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

me well understood that given the opportunity

[Les Sillers]

to take it all back, I would

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

have gladly done so.

[Les Sillers]

But by now, I felt trapped. She didn't detransition earlier because she was afraid she'd Be called a traitor, seen as a threat to trans ideology.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

This is still true today, as we all know. And in my opinion, it seemed to have gotten worse.

[Les Sillers]

It has gotten worse. One slim young man in a black sleeveless top, Johnny Skinner, described growing up with an autism diagnosis and same sex attractions in a homophobic family.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

There were frequent episodes with me growing up where people would attempt to pray it away or, you know, try to change my behavior, the way that I talk, or just my general, I guess, just way that I carry myself.

[Les Sillers]

He started following trans influencers online.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

So I was seeing all of these men that were like me going through this transition, and it seemed as if they spoke, as if it made their lives so much better.

[Les Sillers]

When he was 13, his mom took him to a social worker who advised him to undergo medical transition.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

And she sort of used my vulnerabilities to make me feel as if this was the only option for me.

[Les Sillers]

This social worker told his mom that Johnny was suicidal. He never said that. The social worker said that most kids with gender dysphoria commit suicide if they don't transition young. That's a mantra in the trans community. But in fact, a Finnish study last spring showed there's no causal connection between gender dysphoria and increased risk of suicide at all, or proof that transitioning reduces the supposed risk of suicide. The social worker also said his mom

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

doesn't have a son. She never had a son. She has a daughter and she can accept that or have a dead son.

[Les Sillers]

They met with an endocrinologist who presented as a gay man.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

So he said, I'm not actually gay, can't be gay. I have a girl brain and a boy body. I was born in the wrong body. Everything about my body is wrong and needs to be essentially reconstructed so that I could be normal.

[Les Sillers]

A gender therapist was there.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

The gender therapist told me I would not find. I would not find love or acceptance in the gay community.

[Les Sillers]

Most men want relationships with manly men, and that wasn't him.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

And that I needed to do this to disappear into society was like the

[Les Sillers]

wording that is become transgender so he could live like a normal person, be accepted. He'd find a relationship with a gay man, and outwardly he'd be the woman in a straight couple. The phrase some use is trans the gay away. Johnny said his mom pushed back. She asked, isn't social transition enough for now? Let him dress how he wants, but no hormones. They told her that if she wasn't willing to offer a supportive home, they could always step in and find him. 1.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

I mean, the manipulation and the undue influence was just so profound. It like makes me almost emotional talking about it.

[Les Sillers]

In the end, his mom agreed to let her 13 year old son do a medical transition. He wasn't any happier.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

I lived that way for eight years.

[Les Sillers]

At age 21, he met a new endocrinologist who said his body needed a break from all the estrogen. Then In March of 2024, he read that the scientific basis for the standards of medical care for transitioners was was trash. The standards had been developed by a group called wpath. Everyone from the American Medical association on down has been relying on them.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

I literally felt like the sky was caving in. It was like, oh my God, so you're Everything I was told by this doctor was not true. They took advantage of me and they shaped and molded my body according to like, whatever plan they had for me.

[Les Sillers]

The D Trans Day conference attendees listened with rapt attention. Not because this kind of story was new to them, but because most people there had lived some version of it. The conference also included a panel of doctors who talked about how little research had been done on detransitioners, about why insurance doesn't cover detransition treatment. A panel of lawyers talked about the roughly two dozen lawsuits filed across the country by detransitioners against their doctors and therapists. People were especially interested in the Fox

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

Varian verdict in a legal First, a

[Les Sillers]

jury in New York awarded a 22 year old woman $2 million in damages

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

over her gender transition surgery that took

[Les Sillers]

place when she was. Some organizations at the conference were offering to help detransitioners raise money for more of these kinds of lawsuits. A Trump Cabinet member was there. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson told the detransitioners that they'd been ignored far too long. He said the FTC is working around the clock to investigate whether those providing gender affirming care had broken any laws and if the law has been broken,

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

to identify the lawbreakers and compel them to pay for what they've done. Today, we are witnesses to a present day reckoning for those who advocated for medical interventions on vulnerable children in the presence of their vulnerable parents without evidence that those drugs or surgeries are safe or work as intended.

[Les Sillers]

I left the conference feeling oddly hopeful. In less than two decades in Western countries, transgenderism went from fringe to untouchable. But the momentum has clearly shifted. In that cramped basement conference room filled with some of society's most overlooked and wounded, an incredibly powerful and oppressive movement seemed strangely vulnerable and I thought maybe one day there will be a day of reckoning. If there is, people like Vanessa Sivage will have played a big part.

[Vanessa Savage]

You know, I really deeply wanted to help people.

[Les Sillers]

Vanessa grew up in Houston and went to nursing school at the University of Texas Health Science center. She graduated in 2015. In 2018, she landed a job at Texas Children's Hospital.

[Vanessa Savage]

It was a dream come true. I mean, it's incredibly competitive for nurses anywhere to get a job there. We're here to celebrate. We are number one amongst all children's hospitals nationwide. Give yourself a round of applause.

[Les Sillers]

She spent her first three years in the cardiology department.

[Vanessa Savage]

So I trained with some of the most, I mean, the most world renowned surgeons and Doctors.

[Les Sillers]

Then in 2021, she transferred to the hospital's campus on the outskirts of Houston. She wanted to broaden her skills and shorten her commute. She and her husband Blake, had purchased a nice two story house in a quiet western suburb. It's near soccer fields and jogging paths. They have a good church. Her new facility had clinics for gastroenterology, orthopedics, sports medicine, gynecology, endocrinology, and many others. It was a great place to work, a lot of nice people. There were pictures on the walls the kids had drawn. It was a place, Vanessa says, where children would feel welcome and secure. She really felt like she was making a difference.

[Vanessa Savage]

Except I did not realize when I accepted the job that there was a fully functional gender clinic happening at my workplace.

[Les Sillers]

She didn't work in the gender clinic, but as a liaison between parents and doctors. She was dealing with transgender patients regularly, a few times per week. Vanessa soon noticed something weird with the patient charts. Part of her job was obtaining insurance authorizations for prescription medications. And she saw a lot of young teen girls with prescriptions for testosterone and boys were getting estrogen. That wasn't surprising in a gender clinic. Exactly. But the only reason she knew which patients were transitioning was because she had worked with them. Their charts listed the patients as male or female, not according to their biological sex, but but according to their preferred gender. Some girls were listed as boys and vice versa. She didn't expect that.

[Vanessa Savage]

And so if you weren't actually in tune with what was happening, you would just see a boy that was requesting testosterone, when in reality it was a girl, a biological girl, getting testosterone.

[Les Sillers]

To Vanessa, it looked like someone at the hospital was falsifying medical records to hide the fact that you gender affirming medical treatments were going on. Later, she'd discover why a hospital might want to do that.

[Vanessa Savage]

So that was the first red flag.

[Les Sillers]

I did contact Texas Children's Hospital regarding the allegations that Vanessa would later bring forward. I also asked for comment on a settlement that Texas Children's reached with prosecutors as a result of Vanessa's testimony. We'll hear more about that case next episode. Here's their response. Out of respect for the ongoing settlement process, we will not be making any statements at this time. As the matter proceeds through the proper channels over time, Vanessa found her job increasingly unsettling.

[Vanessa Savage]

I'm a Christian first and foremost, so my beliefs as it relates to transgender ideology were always very cemented, and I knew exactly that it was wrong.

[Les Sillers]

Most of the transgender patients were girls. They typically had diagnoses like anxiety, depression, or autism. Many had tried to harm themselves. They'd often suffered sexual or physical abuse. Transition treatments were presented as a quick fix.

[Vanessa Savage]

And in so many of these cases, these children have been profoundly abused. They had some form of vulnerability that made them susceptible to the lies that transgender ideology brings with it. The lies that you will be accepted, that you will be affirmed, that will be a part of this incredible community. Those lies sound very appealing to a girl or to a boy who is deeply struggling for some reason or another.

[Les Sillers]

At one point, Dr. Richard Roberts asked her to teach a boy how to give himself injections. That wasn't uncommon.

[Vanessa Savage]

So what I realized, I walk into this room, and it's a biological male who's presenting as a female.

[Les Sillers]

An effeminate lad.

[Vanessa Savage]

And a boy trying so desperately to be a girl, trying so desperately to erase his God given identity. Long hair, feminine clothes, boy. His voice was starting to become less deep. And it's. It's the worst. And I walk through all the steps with some minor red flags going off in my brain, but I just did my job.

[Les Sillers]

She showed him how to give the injections and then walked out to record what she'd done on his chart. And that's when it hit her.

[Vanessa Savage]

And so essentially, I have now facilitated his erasure, for lack of a better word, and the weekly injections of estrogen that he was going to be giving himself at home to affirm this false identity. That was heartbreaking for me.

[Les Sillers]

But she didn't do anything about it right then. She just kept working. It's easy to second guess people like Vanessa in this situation who don't speak up when they know something is wrong. But Coulson center president John Stonestreet recalls that back in 2022, transgender ideology wasn't merely on the rise.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

And it felt like this was a runaway train because it had touched every single cultural sphere.

[Les Sillers]

Education, business, politics, government, medic, economics, sports, law, news, entertainment. All overrun with demands to be inclusive and caring and use preferred pronouns. Even many Christian organizations. Sure, there were conservative critics, but if you wanted to keep your job, if you wanted to avoid public shaming, you kept your doubts about transgenderism to yourself.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

This particular issue had to be driven forward by totalitarian impulse.

[Les Sillers]

Stonestreet isn't saying we've been living in a totalitarian state. The totalitarian impulse is when a segment of society that has rejected reality tries to shut down dissent in the pursuit of a utopian dream. How this happened is a long story. We won't go into too much detail. But here's the outline. Widely accepted among conservatives, the sexual revolution of the 1960s laid the ideological foundation for homosexual rights. And then transgenderism. It enshrined sexual autonomy as a civil right, both culturally and legally. It defined people in terms of their sexual desires. Hetero, homo, bi, whatever. And society must affirm that desire. Treat a person's sexuality like skin color or religion. The only limit was consent. Biology certainly doesn't matter. And if your sexual desires must not be limited by biology, why should your gender identity? If the highest good is serving your sense of self, then of course you should change your body to fit the sex you would like to be. Crucially, the sexual revolution separated sex and gender. It insisted that biology and sexual identity aren't intrinsically connected. It claimed that gender is what some theorists call performative, a social construct. Stonestreet again.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

So there was this evolution where we're going to separate those two, and then we're going to prioritize gender over sex. And then that became to the point that even sex was seen as something that was socially constructed.

[Les Sillers]

Technology now makes plausible the illusion that man can reject his created limits in rebellion against God, Particularly regarding sex. Transgenderism is a crucial front in the war against human nature. It's the dream of self creation to make yourself God. That dream is at the core of transgender ideology. Activists then sprinkle the dream like toxic pixie dust across the entire culture. From the TV show Entertainment Tonight in

[Vanessa Savage]

2014, check out this new cover of Time magazine that is history being made.

[Les Sillers]

Laverne Cox from Orange is the New

[Vanessa Savage]

Black is the first transgender person to

[Les Sillers]

make the COVID of Time.

[Vanessa Savage]

I'm about time. Go ahead, Laverne.

[Les Sillers]

Social media turbocharged the process. It connected people who'd been exposed to the ideology, and those connections helped turn them into believers. Also, a group called Wpath was Central in pushing these ideas globally, wpath, which

[FBI Agent]

is the world professional association for transgender health, they created a political campaign.

[Les Sillers]

Stella o' Malley founded genspect, the group that organizes D Trans Awareness Day. She's a psychotherapist in Ireland.

[FBI Agent]

You could say it went back from the 80s, but really since 2010, to de psychopathologize gender issues. That meant this is not a mental illness. This is just an ordinary and healthy normal identity that needs to be supported in society. This wasn't as a result of scientific inquiry. It was as a result of political lobbying from WPATH that started in 2010, and it's been very, very, very successful.

[Les Sillers]

Genspect and other opponents are trying to repathologize gender dysphoria because it is a mental illness.

[FBI Agent]

It was always a mental illness. And I have an awful lot of compassion for people who do have mental illnesses. But this idea that it's a healthy identity that should be supported, it was never correct.

[Les Sillers]

Twenty years ago, few people expected transgenderism would become so powerful so quickly.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

And I think because observable reality, a lot of people that were kind of common sense people thought, there's no way it's going to work. Well, if you find which levers of social power you can pull, you can make it work.

[Les Sillers]

The transgender movement found some especially big levers in the medical profession. Dr. Kurt Micelli is the medical director of do no Harm, an organization that opposes identity politics in medicine.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

There's no doubt ideology has played a substantial role in this area of medicine.

[Les Sillers]

He says that activists drove the rapid acceptance of transgender ideology by presenting transgenderism as a human rights issue, not by examining the medical evidence.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

When you have medical associations that are issuing strong position statements, they effectively then become treated as de facto standards of care.

[Les Sillers]

Ordinary doctors feel like they're not able to contradict professional societies, and the professional environment rewards conformity and punishes dissent. It has produced what he called ideologically purified associations, and they intimidate into silence those who disagree.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

There's definitely a fear of being fired, being blackballed, being cancelled.

[Les Sillers]

According to Stella O', Malley, by about 2018, the trans movement had become so successful, the transition treatments were supposedly medically necessary. To not provide them to people who wanted them was regarded as harmful and oppressive. In 2020, President Joe Biden wrote in a social media post, let's be clear, transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. People in the grip of a totalitarian impulse try to change reality to fit their ideology rather than the other way around. Political science professor Daniel Mahoney's latest book is called the Persistence of the Ideological Lie. Transideology involves an even more frontal and brutal assault on common sense and the very idea of human nature than some of the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. In a dictatorship, a small group of people control society by force. But in a totalitarian state, an ideology takes control through something called mass formation. Mass formation is a group of people, usually 20 to 30% of the people, who fanatically believe in an ideology in a narrative. Matthias Desmet is professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium and the author of the Psychology of Totalitarianism from an interview with Hillsdale College and who are willing to self sacrifice completely for the sake of that ideology. Desmet describes in his book how these people coalesce around a common threat, a threat to the narrative they tell themselves about what kind of people they are and what kind of a society they live in. And in a science oriented society, people who have abandoned spiritual realities are particularly susceptible to stories that offer a technological solution. Desmet didn't refer in his book to the transgender movement. His book is really about what he saw during the COVID pandemic. But the idea of mass formation explains a lot about the rise of transgenderism. Professor Mahoney notes that the explosion of young women claiming to be trans shows how vulnerable that group is, especially those who are troubled and confused. And when they're given an interpretive framework that tells them you're really a man, it's easy to find comfort in that when it's in fact a form of psychological and spiritual torture. Even worse, those in the grip of mass formation really do believe they're doing the right thing. They have, as Professor Desmet writes, a fanatical ideological belief that justifies deception and manipulation and ultimately transgresses all ethical boundaries. So when you oppose those caught up in mass formation, the risks of speaking the truth become enormous. It makes people radically intolerant for dissonant voices, for people who think differently, even if it concerns their own children or their own parents. Vanessa saw all this developing in the culture around her and at Texas Children's Hospital.

[Vanessa Savage]

And I knew that I was in a very difficult position because the hospital was entrenched in this.

[Les Sillers]

The then CEO of Texas Children's Hospital, Mark Wallace, would often talk about diversity and equity in his monthly newsletter to the entire staff in the hospital's annual training program. It included sections on respecting people's pronouns and gender categories. Gender ideology was in the DNA of the place. Now imagine Vanessa trying to Decide whether to speak up about a gender clinic.

[Vanessa Savage]

This was their identity. I mean, this is. This was something that they paraded around. I mean, they were very proud of this program.

[Les Sillers]

So Vanessa stayed at the hospital, Even though it became harder and harder. One day she was in the adolescent gynecology clinic.

[Vanessa Savage]

Teenage girls with concerns about their period or irregular bleeding or, you know, stuff like that.

[Les Sillers]

A young hispanic girl came in with her mother.

[Vanessa Savage]

I'll never forget her.

[Les Sillers]

She was dressed like a boy, Very baggy clothes. She told a gynecologist that she'd really

[Vanessa Savage]

hated her period and she didn't want to have it anymore. And it was just she, you know, wanted to get rid of all of this. And the gynecologist looks at her and says, oh, we can just stop your period altogether if you want. You don't ever have to have a period again.

[Les Sillers]

He offered to prescribe a pill. It'd be easy.

[Vanessa Savage]

He said, thank God I had a mask on.

[Les Sillers]

It was the COVID era, because my

[Vanessa Savage]

face under that mask, I couldn't believe it. We're talking about halting a natural biological process that every little girl has to go through.

[Les Sillers]

The mother's english wasn't great, but she knew what the doctor was suggesting. She asked, is it safe? Are there any side effects?

[Vanessa Savage]

And the doctor was like, no, no, no. We can do whatever your daughter wants. We will do whatever she wants. And the mom just kind of sat back and she just kind of took it.

[Les Sillers]

And so the girl started hormone treatments. Vanessa says she might actually have liked the results at first.

[Vanessa Savage]

You know, they do seem like they're getting better because it's a new experience that is drastically changing their bodies and their puberty.

[Les Sillers]

The girls stop their periods. Boys voices change, become more feminine.

[Vanessa Savage]

And at first it's a very exciting thing. And then, you know, the girls start to develop hair on their legs, and their voice begins to deepen.

[Les Sillers]

Gender doctors rarely emphasize to young patients that the effects of pumping them full of cross sex hormones and puberty blockers are all often irreversible. They don't call it chemical castration, but people can end up sterilized. Detransitioners also describe altered bone development, stunted growth, hormonal imbalances. If they have genital surgery or breast removal, they certainly can't get their actual body parts back.

[Vanessa Savage]

I think what I observed was that they started to really understand what they had signed up for, and it wasn't so appealing and shiny and new after a couple of months.

[Les Sillers]

But the kids and their parents can't stop They've bought into the lie.

[Vanessa Savage]

They just kept going. And they learned to deal with the multitude of side effects that came with weekly doses of testosterone or estrogen, wreaking havoc on all of their bodies.

[Les Sillers]

Vanessa says this is the biggest lie the medical establishment has ever sold to confused children and vulnerable parents.

[Vanessa Savage]

Really, I mean, the parents were also very entrenched in this too. They were convinced they were manipulated by the doctors, that if they did not do this for their kids that they would harm themselves, they would commit suicide.

[Les Sillers]

Worse, doctors and therapists sometimes threaten to call social services if parents refuse to affirm a child's transgender identity. And the state can come and take away their kids. It's unclear how often it has happened, but it happens more than most people realize. Meet Alexandra Lyashchenko.

[FBI Agent]

It happened almost two years ago. She was taken on June 3, 2024.

[Les Sillers]

She attended the D Trans Awareness day. She and her husband are Ukrainian immigrants.

[FBI Agent]

We are desperate. We lost the dependency court a month ago. Our daughter is in the clutches of the corrupt dependency judge of Shasta County, California.

[Les Sillers]

It's a typical story. A very troubled child who was spending too much private time online decided life would be better as the opposite sex. Her parents refused to affirm the delusion, so her therapist reported them to social services. And one day the doorbell rang.

[FBI Agent]

So I opened the door, I went on the terrace. There was a woman I never saw before, 30 to 40, midi, black dress, blonde. Immediately starts accusing me of being, you know, emotional abuser based on gender identity, you know, non affirming.

[Les Sillers]

Things escalated from there. The social worker called 911. Cops showed up in the middle of all this. Alexandra went into her daughter's room and found her chat history on her computer. Discovered that the girl had been planning an exit for months.

[FBI Agent]

She is disowning us. She is dissociated with this family. You know, that was. She wished me death for these past five plus years.

[Les Sillers]

I even told Nelson their daughter went into foster care. The Lyashenko have reports from state officials that lead them to believe that she's been abused. The Lyashenko's life became a cycle of court appearances that ended when they lost custody. They recently moved to Florida in part because they were afraid California's officials would come after their son as well. They want to sue California, but can't find a lawyer who will take the case. Here's another example from Tucson, Arizona. In the spring of 2020, Sharmila and Levi Kirwan's 15 year old daughter Asha was struggling.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

Yeah, she was wrestling with

[Les Sillers]

some eating

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

disorders, self harm, a lot of anxiety.

[Les Sillers]

The story has a number of layers, but the outline is typical. At first, the parents were willing to make minor accommodations, let her dress in boys clothes, and so on. But as they started to read about the issue, they realized this just, you

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

know, affirmation is not scientifically medically prudent, and it's also unbiblical. And so, you know, we started to peel back some of the ways that we were affirming her. She was becoming hardened.

[Les Sillers]

Asha got worse, claimed to have attempted suicide. Then, Levi Kerwin says, In October 2020, the state of Arizona's Department of Children's Services began an investigation into the fact that we were not going to lie to our girl and tell her that she was a boy. They lost custody while Asha was in hospital under psychiatric care. And the ex parte removal was largely about how we had unrealistic expectations for our child, how we wouldn't affirm, how we were demeaning to the LGBTQ community. They tried three different times to regain custody over the next few years. They lost every time. The Kirwans say the system was stacked with pro trans judges and state officials. They spent about $400,000 on these custody attempts and on hiring experts to testify.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

We sold our dream home in Tucson and most of our possessions and have been renting ever since and just trusting

[Les Sillers]

the Lord for provision.

[Detransitioner (e.g., Richie Herron or Johnny Skinner)]

Yep, it's had some employment implications as well.

[Les Sillers]

Levi had a high paying job with a medical device company, but he was concerned that some of the technology involved aborted fetal tissue, so he resigned. It's been hard to make a living since. When employers and potential clients look him up online, they find this case and decide he has too much baggage. Finally, we decided that there was nothing further we could do because our child had been so weaponized against us on five separate psychotropic drugs. They too are trying to sue the state, but it's a hard slog. The entire thing, the entire time, was a pretext to make this, to make us the test case to take away a child on the basis of a transgender identity from parents who would not affirm. Throughout 2022, Vanessa was finding her job harder and harder.

[Vanessa Savage]

I mean, I would come home so disturbed, like to the point of tears, telling Blake, that's her husband, I got a request for testosterone for a girl today, and I have to fight with the insurance to get approval for this girl to erase herself. It just infuriating. It just goes against every fiber of my being. It's a huge weight on My conscience. But how do you. How do you fight back? It's literally in my job description. I have to do it.

[Les Sillers]

In August, she'd finally had enough. She wrote a piece for the Washington Stand, a publication from the Family Research Council. The heading what happened to do no Harm? A Nurse's firsthand look at the transgender craze. It attacked transgender ideology and blasted the medical profession as willing to watch teen girls get double mastectomies rather than risk their lucrative jobs. She put her name on it.

[Vanessa Savage]

And so this was the only way that I could express and voice my convictions and my concerns that at minimum, the First Amendment should protect me, at minimum. But if not, I was willing to accept the consequences of fallout.

[Les Sillers]

It came out, and she waited for the blowback. Nothing happened. She doesn't know whether her boss has just never saw it or ignored it or what. At first, she thought she'd done her part, but the reality of her job still confronted her every day. She also came to understand why the hospital wanted to hide its transgender program. Following an official opinion from Texas Attorney General, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the state's child welfare agency to investigate reports of transgender treatments for kids as criminal abuse. A few weeks later, In March of 2022, Texas Children's Hospital announced that because of potential criminal legal ramifications, it was pausing its transgender hormone related prescription therapies for children only. It didn't. We know this because of Dr. Eitan Heim.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

I'm a general and trauma surgeon. I was the anonymous whistleblower who exposed Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world, for lying about the existence of their transgender program. A program that would manipulate, mutilate, and sterilize healthy young children.

[Les Sillers]

This is from his congressional testimony last year.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

They not only continued their program, they expanded it. All this was happening behind closed doors.

[Les Sillers]

In the fall of 2022, other surgical residents told him they were surgically implanting puberty blocking hormone devices in young children who believed they were transgender. Heim was surprised to hear this. He did some research and found that Texas Children's Hospital featured its transgender treatment program in its hospital wide video conference training series in January of 2023. It was titled Medical and Psychological Care of Gender Diverse Youth. It described the process of sex change interventions from puberty blockers to genital surgery. It was put out months after the hospital claimed to have stopped such treatments. He had a moral and legal obligation to blow the whistle because he'd seen the effects of these procedures.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

They are destroying the lives of these children. They Are putting them down a road where they become a chronic medical patient that they can never come back from, especially the surgical complications. I see these things all the time.

[Les Sillers]

He describes seeing urethras narrowed so that fluid builds up in the bladder fistulas where stool leaks into the surgically constructed vagina.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

A lot of them don't see these problems in the first couple of months, even the first couple of years. But this is what happens as a surgeon.

[Les Sillers]

He took children into the operating room to make them better. Other doctors would take them into the same operating room to make them sick.

[Expert/Authority (e.g., Andrew Ferguson or Dr. Eitan Heim)]

They were putting them down a road that they could never come back from. So could I call myself a doctor if I didn't speak up against it?

[Les Sillers]

Heim figured it was pointless to confront his bosses at Texas children's. In the end, he called a journalist with a Manhattan institute, Chris Ruffo. He's made a name for himself, uncovering all kinds of injustice and abuse in the name of gender ideology. Himes sent Rufo schedules of treatment with patient names redacted. The article came out May 16, 2023. That day, Vanessa was sitting at her desk in the clinic. She'd been living under severe strain for several months. She'd screwed her courage to the sticking point to write that piece for the Washington stand eight months earlier.

[Vanessa Savage]

You know, people have asked me before, well, what. Why didn't you come out? Like, what did you. What were you thinking this whole time? Or what. How did this. And it's just. It's one of these things where you just go to work and you just try to do your best and you try to do your job.

[Les Sillers]

But then a colleague sent her the Rufo piece by email.

[Vanessa Savage]

She clicked on it, and all of a sudden it was like, oh, my goodness, Someone else in the hospital thinks the same way.

[Les Sillers]

I think at that point, she'd been living inside a lie for about two years.

[Vanessa Savage]

You feel like you're. You're going crazy. You feel like you're the crazy one. Everyone is reciting the same. The same stuff, the same talking points, and I'm over here like, you're sterilizing children.

[Les Sillers]

Eventually, she hit her breaking point.

[Vanessa Savage]

It took me a little bit to get there, like, because when you're surrounded by people who have pledged their allegiance to a false ideology, you have to kind of build up this inner courage to just break out of that and say, no, I'm not the crazy one. You're. You're insane.

[Les Sillers]

You know, after she read Rufo's story, I was.

[Vanessa Savage]

I. It just. It just lit me up and I was like, I'm, I'm ready. Like, send me, Lord, use me. Send me. I'm ready. You know, that day, I didn't even tell Blake. That day I called Christopher Rufo. I emailed him and I called him and I said, I have, I would like to let you know that everything that you've reported is true, every single word.

[Les Sillers]

The next day, she spoke to Rufo for about an hour, told him everything she could. He published a follow up piece based on his interview with Vanessa a few days later. She just felt so relieved at that point. Both she and Dr. Haim were still anonymous as far as they knew.

[Vanessa Savage]

No one knew who it was, who it was, or who I was. And I was very content for it to stay that way.

[Les Sillers]

Shortly after Rufo's article came out.

[Vanessa Savage]

For now, we turn to the state Capitol where one of the most controversial bills to make it through the 88th Texas legislature has been signed into law.

[Les Sillers]

From Kens 5, San Antonio.

[Vanessa Savage]

On Friday, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14. It bans gender affirming care for Texans under the age of 18.

[Les Sillers]

It outlawed cross hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and sex change surgery for minors. The bill had been in process for about two years. The Rufo stories were published just as the final votes were happening in the state legislature. Three Democrats crossed the aisle to support it.

[Vanessa Savage]

I was like, this is great. I can go to work again and not feel like I'm, you know, violating my conscience.

[Les Sillers]

She doubted Texas Children's Hospital would continue transgender treatments for minors after it was actually illegal.

[Vanessa Savage]

You know, I had played my part. I thought this was supposed to be the end of the story.

[Les Sillers]

Actually, no, not so much.

[FBI Agent]

Hello?

[Les Sillers]

Hi, I'm looking for Vanessa Savage.

[Vanessa Savage]

Okay.

[FBI Agent]

Yeah.

[Les Sillers]

Who are you?

[FBI Agent]

I'll. Next time.

[Les Sillers]

An FBI agent.

[Vanessa Savage]

Yeah. So two months later, in July of 2023, the FBI came to my house. They showed up to my front door.

[Les Sillers]

Next time on Double Take, we'll pick up the story right here.

[Vanessa Savage]

We were, I mean, the next several weeks, we were in a. We were just utterly just, I mean, just so scared.

[Les Sillers]

I reported and produced this episode of Double Take. You can find more great news and stories from a biblical perspective on wng.org check it out and don't forget to rate and review us in your podcast app. And we'd really love to hear what you think of our program. Send a note, written or recorded, to editorng.org we always appreciate hearing from you. Finally, word of mouth recommendations are one of the most effective ways podcasts grow their audiences. So if you're listening to an episode and you happen to think, hey, so and so would really enjoy this, please send them a link. I'm Les Sillers. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Additional support comes from Equip by Unbound providing high school students with life coaching, practical skills training and hands on projects. More at Beunbound US World.