A new lawsuit is in the works that alleges that doctors are pushing puberty blockers and unnecessary surgeries on young children without adequately warning them about the risks – both medicinal risks and psychological risks. Mike Papantonio & is joined by attorney Steve Luongo to talk about what’s happening.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A new lawsuit is in the works that alleges that doctors are pushing puberty blockers and unnecessary surgeries on young children without understanding or warning them about the risk, both medical risks and psychological risk. Joining me to talk about this is Steve Luongo, ex ballplayer, superb, superb trial lawyer. Steve, I want to talk about the complaint that’s been filed. We’re not doing this litigation full disclosure. This is not something we’re doing. But I saw that there was a complaint filed and there’s actually been several filed now. Tell us a little bit about the case. First of all, what’s happening with the gender case to begin with?
Stephen Luongo: So the one that is on file right now is a similar pattern that we’re seeing in the news is that a young girl is confused about who she is, around the age of 10 or 11 years old, and then goes to the adults for help, tells her parents and family, I want to transition. They then go to the medical facilities in their area. In this particular case, the case is against Kaiser and their foundation hospitals and the doctors that treat there. They are then given a psychiatric evaluation, they’re given and diagnosed what’s called this gender dysphoria, which is really the gateway to them being diagnosed and having the access to these puberty blockers, these cross-sex hormones.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. According to this complaint, this has been filed, well, according to the complaint, Superior Court of California.
Stephen Luongo: Right.
Mike Papantonio: There’s a couple of them already filed. I’m seeing ’em pop up around the country. This one, they saying Kaiser Foundation is on the hook. They’re saying the psychologist that worked with a child’s on the hook. They’re saying that the doctor that performed the surgeries on the hook. And in any, counselors of every kind are on the hook in this lawsuit.
Stephen Luongo: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So what they’re saying is that, that the child was 13 years old. She’s now 18, and she says, A, you lied to me. B, you didn’t give me full understanding what was going on. C, you put undue pressure on my parents to get this done, and now there’s no way I can turn this thing back. These lawsuits are popping up. We’ve chosen to stay out of it because I don’t know if it does, you know, you don’t want to slow the rights down of a person to get this kind of surgery. But like it or not, these folks that are doing this are being sued. Talk about it.
Stephen Luongo: Absolutely. And the claims that they’re alleging are malpractice claims against, like you said, the Foundation, the facilities allowing this treatment to go forward as well as the doctors. And what they’re saying is that it’s too fast of a process. You didn’t gimme time, you didn’t gimme informed consent. You didn’t give my parents informed consent. And the allegations that they’re making here is one of ’em is.
Mike Papantonio: 30 days. This, my memory is, was it 30 days they gave this person?
Stephen Luongo: It’s close to that. And in some cases that we’re seeing, it’s same day, they’re being given these puberty blockers. They’re given scripts for the puberty blockers. And what they’re saying, and what the doctors are telling the parents, at least in this complaint is that, do you want a dead daughter or a living son? So those are the choices that they’re giving the parents.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, they’re saying, your daughter may commit suicide if we don’t do this and because of that, we had to do it. But here’s the truth. According to this complaint, and this is, these complaints are all saying the same thing. This one again, is a, it’s a California complaint, but they’re saying that Kaiser Foundation is building a cash cow around this business. They’re saying that the people that sell pharmaceuticals are building a cash cow around this business. Everybody’s rushing into the market. You’ve got psychologists and psychiatrists according to this. Now we haven’t done, I don’t, I can’t speak to it, I haven’t done the research on it, but if I read what this says, they apparently have done some research and they say the psychiatrists and psychologists are making this into a cottage industry.
Stephen Luongo: Right. And the research that they’ve done, and the allegations again in the complaint are that you’re giving these children puberty blockers, which are not approved by the FDA for this use. You’re also then giving them the cross-sex hormones, which again, are not used for this. Not prescribed or approved by the FDA for this use. So those are the major complaints as to what the pharmaceutical companies are doing, what they’re aware of, how their drugs are being used and given to a population that they were never designed to have.
Mike Papantonio: Steve, is this a chilling effect though? Is it, if you start suing these people that are saying, I’m in this business of trying to help, what is it, the numbers are startling. I mean, the numbers that we’re seeing pop up are startling.
Stephen Luongo: In 2021, 42,000 children were diagnosed with gender dysphoria alone.
Mike Papantonio: 42,000?
Stephen Luongo: Yes, sir.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. And so if we look at these complaints that are popping up and they’re saying that if, they’re saying one thing I think is critically important, they’re saying that the pharmaceutical industry that we do sue all the time and we know how corrupt that industry is, hasn’t even done long-term clinicals to understand what kind of effects this is having on children. The possibilities are bone density problems, leukemia, dysplasia of all different kinds, blood dysplasia. They’re saying that if you look at what studies have been done by people like Kaiser or these psychologists and psychiatrists that are saying, yeah, get this done, we don’t really know what the risk benefit is. That’s according to this complaint. And I think that’s something that’s popping up in all these complaints. I think that this is going to be a new trend. I think these folks are gonna be sued into hell to tell you the truth. And the problem I have with it is what effect does it have on a legitimate case where a child wants to make a transition? They’re not 12, they’re not 10, they’re 16, 17 and they have the feeling, I wanna make this transition. Does it have a chilling effect? What’s your take?
Stephen Luongo: I think it will. I think it’s gonna cause these doctors to think twice about what their standards are because right now it’s all over the board, across the country. We’re seeing significant legislation coming out in states restricting the care for minors. But there’s states where they’re sanctuaries and they’re proud of that and advertising that. Come to our state, we’re allowing this care for kids.
Mike Papantonio: Well, like California’s one of them. Maybe that’s why these cases are popping up in California.
Stephen Luongo: I think so. And what the complaint also goes into is what are the long-term psychological effects of these hormones on young kids and their future fertility. Fertility as that is.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Is it reversible? I mean, if a child that’s 10 years old is, they start ’em on chemicals. Say they start the chemical transition. This goes through a pretty detailed kind of explanation. But when I read it, it appears they start ’em on chemicals. When they reach a certain age, then it’s surgery that they say, what are the age, what are the age groups here?
Stephen Luongo: So typically the process that these clinics and what they’re called, they’re gender care clinics or gender facilities within these hospitals and universities, they start ’em off with either medical intervention with the puberty blockers around 10 or 11, whenever puberty starts with these young kids. From there they can continue with those for long term, for multiple years or transition to what’s called cross-sex hormones, which are more advanced, as far as stopping the process and actually creating the desired physical attributes that they want. The development of the cross-sex gender.
Mike Papantonio: What if there’s been, what if there’s been surgery? What if you’ve had breasts removed? What if you’ve had genitalia removed? That not a reversible thing, is it?
Stephen Luongo: That is not reversible and that really, I think is what the heart of the complaints are trying to avoid and stop. What we see is that there was nearly a thousand mastectomies of young girls under the age of 18 and that trend is going up.
Mike Papantonio: Steve, isn’t it like anything else. Okay. This is something that we have to have professionals that can do this. Okay. There’s real legitimate cases where it should be done, but then greed gets involved. And if I read this, as I read it, it is that all these folks that are involved in some form or fashion are creating a cash cow for themselves. The psychologist and psychiatrist, they now have a client for life.
Stephen Luongo: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The chemical company, they have chemical, they can sell pharmaceuticals for life. Caza permanente, you know, as there’s, these facilities go up everywhere they have new customers. I don’t know. I look at this, if I were in the business of this, and you know, of course this is our business is going after large corporations, they better have standards that they can present to a juror and they can say to the jury, look, here’s what we did. Yes, she’s now 21. She says that I, you know, this is a horrible mistake. I was pushed into it. There was way, way too much undue influence in helping me make this decision. But if you have standards that say, well, not really, because here’s what we did. This complaint says that there are no standards that really protect these kids.
Stephen Luongo: Right. And that’s what the complaint is alleging. That’s one of the focal points of saying we need to slow down. And you talked about the chilling effect earlier. I think that is the purpose, one of the many purposes of these complaints, is especially in the sanctuary states where the care is being fostered, it’s being endorsed, they want to chill that. They wanna slow that down, get the standards that you’re talking about, because it is a cash cow for them. The puberty blockers, the hormones, those are monthly injections and they’re thousands of dollars per injection.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And but the, the ugly part of it is the politics of it. I mean, hell, I mean, you put money on the table and you got corporations that are doing the greedy thing. You put issues, social issues on the table, and you have lane brain politicians that want to overreact and they want to overcorrect. This particular area, my prediction is, they’ll be dozens and dozens of these cases filed within the next 24 months. That’s my guess. We’re not gonna do it. I’m telling you that we’re not gonna do it because I feel like at this point, the chilling effect may be such that it could stop it to where people don’t have a place to go. And that’s a problem. Steve, thank you for joining me. Thanks for reporting on this. Okay.
Stephen Luongo: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all of these segments are gonna be available throughout the next week. And make sure you follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em tell those stories or because their political connections are so tied to a political party that it doesn’t allow them to tell the story. But you know what, we will tell you that story. See you next week.
