Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine? #1

Thanks for joining us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. Today, Don continues with our current series, The Bible and Pride Month, with a message he's titled, Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine?

Friend, have your Bible open and ready as Don teaches God's people God's Word from The Truth Pulpit. What we have shown, without fear of contradiction, is that transgenderism, particularly as an ideology, is a sin against God. And it's not simply the matter of transgenderism and its personal expression by individuals who are conflicted about who they are in their own mind. We are particularly addressing it as an ideology that is advanced by activists who want to overturn the nature of society itself. And so while this necessarily affects individuals who would identify as transgender, it is more particularly addressed at the ideology, and we recognize that that has implications for those who have personal conflicts in their heart about what kind of person that they are.

We are the friend of transgender people, even though they might disagree with the things, and they would certainly disagree with the things that we say, we are not attacking them, but rather trying to share truth with them as our Lord has commanded. And so we declare what Scripture clearly teaches, that the ideology which centers truth in the heart of man is fundamentally, fatally flawed. Truth cannot be found in the heart of man. A person cannot know the truth about themselves by looking inward. They must look outside to what God has said, and those things are a matter of great biblical importance.

Now, transition here after that little bit of review. I'm quite mindful that everything that we've said is contrary to what our media and what our culture would say. If it ever falls into their hands, I expect them to have a conniption fit if it ever comes up in their minds. They would point to the medical field to prop up their ideology, the transgender ideology, and they would point to doctors and medicine as proof for the truth of what they believe and what they assert. And here's the question, and I'll point to a few things that they say here, but I want to preface it with the question that I ask in the very title of our message.

Shall we believe transgender medicine when it speaks to these issues? And what I want to assert clearly to you as a predominantly Christian gathering is that we have an absolute right to ask that question. We are not subject to those overlords. We are not subject to what they say.

We are not intimidated by their efforts to silence all questions about it. That is not their prerogative to even forbid questions about what is happening in the realm of this so-called medical practice. We have every right to ask if their assertions should be believed, and biblically speaking, the Bible tells us to do this. We are under command of God to discern matters.

1 John 4 verse 1 says, Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they be from God. And in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 21, we are told to examine everything carefully. Now, that is especially critical in this area of transgender medicine because, as I said earlier, what they practice intersects with the fundamental nature of God's creation and the way that he made humanity. And not only that, beloved, but it has massive consequences for their so-called patients. And so what we're going to do is we're going to make an extended application of biblical discernment.

Now, and that's the biblical justification for a message like this that I am making. Now let's just back up, and especially for those of us that are a little bit older in life, we have been conditioned over time to trust doctors implicitly. We are supposed to trust them. Ever since the days of Marcus Welby, M.D., and before, we've been conditioned to see doctors in a favorable light as those who have the knowledge and the desire to advance our best interests and to take care of us as they are required to do by the Hippocratic oath.

And so we are supposed to trust them implicitly. Doctors spend many, many years of difficult study, long hours of residency, to study matters about the human condition, the human body, matters that are beyond the ability of most of us and certainly beyond our training. Doctors carry an air of authority as a result of that. They have an air of expertise. And often their authority and their expertise is mingled with genuine compassion for us as they provide care for us, and we're grateful for that. And with their compassion and their training, they are often able to provide us with real help in the physical matters that come up in the course of life on this fallen earth. And they often, doctors often vindicate our trust, vindicate our confidence in them, and they help us through life. And so I want to be clear up front that I'm mindful of being targeted in what I say with that qualification said, beloved.

You and I should never forget that doctors are mere men. They are subject to error like the rest of us. They are subject to doing things with hidden motives that are not disclosed. And even though they have an air of authority and expertise, often they will bristle when they are questioned about their treatment or their proposed care for us.

They don't like some of them. They don't like to be asked questions. But that does not mean that we are in any way doing anything wrong when we question and ask questions that we might be able to understand what it is that they are asserting and what they want to do to our bodies. They are accountable to answer those questions. Patients are entitled to give informed consent to whatever procedures are proposed to them. And so those that are too proud to take questions have problems of their own.

And going just a little bit further, the very existence of abortion doctors show us that the medical profession certainly has no monopoly on virtue. And so we are within our prerogative and it is right and proper for us to ask questions, to gain understanding of what is happening in medical fields that intersect with our interests. Now, what does all of that have to do with a study, what I've just said, what does all of that have to do with our study on transgenderism?

Well, let me start it this way. There is an interactive map at the website for the Human Rights Campaign, a well-known LGBTQ organization. And that map is titled, quote, Clinical Care Programs for Gender-Expansive Children and Adolescents, end quote. And at that map, when I last looked at it two or three weeks ago, it now lists over 50 medical facilities in the United States and Canada which will treat, I use air quotes around the word treat, they will treat children as young as four years old who supposedly have gender identity issues.

Four years old, some no doubt would go even younger. So you have doctors bringing children under their care, so-called care, and I'll just qualify that, you know, anytime I say care in this message, I understand that I'm using it in the sense of so-called care. Bringing children who aren't even old enough to determine their own diet and to treat them because these children are supposedly presenting with gender identity issues and trying to help children at different stages of their development to determine whether they are a boy or a girl, whether they will live according to their biological sex or whether they will pretend to do something else. Now, when you have 50 medical facilities doing that, and as I've said Cincinnati's Children's Hospital is one of them on the list, it is proper for us to examine even the medical profession carefully to examine their truth claims.

One of the things that you will find if you go to the website of Cincinnati's Children's Hospital on their transgender unit is that they have a list of recommended resources for people to follow up. Almost without exception, perhaps without exception, it is filled with material that is written by pro-homosexual groups. There is no balance even to the recommended resources that they do. Again and again and again you find this agenda-driven material that they promote as recommended resources.

There is absolutely no balance in it whatsoever. That should cause thinking people to take pause and to consider whether we should actually just implicitly believe every assertion they make simply because, and this is really important for those of us later on in life, simply because a doctor tells us that that is what should be the case. Now, all I want to say is this, beloved, and to help you think through these things rightly.

You and I will be better able to stand for the truth. You and I will be better able to help other people who come across our path dealing with these kinds of issues if we have a more mature understanding and approach to the role of medicine in the transgender debate. I want to give you three warnings, three warnings that will caution you from simply implicitly believing whatever you're told by a doctor on these matters. I just want to give you a perspective on three warnings that need to be heeded that would caution any reasonable thinking person from plunging into the depths of this and handing over the future of their life and the future of their body to these people who approach them with pharmaceuticals, knives, and an invoice. Now, let me give you three warnings on why we should all be cautious about this.

Number one, let me give you a warning from history, a warning from history. Dr. Benjamin Rush lived from 1745 to 1813, and he is hailed by some as the father of American medicine, and he certainly had a distinguished career, Dr. Benjamin Rush, R-U-S-H. Dr. Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was the treasurer of the United States Mint. He was also the most celebrated doctor of his generation, so he was a man of no small accomplishment and recognized as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a man who was involved in the very founding of our country.

And so this was a man of prestige. Now, during the course of his medical career, Dr. Rush was elected physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and he was appointed as professor of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. By one estimate, he probably instructed more than 2,250 prospective doctors during his academic career. Physicians and laymen throughout the country, as it existed at that time, constantly sought his clinical advice for patients that were under their care or for medical conditions that they were facing. He was Dr.

It, you might say, at the pinnacle of the profession. Now, you read a little bit about Dr. Rush, and you might ask this question. What was Dr. Rush's primary means of medical therapy?

Hold your ears. One medical historian tells us this, that Dr. Rush promoted the elimination of blood and other bodily fluids as the only means to heal. Copious bloodletting, administering drugs to induce diarrhea, salivation, sweating and vomiting, and drawing out bodily fluids by blistering the skin served as the mainstay of Dr. Rush's approach. Did you get that?

Should I repeat it? This is Dr. It. This was the man above all doctors who was training the medical profession in the country at the time, and his primary means of medical therapy involved eliminating blood from the body, producing fluid-losing responses of diarrhea, salivation, sweating and vomiting, and blistering people in order to supposedly purge their system of whatever was ailing them. And this medical historian writes, Dr. Rush's bleed, blister, and purge gambit remained the backbone of American therapeutics for almost 100 years and had a devastating impact on Civil War soldiers, as well as contributing to the loss of life of President Garfield after he was shot on a train platform on the East Coast.

Beloved, Dr. Rush's therapies seem shockingly backward and ignorant to our ears today, don't they? This is unthinkable medical treatment in our day and age and understanding and the advances that have been made in medicine in the ensuing 200 years. But that's not the point.

That's not the point, and you must follow the logic here and what the concern is here. At the time, Dr. Rush's medical treatments were the prevailing medical opinion of the times. This is what doctors believed was the way to treat people who had any kind of physical illness.

How could that be? The medical historian goes on and says this, and I quote, There was a simple explanation for this seemingly bizarre therapeutic behavior. The scientific ignorance of the times was overwhelming and the great mass of poorly educated physicians remained blindly devoted to old medical routines, end quote. My point here for this evening is this, is that something may be the prevailing medical practice of its day, but that does not make it right and that doesn't even make it intelligent.

Let me give you a modern illustration from an impeccable source in medical literature. In 2013, 2013, the Mayo Clinic published an article titled A Decade of Reversal, an Analysis of 146 Contradicted Medical Practices, end quote. The authors of that article reviewed 10 years of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. Among other things, the Mayo Clinic authors did this. They reviewed 363 articles that tested the existing standard of care in a variety of current medical practices.

Okay, so let's just back up. You have the Mayo Clinic that's doing a study of what other people have written in the medical field. The Mayo Clinic doctors went to a standard medical journal, one of the leading medical journals of our day, the New England Journal of Medicine. Within the context of the New England Journal of Medicine, they reviewed 363 articles that had been published over a period of 10 years. In those articles, those articles were testing the existing standard of care for a variety of medical practices. Okay, 363 articles.

This is within the past decade as I'm speaking here. What did they find as they reviewed those 363 articles? In 146 instances of the 363, 40%, the existing practice was reversed, meaning that it was found to be ineffective or no better than a lesser therapy that was available. And so you have the standard of care, what's considered the standard of care for a variety of different medical practices, reviewing hundreds of them, finding 40% of the time that that standard, prior existing standard of care had been reversed and found to not be proper medical treatment. The authors of the Mayo Clinic article, this is the Mayo Clinic.

I'm not making this up. This isn't me critiquing medical things that are beyond my ken. I'm quoting the Mayo Clinic, and the authors of that Mayo Clinic article state this, quote, although there is a weak evidence base for some practice, it gains acceptance largely through vocal support from prominent advocates and faith that the mechanism of action is sound. Later, future trials undermine the therapy, but removing the contradicted practice often proves challenging. And so doctors continue to do that, which is contradicted, because it's what we've always done.

It's Benjamin Rush, part two. This is what we've done for 100 years in Benjamin Rush's day. Why would we change it? Today, there is this secretion of medical practice continued, perhaps without justification, perhaps not even being effective. The conclusion of the article says this. The Mayo Clinic article says the reversal of established medical practice is common and occurs across all classes of medical practice, end quote. In other words, beloved, the mere fact that something is being done today doesn't mean that it's right, doesn't mean that it's proven, doesn't mean that it won't be contradicted in the future.

If this stimulates your interest at all, let me recommend something else. Do a Google search sometime with the search terms, debunked medical practices. Debunked medical practices. You will find all kinds of once standard medical treatments that are now considered repulsive. Beloved, doctors may be doing something today, but that doesn't make it right.

They may not even be intelligent. How does that apply to our topic? Beloved, transgender medicine one day will eventually go the way of Dr. Benjamin Rush. The practice, the accepted practice of amputating healthy flesh and administering pharmaceuticals to people who have a mental condition will one day be looked on with the same shock that you and I look back at the bloodletting of Dr.

Rush and all of his students at the beginning of our day. Will you and I live to see that day when this statement is vindicated? Maybe, maybe not. But we are right to take warning from history to learn not to defer to those people who perhaps don't deserve the deference which they assert. We're entitled to use a sanctified common sense to look at things and say, this is ridiculous and I don't have to wait a hundred years for a medical writer to say so in order to make that determination today. Now look, we wouldn't even be talking about this except for the fact that lives are at stake, truth is at stake, and all of this transgender medicine is driven by an ideology that is utterly without foundation. You've been listening to Don Green with part one of a message called Shall We Trust Transgender Medicine? Part of a series, The Bible and Pride Month here on The Truth Pulpit.

We hope to see you again next time, but before we go, here again is Don with a closing word. Well, my friend, thank you for being with us today on The Truth Pulpit. You know, our biblical voice on these ethical matters is an increasingly minority opinion in culture today, but I'm encouraged nonetheless. It may surprise you to know that our ministry reaches nearly all 50 states and over 40 countries on a consistent monthly basis, and so God's Word is having an impact, and He will never allow it to return void. You know, friend, would you consider supporting our broadcast to enable these podcasts and airing over local radio stations to continue as we minister God's Word? You can find the ability to give on our website, thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. Thank you so much, and God bless you. Thanks, Don, and friend, thank you for joining us today. I'm Bill Wright. See you again next time on The Truth Pulpit, where we teach God's people God's Word.