Follow the money - who is funding the US transborg?

Just got round to reading this. Very very interesting.

Yes, I was specifically thinking of Sylvia Plath and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Sorry to overgeneralise.

ECT is rather a different beast these days - when done correctly and with consent it can be beneficial for severe depression.

I do understand why dodo put it in the list though - it has been used as a technique to punish and sedate in the past. When done too frequently /with no consent etc it has had quite a dark history. And been used on women disproportionately.

Please don’t put ECT into the list of unwarranted/damaging treatments. It cured my very severe postnatal depression in a very short time, after months of getting nowhere. Obviously it shouldn’t be prescribed lightly. BTW I had no lasting ill effects, only headaches (bearable) after treatment. I had three sessions.

As someone said upthread this isrequired reading, a remarkable piece of journalism. This is being driven by wealthy people who want to abolish sex based protections and experiment on children who don't conform to patriarchal standards for their sex. Who wrote it?

A possibly useful tool: projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

It's called Dollars for Docs: Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are required by law to release details of their payments to a variety of doctors and U.S. teaching hospitals for promotional talks, research and consulting, among other categories. Use this tool to search for general payments (excluding research and ownership interests) made from August 2013 to December 2016.

It's US-only (how I would love such a thing for the UK!), but might be helpful in connecting the dots when investigating particularly loud "medical establishment" voices.

d0do
*On the subject of medical mistakes, where to begin?

Thalidomide
Electric shock treatment for depression
Lobotomy for assorted psychiatric problems*

Dodo I just wanted to add that electric shock therapy is still used in some severe depressions and can be literally lifesaving so I wouldn’t put it in same category as thalidomide and lobotomy. Admittedly it was used far too much in the past.
There are lots of other examples of clear medical mistakres and I am sure that puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria will come to be regarded as a huge error as well.
I’m just going to try to read the linked article now!

espoused rather- apologies!

Its fascinating though that this intersects with the 'far-left anarchic smash the binary' ideals as expoused by Jess Bradley etc:

www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=ue3iAnSSIP4

I just came here to post this article. It’s absolutely essential reading and has answered a lot of questions as to where all the money has come from.

No, I agree that the drivers behind this are varied. Financial considerations will keep bad ideas alive though. Investors are not backward about exerting pressure. I still obviously wouldn't deem it a conspiracy - because that all takes far too much effort even for evil bankers! But they will exploit situations and some of them were pretty dubious. Restrictions on compliance and conflicts of interest are pretty tight now in the big firms but for wealthy individuals it's different.

As you say there are so many groups who have different interests in this that are a variety of sources but someone will have smelt money because there's definitely money there. And once investors start to see opportunity they are keen for results. I'm not even sure they'd question the ethics either as it's been sold so well as a "good" thing.

from the Michael Biggs article:

OSF fully supports the objectives of transgender activists. Self-identification is “an essential legal right for trans people” (OSF 2014a). In other words, biological sex must be superseded by subjective gender identity, to include options “outside the binary categories of male and female” (OSF 2014b). Identity should not be “governed by age restrictions” (OSF 2014b). Therefore OSF funds “trans-led or LGBT organizations that promote progressive, rights-based processes for legal gender recognition” (OSF 2014a). It also advocates access to “hormonal therapy, counseling, and gender-affirming surgeries” on demand (OSF 2014a). This includes puberty blockers for youth (OSF 2013) .

I have to say I don’t believe many pharma conspiracies either - what I DO believe is that people will take any opportunity to make money and have and will continue to engage in dubious marketing practices.
I don’t think pharma is behind all this but I do think they will happily profit wherever they can. As they always have. The rules keep getting tightened and are much more strict than they were even ten years ago, which is a good thing, but there are still loopholes.

For people like Pritzker - there’s obviously a meeting of massive wealth and a need for validation. The concentration of such huge wealth in single hands just shows you how much good or bad it can do - if you’re a billionaire you can engage in genuine philanthropy or you can have a pet project and consequences be damned. That again is an indictment on our modern unequal society.

When you add in the white male backlash against POC and women which has the Alt right (against POC) and MRA groups (against women) spearheading it then you have a toxic cocktail. In a society where ID politics is king it’s a perfect storm.

I haven't managed to get through all of the article yet, but wanted to add observations on the financial inducement to promote this from the point of view of investors and investment houses (I used to work in the financial industry).

As Bowl mentioned pharma companies have a huge inducement to extend patents on products. The R&D cycle is expensive, lengthy and can crash at the final stage. Companies were always hunting for a "wonder" drug and they often targeted the same market - some sectors are clearly much more profitable than others (in the 90s, there were a few ulcer wonder drugs, like losec which catapulted Astra into the big league). And, of course, as investors we encouraged them. R&D investment is naturally necessary because you need the next product once you face the patent cliff-edge, but too much and you squeeze the profits that investors are after. You also need to find the right market - i.e. identify an area with maximum growth potential and fewer competitors. Alternative strategies were to find an improved version of an existing drug (but it had to be much better as the competition from generic versions of your old drug would be much cheaper) or to find a new indicator for an existing drug and extend the patent. For investors, pharma companies with a star drug are a fabulous prospect. But those facing patent expiry experience a dramatic earnings loss and a tumble in the share price.

I don't really like conspiracy theories about pharma, but I'd be naive if I didn't think that this could be a perfect storm. You have the drugs which can be used for new applications, the market which seems to be rapidly expanding (and patients who will be dependant on products possibly from early teens for life) and, as a new area, there are so many potential opportunities for other drugs to be sold of the back of any resultant complications or new developments. The figures donated seem large (and obvious far in excess of those to the L&G), but in terms of risk / reward, they seem small for someone set to make money from the accrual in share value.

I wouldn't spit on Soros if he was on fire.

May 2018 Assoc. Professor Michael Biggs (Oxford Sociology) article:
'The Open Society Foundations & the transgender movement'
(extract)
"The transgender movement has transformed cultural norms and social institutions at breathtaking speed. Most of us, becoming acquainted with the trans issue for the first time, are astonished to discover the extent of the gender revolution. The movement has accomplished in a few years what the movements for women’s and for gay and lesbian rights took many decades to achieve.

Part of the explanation is the amount of money behind transgenderism. The Gender Industrial Complex, as we may call it, has many components. Lucrative sponsorship comes from pharmaceutical companies and medical providers. Charities originally established to fight for homosexual rights (like Human Rights Campaign in the United States and Stonewall in Britain) wield large budgets. Last but not least, three American billionaires have bankrolled the transgender movement on a global scale: Jennifer Pritzker, whose activities were detailed in another blogpost, Jon Stryker, and George Soros.

This blogpost focuses on the Open Society Foundations (OSF), funded by Soros. This is not easy to discuss because he is vilified by right-wingers, whose criticism sometimes degenerates into anti-semitism (Williamson 2018). Therefore those of us who are liberal or progressive tend to react instinctively by dismissing any scrutiny of Soros out of hand. This is unjustified, as I will show by providing some facts about how OSF has funded the transgender movement.

OSF fully supports the objectives of transgender activists. Self-identification is “an essential legal right for trans people” (OSF 2014a). In other words, biological sex must be superseded by subjective gender identity, to include options “outside the binary categories of male and female” (OSF 2014b). Identity should not be “governed by age restrictions” (OSF 2014b). Therefore OSF funds “trans-led or LGBT organizations that promote progressive, rights-based processes for legal gender recognition” (OSF 2014a). It also advocates access to “hormonal therapy, counseling, and gender-affirming surgeries” on demand (OSF 2014a). This includes puberty blockers for youth (OSF 2013).

How much has OSF spent to promote the transgender movement? In 2011–13, it spent $3.19 million, which made it the top funder, followed by Stryker’s Arcus Foundation and Pritzker’s Tawani Foundation (Funders for LBTQ Issues 2015). OSF’s current database includes grants worth $3.07 million for 2016–17 (searching for keywords “trans” and “transgender”). The largest recipients in this current tranche are the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association ($642,000), Global Action for Trans Equality ($500,000), and Transgender Europe ($500,000)." (continues)

thread with link to article:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3260270-Michael-Biggs-Oxford-Sociology-dept-The-Open-Society-Foundations-the-transgender-movement-incl-comparison-with-funding-for-women

D0do

Excellent link! Thank you for sharing. That was so insightful and captured many of my frustrations with the modern mental health narrative.

To quote:
"Those of us in the mental health profession ought to be in the business of helping people to see themselves as having the potential to be well and whole. We should help them understand themselves as resilient, rather than infirm and frail. We ought to help people imagine larger, richer, more complex stories for themselves, rather than simplistic narratives of illness and victimhood."

I posted these on a different thread - hadn't realised this one was going! Oops!

The Federalist article raises a slight alarm for me as the clinic where the first US womb transplant took place and centre where the resulting child was born are both linked to Pritzker... implying there is perhaps an agenda to attempt this sort of surgery for transgender women.

Thanks Bowlofbabelfish.

According to Wikipedia:

"Triptorelin is marketed under the brand names Decapeptyl ( Ipsen ) and Diphereline and Gonapeptyl ( Ferring Pharmaceuticals ). In the United States, it is sold by Watson Pharmaceuticals as Trelstar. In Iran Triptorelin is marketed under the brand name Variopeptyl."

I've no idea if Ipsen, Ferring Pharmaceuticals or Watson Pharmaceuticals have any relationship with TAP.

Does anyone know?

I'm reading this too. It's mindboggling.

On the subject of medical mistakes, where to begin?

Thalidomide
Electric shock treatment for depression
Lobotomy for assorted psychiatric problems

I am a layperson but for various reasons I don't have a huge amount of confidence in psychiatry/psychology compared with other branches of medicine. It's a long, long way behind other disciplines in the standard of diagnosis and treatment. Medicalising perfectly normal features of personality and reactions to life events has not done us any favours at all.

On which note, here's another good article, much shorter than the Medium one: areomagazine.com/2018/07/08/no-you-dont-have-a-disorder-you-have-feelings/

Still reading...my children are making this challenging for me. :)

I've been thinking today about how many times the medical community has been wrong about various things. Like completely missed the mark. (I knew we've talked on here about past treatments for mental health.) Remember the whole low fat craze of the 90's? Where sugar was fine, but God forbid you let a gram of saturated fat in your diet? That turned out well..

TRAs love to cite that they have the backing of physicians and medical organizations. That honestly means nothing to me. The fallibility of medicine remains. Also, though, the financial piece cannot be ignored.

Here's a good example of policy/clinical recommendations being swayed by finances: here in the US, circumcision remains a fairly common practice. Many times, it's performed by pediatricians. The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) came out with a position statement that essentially said there was no medical benefit to routine neonatal circumcision. Over time, insurance companies and state insurance programs (like Medicaid, which covers low-income children) stopped paying for the procedure. Predictably, circumcision rates dropped. Pediatricians saw a clear loss in revenue.

Interestingly, the AAP reconvened their committee on the subject and reviewed the literature. Fascinating, isn't it, that this time they found the potential for medical benefit and justified the procedure?

Which begs the question: who are the real shareholders here?

Triptorelin.

Not sure who makes it, should be google able

What's the alternative to Lupron that's often used in the UK?

Is it made by Tap also, does anyone know?

Still reading, a very long read indeed.
I was aware of Pritzker and a few others, and some of the funding pools.

According to Funders for LGBTQ Issues (FFLI), funding specifically earmarked for transgender causes began rapidly increasing in 2012; by 2016 it outstripped the funding for gay, lesbian and bisexual combined (a total of $13.2m), at a cool $22 million total in funding, specifically earmarked for transgender causes.

Yup. :(

I'm half way through this article and overwhelmed by the size of the machine.
Essential reading.