“It’s so clearly fraud to me. … You’re overestimating the benefits and you’re underestimating the risk and you’re trying to push bad treatments on people.”
Serving as an expert witness in lawsuits about pediatric gender medicine (PGM) is often a thankless task. When Dr. Kristopher Kaliebe, an experienced psychiatrist, offered his analysis of the practice in his home state of Florida, the judge didn’t even mention him by name when he declared the state’s PGM ban unconstitutional. He simply wrote, with no explanation, that all the physicians who criticized PGM “testified not based on their professional expertise but based on their ideology.”
Nevertheless, Dr. Kaliebe has continued trying to educate courts, healthcare professionals, and the public about the dangers of PGM.
In this interview, Dr. Kaliebe speaks with GCLS about the placebo effect, psychotherapy, his behind-the-scenes view of PGM trials, and why even social transition without medicalization can be “a terrible part of your childhood.”
The interviewer is Elspeth Cypher, a retired justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court who serves on the board of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).
This is an illuminating conversation between two dedicated professionals who use their expertise to fight — often with little or no recognition — for kids caught up in the PGM scandal.
