On Thursday’s edition of CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell had a sitdown interview with Doctor Jesse Ehrenfeld, the president of the American Medical Association who grumbled that doctors and other medical professionals were struggling in their professions due to states banning chemical castration and other transgender surgeries.
After introducing Ehrenfeld, O’Donnell asked him what he thinks was “the top issue facing physicians today.” Ehrenfeld responded that the United States has a “twin-endemic, a pandemic of the disease, plus a pandemic of misinformation and bad information.”
Narrating to the audience, O’Donnell bemoaned that “Dr. Ehrenfeld is taking over at a difficult time. Doctors are facing burnout, soaring medical costs, medicare payment issues, and new legislation targeting the LGBTQ community and reproductive rights.”
“We have a healthcare system in crisis,” Ehrenfeld proclaimed. When asked to clarify, he said, “In at least six states now, if I practice evidence-based care, I can go to jail. It's frightening. When a patient shows up in my office, if I do the right thing from a scientific, from an ethical perspective, to know that that care is no longer legal, criminalized, and could wind me in prison.”
There was no scientific evidence to support chopping off the healthy body parts of a young boy or girl in order to make them look like the opposite sex. Yet, O’Donnell never corrected him or challenged him in any way.
Even worse, she accepted his anti-scientific narrative by referring to it as “criminalizing of doctor care.”
“Health care has been a target as of late in a way that has been deeply damaging not just to the health of patients who are seeking specific services, but to every American,” Ehrenfeld decried.
Ending the segment, he worried that “we see patients who no longer confine in OB-GYN because OB-GNs are leaving a state where they have criminalized certain aspects of care. That affects all women in the state.”
This segment was made possible by Simplisafe. Their information is linked.
To read the transcript click “expand”:
CBS Evening News
6/15/2023
6:41:22 p.m. EasternNORAH O’DONNELL: Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld is an anesthesiologist, Navy veteran, and father. What do you think is the top issue facing physicians today?
DR. JESSE EHRENFELD: So, after three years of experiencing so much stress with COVID, you know, we have had this twin-endemic, a pandemic of the disease, plus a pandemic of misinformation and bad information.
O’DONNELL: Dr. Ehrenfeld is taking over at a difficult time. Doctors are facing burnout, soaring medical costs, medicare payment issues, and new legislation targeting the LGBTQ community and reproductive rights.
EHRENFELD: We have a healthcare system in crisis. I hear that from my physician colleagues.
O’DONNELL: How do we have a healthcare system in crisis?
EHRENFELD: So today there are so many backseat drivers telling us what to do and we’ve got regulators that are discarding science and telling physicians how to practice medicine, putting barriers in care.
O’DONNELL: Those barriers include what he considers the criminalization of healthcare.
EHRENFELD: In at least six states now, if I practice evidence-based care, I can go to jail. It's frightening. When a patient shows up in my office, if I do the right thing from a scientific, from an ethical perspective, to know that that care is no longer legal, criminalized, and could wind me in prison.
O’DONNELL: What kind of care are you talking about?
EHRENFELD: So, gender-affirming care, care for transgender patients, as well as abortion, reproductive health care.
O’DONNELL: What do you think’s behind this criminalizing of Doctor care?
EHRENFELD: Health care has been a target as of late in a way that has been deeply damaging not just to the health of patients who are seeking specific services, but to every American. So we see patients who no longer confine in OB-GYN because OB-GNs are leaving a state where they have criminalized certain aspects of care. That affects all women in the state.
O’DONNELL: Dr. Ehrenfeld hopes to improve health equity for all underserved groups. And he hopes to be a role model for any young doctors, and especially his own sons.
