As a two-time breast cancer survivor and BBC-trained journalist, I have done a significant amount of research into the causes of cancer. My self-help memoir, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity, not only includes cartoons and humor, but also a bibliography referencing nearly 70 books and more than 100 articles and studies.

Do Bras Cause Cancer?

One important book I read as part of my research was the second edition of Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, by Sidney Ross Singer and Soma Grismeijer. It presents compelling evidence that the link between breast cancer and bras is stronger than that between smoking and lung cancer. I describe the issue in more detail In my blog, Say No to Bras: Can Bras Cause Breast Cancer?

Do Bras Make Breastfeeding More Difficult?

A chance meeting with a woman who had decades of experience in obstetric nursing and nurse social work, employed in these settings from the 1980s to the early 2000s, gave me insights into another problem stemming from the constriction of bras that I haven’t seen written about anywhere. As a certified lactation consultant, she found that young women who had worn training bras while their breasts were developing tended to have inverted nipples, which made it very difficult for them to breast feed their babies. Older nurses she worked with agreed that this was a recent phenomenon. In the old days, girls did not wear training bras. In addition, the pointy bullet bras of the 1950s popularized by Marilyn Monroe did not push the nipples in. These days, however, women do not want pointy bras or nipples to show through their clothing, so  bras tend to push the nipples inward.

Beast Binding: Like Bras on Steroids

Given the potential damage bras may cause, I find the current fashion for nonbinary gender fluid biological females to bind their breasts to be concerning, especially in young girls whose bodies are still developing. Are they dramatically increasing their chances of getting breast cancer? The jury is out on this issue, but in 2017, a study of the health impacts of chest binding among transgender adults was published in the journal Culture, Health & Sexuality. It found that 97% of the 1800 participants who bound their chest daily had at least one negative symptom. Side effects they reported included back and chest pain, shortness of breath, a buildup of fluid in the lungs, reduced exercise tolerance and even broken ribs. Inexpensive breast binders are now available from a variety of retailers, including Target and Amazon, and I saw no mention of potential health issues in any of the listings that I found online for these products.

These symptoms of health problems from breast binding in some ways hearken back to those reported from the 19th century fashion of upper-class women wearing tightly laced corsets. An article by Susan Isaac entitled “The dangers of tight lacing: the effects of the corset,” published in 2017 on The Royal College of Surgeons of England’s website, details a litany of health hazards this garment caused, labelled by doctors as “chlorosis” or “green sickness.” Symptoms ranged from fainting and anemia to even death. However, some claim that the improvements in women’s health after corsets fell out of favor were due to better sanitation.

Male Tucking Blocks Lymph Flow

The male equivalent of female breast binding is known as tucking: squashing and flattening out the male genitalia to achieve a smooth girlish crotch contour. As well as ultra-tight underwear, sometimes adhesive or duct tape is used.  A June 17, 2016 article on the UCSF transgender care website by Madeline B. Deutsch, MD, MPH, states, “In addition to local skin effects, this practice could result in urinary trauma or infections, as well as testicular complaints.” I would be concerned that the resulting constriction of lymph nodes in the groin area might lead to testicular cancer in the same way that researcher Sydney Ross Singer says constricting the lymph flow around the breast area causes breast cancer.

Hormone Blockers Have Serious Side Effects

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was seen as a miraculous cure for hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms and was increasingly prescribed from the 1960s to the 1990s. Later it appeared that this treatment caused breast cancer and thus it has now fallen into disfavor. This begs the question: Like HRT, will the practices of prescribing puberty blockers and various hormone treatments to youngsters with gender dysphoria be found to have various unintended consequences, including breast cancer? Osteoporosis is no laughing matter, but up till now it has been a condition mainly affecting postmenopausal women, rather than young people in the prime of life. Yet in a February 3, 2021 article in the Daily Mail, Joe Pinkstone reported on a study showing that puberty blockers impair height, growth and bone density. Some doctors believe that growth and bone density will return to normal if these drugs are discontinued, but nobody knows if this is actually the case, as those prescribed puberty blockers are in effect preventing vital development at a key time in their lives. Extensive use of these drugs during puberty has virtually no previous track record as no long-term studies have been done to prove their safety. It is all brand-new territory, and today’s trans youth are the guinea pigs.

I have two male friends with prostate cancer who have been prescribed hormone blockers as part of their treatment. Their doctors warned that they were likely to suffer loss of bone mass from the drugs. The two men also suffered various other side effects, including mood swings, hot flashes, loss of libido and weight gain.  These are not the kind of problems anyone would want to create for insecure youngsters who are unhappy with their body image. That’s not the worst of it. According to FDA data, thousands of deaths are linked to puberty blockers. In an article published on October 2, 2019 on breitbart.com, Dr. Susan Berry writes, “Between 2013 and June 2019, FDA recorded 41,213 adverse events, including 6,379 deaths and 25,645 “serious” reactions in patients who took the hormone blocker known as Lupron — the same drug given to children who say their gender identity is not consistent with their biological sex.”

For an in-depth look at the issue, read “Puberty Blockers Are Incredibly Dangerous Drugs: Exploring the Dark History of Hormone Blockers” by the Substack writer who goes by the name of A Midwestern Doctor. He says that “hormonal blockers are amongst the most dangerous drugs on the market.”

Sex Change Surgery Can Cause Horrific Problems

Sex-change surgery is often presented as unrealistically safe and easy on the silver screen. One of my favorite sci-fi series, The Orville, has a character known as Topa, born as a female on a planet that only accepts males. The baby is handed in to the hospital and soon comes out a perfect male. Then as an adolescent, Topa chooses to go back to being a female, receiving sex-changing medical treatment to do that. No side-effects. No pain. Everything perfect. Nothing could be further from the truth as regards real-life gender reassignment surgery. The internet is littered with horror stories of sex-change surgery gone awry, leaving young people suffering serious permanent damage for the rest of their lives. The poster-child of transitioning from male to female is Jazz Jennings, now 22, whose parents initiated the process when the child was only five years old. Jazz had a vaginoplasty at the age of 17 that required several subsequent corrective surgeries. The body apparently treated her neovagina as an open wound that it would try to heal by closing up unless she dilated the opening daily. No wonder that in the 8th season of her I Am Jazz reality TV show, Jazz has described feeling broken and unable to feel her authentic self.

One of my relatives had a baby boy born with the genital malformation, hypospadias. he needed three operations to create just a few millimeters of missing urethra. The boy endured a lot of pain and discomfort. Although much improved by the surgery, he still does not have completely normal functioning. Given how much more complex sex reassignment surgery is than this, I can understand how it frequently goes wrong.

Are Children Pushed to Transition Without Understanding the Consequences?

As reported in the Daily Mail in July, 2022, changing gender as a teenager was a decision that Keira Bell came to deeply regret.  She received treatment at the Tavistock Centre in London, England. This controversial child gender identity clinic has now been shut down after a damning report showed serious ideological malpractice and a lack of concern for the welfare of its young patients. According to a July 2022 article in The Times, the Tavistock Centre recklessly prescribed puberty blockers and pushed youngsters down the path of transitioning rather than addressing other psychological issues they might have been dealing with. Aged 16 and, by her own admission, “very mentally ill,” Keira had been given drugs by Tavistock Centre doctors to pause her own development before realizing—six years later and after undergoing a double mastectomy—that it was a monumental mistake.

Some gender-dysphoric biological females as young as 13 years of age have  undergone mastectomies for cosmetic reasons. Some doctors have apparently claimed that if these youngsters change their minds, they can always have reconstruction surgery. This is shocking to me  because breast implant illness is very real, as I write in my blog, “Breast Implant Illness? It’s All in Your Head, You Neurotic Woman!” The potential side effects include pain, cancer and systemic immune dysfunction. Thus, my view is that once someone decides to get rid of their breasts, they had better really want that 100 percent, and the person should be at least mature enough in age to be able to make an informed decision. When I went through breast cancer the second time, my doctor recommended a double mastectomy, but never mentioned anything about the toxicity of breast implants. I chose to turn down that surgery and have a lumpectomy instead. Nicole Daruda’s Breast Implant Illness and Healing Facebook support group to date has more than 175,000 members. Many women with breast cancer are now choosing to go flat after having mastectomies to avoid having to deal with implants.

The legal age for purchasing or publicly consuming alcohol in the United States is 21, based on the National Minimum Drinking Age Act that was passed in 1984. Yet adolescents have been deemed old enough to choose medical treatment for gender dysphoria that can have permanent effects on their bodies, even though society does not see them as mature enough to handle alcohol.

Adolescence and youth in general is a time of insecurity and experimentation. Some folks know early on in their gut deep down that they have been born in the wrong body, but for others gender fluidity is a temporary phase in their lives that they later change their minds about. Several friends of mine went through times of trans, gay or bisexual activity, but then later on became 100 percent cisgendered and heterosexual. One girl I knew from high school had a relationship with a guy that ended so badly she vowed to date only girls from that time on, but when I reconnected with her several years later, she was happily married to a man she described as her true soulmate.

The Fear of Suicide

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, chief psychiatrist of one of Finland’s two government-approved pediatric centers and one of Finland’s top transgender treatment experts, has slammed spread of what she calls “disinformation” on children with gender confusion,  declaring that “four out of five” kids who question their gender grow out of it. An article by Alex Oliveira published in the Daily Mail on February 22, 2023, quotes Dr. Kaltiala as saying American doctors are “using the fear of patient suicide” to convince parents their children need gender-affirming treatments. Many of those suicide statistics are derived from online surveys solicited on Facebook and Instagram, and as such, cannot be considered to be reliable, unbiased research.  Furthermore, there is no clear evidence proving that transitioning reduces depression or suicide risk. The hormone blockers doctors might prescribe to help these apparently suicidal teenagers may themselves cause psychiatric problems including suicidal thoughts.

First Do No Harm?

I have dealt with breast cancer twice, undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation as well as the emotional toll of confronting my own mortality. It is not an experience I would wish on anyone. Thus, the bottom line for me is that I firmly believe gender experimentation in young people with bodies that are still developing should not be medicalized. The precept of bioethics still taught in medical schools today, “First do no harm” (primum non nocere) should be the guiding principle of all medical professionals. Furthermore, the potential side effects of practices such as breast binding, tucking, hormone blockers and sex-change surgery should be made crystal clear, both by retailers and doctors.