EPISODE 87 - Medical Technology & Ethics w Jennifer Lahl

Quick Notes:

Jennifer Lahl is the founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. She has 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, hospital administrator, and senior-level nursing manager, and more recently, she’s also become a successful filmmaker. In 2010, she made her writing, producing, and directing debut producing the documentary film Eggsploitation, which has been awarded Best Documentary by the California Independent Film Festival and has sold in more than 30 countries. She is also the Director, Executive Producer, and co-writer of Anonymous Father’s Day (2011), a documentary film exploring the stories of women and men who were created by anonymous sperm donation. In 2014 she completed three films on the ethics of third-party reproduction, aka surrogacy, with a trilogy called: Breeders: A Subclass of Women?. In July 2015, she released a documentary short called Maggie's Story, which follows one woman’s egg donation journey. Lahl’s next feature film, #BigFertility was released in the fall of 2018.

And of course, we were particularly interested in Jennifer’s films that focus on gender medicine. Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender? was released in June of 2021. Her forthcoming film, The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters, is set to release this Fall, in 2022.

In our discussion with Jennifer, she puts forward her theories about what she calls a “superhighway” that confidently shuttles people towards risky medical interventions; this happens, according to Jennifer, both in the realm of fertility and gender. Fertility is an area that Stella and I know very little about so it was interesting to hear Jennifer share her experiences as a nurse and filmmaker who’s been following this topic very closely. She holds some very strong, but thought-provoking views on the medicalization of fertility that some are sure to find controversial. Ultimately, Jennifer’s biggest concern is that any patient, whether they are pursuing interventions in either fertility or gender medicine, should be fully informed about the risks involved, and the outcomes. She also highlights that sometimes a lack of evidence underlies the model of informed consent. This poses the question: how can you consent to something if we have very little or no evidence about it? We explored the parallels that Jennifer has observed in these two areas of medicine, both, incidentally, with serious ethical considerations around fertility and reproduction. We highly encourage you to check out both of the films she’s made on gender, which we also talk extensively about in this discussion. So here is our conversation with Jennifer Lahl.

Links & Resources:

● Center for Bioethics and Culture Network:

● Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender:

● Detransition Diaries: Saving our Sisters:

● Bill Joy Article: “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”:

● Our Father Film:

● FDA puts warning label on puberty blockers:

Extended Notes

● Most of Jennifer’s nursing career was based in pediatrics.
● Pediatric people are always educating people.
● In the U.S., there are over one million frozen embryos.
● Big fertility makes a lot of embryos because it has a high failure rate.
● Profit is a motive for finding cures in the U.S.
● In the recent past, women were treated as guinea pigs by fertility doctors.
● In her movie Eggsploitation, Jennifer spotlights young women who were endangered by fertility doctors.
● Jennifer made a movie while she had a manuscript on the table because people no longer read.
● The patient experience has shifted during Jennifer’s tenure in medicine.
● Ethics classes are not required for medical students.
● Parental authority is being undermined by the current establishment.
● Jennifer says California is close to becoming a sanctuary state where gender-questioning teens can go to get cross-sex hormones and surgery.
● Jennifer shares the fertility preservation information that may impact gender medicine.
● The CDC publishes an annual report on all the fertility clinics in the U.S.
● Assisted reproductive technology is too new to understand the full impacts on children born from it.
● Egg donors are given drugs to put them into a medically introduced menopause.
● The American Society of Reproductive Medicine offers guidelines to women without proper research or testing.
● Jennifer stresses the importance of holistically treating children.

[kamaliancirranoush]

Jennifer Lahl’s work is amazing. I greatly appreciate the awareness she is creating on these subjects. The exploration of ethics concerning new medical technologies is far behind curve of innovation. Thank you for having her on the podcast, this is an important conversation.

[MindmusicArt]

Your interviews are always so interesting! ❤‍🔥Mutual respect and admiration between interviewees and the interviewed is so nice to hear ❤❤❤

[robertmarshall]

Fascinating how broad and deep the reach of this subject goes

[vVvnNnbBb]

Sure I watched eggsploitation on here, absolutely eye opening on the issue!

[LauraBeckerReal]

I'd very much like to hear someone discuss Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) in the trans cohort. From anecdotal evidence I've heard from other detrans people, and myself, PCOS was a contributing factor that nobody was thinking about. PCOS creates a masculinization effect on a girl's body during puberty and is highly linked with greater levels of depression, anxiety, body image issues, eating issues, weight gain, shame, etc. PCOS can also be triggered due to high stress levels at any age of fertility in women, and it can create immense difficulties in conception and child birth. I think PCOS can contribute to gender dysphoria a desire to hormonally medicalize due to already higher levels of testosterone in the woman's body, and I wonder what the fertility effects related to PCOS post-transition are. I have no idea what my fertility is myself, as I'm nowhere near to having a baby, but it concerns me for the future if I ever find a mate and am ready to try and conceive a child with PCOS and after taking testosterone. Lot's of food for thought, and I never hear anyone talking about it.

[kristinskousgard]

Does The Center for Bioethics and Culture oppose same sex marriage? There is a slippery slope from protecting children by opposing a gender ideology which medicalizes children and harms them in objective and measurable ways to an ideology of opposing rights of homosexuals which engender no observable or measurable harm. We need to be aware of this when fighting gender ideology so as to avoid doing objective and measurable harm ourselves.