Dr. Ken Zucker

I first heard of Dr. Ken Zucker back in 2015 when the story about his firing as the head of the CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s) gender dysphoria clinic first broke. The story struck me as strange. At that time he had 40 years of experience in the clinic. And as far as I could tell he was being accused of being “anti-trans”, one of the new heresies of the woke age. The clinic had existed for decades, and he had worked there forever, and been the head a good chunk of that time. They had a great reputation as leaders in the (until recently very small) field. What the heck had happened? Why would an anti-trans person volunteer to help gender dysphoric people for 40 years, many of whom did indeed go on to have surgery and hormone treatment?

As Dr. Zucker mentions, well-known journalist Jesse Singal did a very good bit of investigative journalism which was critical in proving a number of the accusations written about Dr. Zucker in an external-review (or was it a witch hunt, I’m not clear?) were factually untrue. Untrue enough to win him a large court settlement for wrongful dismissal.

And as an interesting aside, as I read more about the details of his case, I realized Dr. Zucker and I have a strange intermediary connection (which he alludes to at one point later in the podcast) - one of these “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” things that gave me insider knowledge that had me even more suspicious of the odd criticisms about Dr. Z than I would have been anyway. FSIM conference attendees may hear more about this connection, depending on how loose-lipped I am feeling at the time.

Dr. Zucker didn’t leave the field after his firing. He continues to see patients and edit the journal “Archives of Sexual Behaviour”. In 2 years he will have 50 years of experience with gender dysphoria. I’m about 24 years into my medical career and am considered an OG. All I can say is hats off to him.

Very few clinicians have 50 year of experience in any field, let alone a highly specialized area like gender medicine. And most clinicians not in the field will only see an occasional gender dysphoric patient. So Dr. Zucker’s perspective is truly singular. Who else in the world is in a better position to make sense of the rapid, strange, and divisive changes that first seeped and then flooded into the field of gender medicine in the last 2 decades. Who could better help us sort out truth from fiction, ideas from ideology, wheat from chaff: a process that is critical. If we submit to the radical forces advocating for automatic and rapid affirmation, we will hurt many patients. If we become reactionary we risk throwing away years of essential acquired knowledge in the field. We can’t forget that those with gender dysphoria are human beings who are struggling and need help. How do we best do that? There’s a baby in the gender medicine bathwater that we should attend to as we try to pour out the dirt. And I think Dr. Zucker knows what that baby looks like.

Dr. Zucker was fired in 2015 not for thinking that gender transition is always wrong, but simply for thinking it is often not RIGHT for those with gender dysphoria. He is guilty of having a balanced view. This makes him unfit to head a gender clinic in the Age of Woke. But it makes him perfect to speak at Free Speech in Medicine.

Some of you listening will hear Dr. Zucker in person in Baddeck next week. You can still sign up for the conference at freespeechinmedicine.com. For those who don’t make it, remember to stay tuned for online events later this year and early next, one of which will be a replay of Dr. Zucker’s talk, with live online Q&A with him afterwards.