The videos aim to ‘educate’ and ‘celebrate’
I wondered how Doctor Teetus Deletus is doing these days so I went looking. The Daily Mail (sorry) reports:
A Florida-based plastic surgeon who dubs herself ‘Dr Teetus Deletus’ — a glib reference to breast removal surgery — has been reported to America’s consumer watchdog for using her huge TikTok following to ‘unfairly and deceptively’ sway teens into having sex-change operations.
In other words she promotes such operations, she markets them, she advertises them. She acts like a Hollywood cosmetic surgeon, as opposed to a responsible health-oriented medical doctor. Her clients, however, have immature brains, so they’re less defended against her marketing than full adults are.
A complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) obtained by DailyMail.com, says Dr Sidhbh Gallagher, who runs Gallagher Plastic Surgery in Miami, talks up the benefits and downplays the risks of sex-reassignment surgeries.
Besides which, the “benefits” in question are very doubtful – they risk being temporary, and in the long term extremely harmful. A girl who gets her breasts cut off at 15 because Gallagher’s marketing convinced her it would be good fun could be in for decades of furious regret.
It accuses Dr Gallagher, who says she carries out between 400-500 gender-affirmation surgeries a year, of using catchy videos with pop music backing tracks on social media platforms as a marketing gimmick to attract ‘vulnerable and impressionable’ minors to everything from breast removals to ‘bottom surgery’.
Is there some other reason for using catchy videos with pop music backing tracks on social media platforms?
The clinic said in a statement that the videos aim to ‘educate’ and ‘celebrate’ a marginalized group, and that Dr Gallagher has become a ‘target of attacks and complaints’ because of her politically-charged work with transgender teens.
And why is the work “politically charged”? Because it’s quackery, and highly destructive, and because Gallagher’s approach is grotesquely flippant and reckless.
I don’t do TikTok, but a lot of TikTok videos get posted as “reels” on Facebook. I have seen many people crowing about their large families, or the otherwise disturbing way they became pregnant, and about the joys of surrogacy. They are all bouncy and dancy, as if only dull, boring, hateful people could possibly disagree.
Imagine glitzy happy marketing campaigns for prescription anti-depressants or antibiotics – suddenly it all becomes clear. Doctors have no business taking this approach to advertise any medical intervention, let alone surgery.
I have no need to imagine such marketing campaigns for antidepressants and other drugs, they exist now. They are from the drug manufacturers, and they advise consumers to pressure their doctors to prescribe the drugs. They are awful.
True. The change in US law that allowed medications to be advertised was a VERY BAD CHANGE IN LAW. The advertising is all over tv.
True about the ads for prescription medicine, but at least the ads say, “ask your doctor if X is right for you.” Gallagher IS the doctor, and I don’t imagine she’s going to tell anyone “no, it’s not.”
Re #5
True, but Holms #2 asked “imagine glitzy happy marketing campaigns for prescription anti-depressants or antibiotics”, and I was responding to that. I agree that it’s oh so much worse for doctors to advertise that way. I have seen ads for doctors (seems like mostly cosmetic surgeons, coincidence?) that are questionable, but they are not aimed at kids.
Most doctors I know actually hate the marketing. They have to deal with patients who insist on a particular treatment they saw advertised, even if it doesn’t fit their diagnosis. It makes their work more difficult.
For a responsible doctor, Dr. Teetus Deletus also would make their work more difficult, as patients not able to get to Florida might insist that it’s right and good because a doctor said so.