What did you see when you went, how long were you in Amsterdam and what did you see while you were there?

I was only there for about a week. So it wasn't like a tremendous amount of time. But I sat in with Anilu doing several assessments, like psychiatric assessments. And I sat in with the team while they discussed

cases because they would thoroughly discuss every single case before they did anything.

And the team was...

Laura Edwards Leeper first visited the Amsterdam Clinic back in 2007, shortly after the Dutch

published the first outline of their protocol and word of this new treatment had started to spread overseas.

You know, I was just sitting there like, you know, wide-eyed, like, okay, trying to soak it all in as much as I could.

She had just been hired as a part-time clinical psychologist for the very first youth gender clinic in the U.S.

And she had been sent there to learn their process.

They were very, very strict with who they allowed to start hormones.

And so I remember talking to Anilu after some of the assessments that I had in on

and asking, you know, why she wasn't like approving hormones for this kid where, from what I could tell, the mental health issues were really directly tied to the gender dysphoria.

And it seemed like that would really help.

But they, you know, were just following a very, very strict protocol.

And that's really, that's what helped me figure out what to do back in the U.S., like when I came back to

Boston.

So you were, there was, you were adapting their approach, right?

You couldn't replicate their approach.

Right. Yeah. I absolutely could not replicate it because, first of all, they had a lot of mental health people, you know, and one endocrinologist. You know, it was like just very, very heavy mental health component. And I was one person with like four hours a week devoted to this. Like so, you know, there was no possible way that I was going to be able to, yeah.

Do you worry about that first jump from the sort of way the Dutch were doing things to how things kind of evolved here?

Yeah. Yes, I do. I mean, and I actually was thinking about this the other day, how they were so generous. You know, they took me under their wing. They taught me the ropes. And then trusted me, you know, trusted me to bring this to our country and try to make it work. And there is a part of me that

definitely feels like I've let them down in some way. It's weird. I mean, because obviously,

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