Republican congressional candidate and physician Aury Nagy says scientific inquiry reveals the gender “that’s hardwired into your brain can be different than the gender that’s expressed externally. That’s just biology, and I think most people aren’t aware of that.” (Nagy campaign video screengrab).
Dr. Aury Nagy, a Las Vegas neurosurgeon who is running in the Republican primary for Congressional District 3, a seat currently held by Democrat Rep. Susie Lee, says he is guided by science, a notion that could put him at odds with President Donald Trump’s White House, where some fear science is taking a back seat to politics.
Trump, for instance, rejects the notion of gender ideology. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order recognizing two sexes – male and female – and eliminated
federal funding for gender-related programs. “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself,” the order says.
Nagy says scientific inquiry reveals the gender “that’s hardwired into your brain can be different than the gender that’s expressed externally. That’s just biology, and I think most people aren’t aware of that.”
Another concern for Nagy is the COVID messenger RNA vaccine deployed during Trump’s first term. Nagy, who served as president of the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, asked Gov. Joe Lombardo to ban the vaccine, which he says may be dangerous.
Trump, on the other hand, is mentioned as a potential Nobel Prize winner for Project Warp Speed, the initiative that delivered the vaccine in record time.
Philosophical differences aside, Nagy is eager to join Trump in Washington.
“For at least another two years, we have somebody in the presidency willing to burn down the institutions that have been failing Americans and replace them with something that works,” he said during an interview Tuesday.
Nagy says CEOs of for-profit health care companies are incentivized to charge as much as possible while delivering minimum care.
As a legislative observer, he says “it seemed there were lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry and the hospitals, the insurance companies, the hedge funds and the personal injury attorneys practicing medicine, but there was almost nobody representing the patients or the people who take care of them.”
Last year, he formed the White Coat Party, a group of health care professionals who share his concerns. The group wants “laws that severely punish companies that repeatedly put profits over patients.”
Under Trump, health care and pharmaceutical corporations are enjoying tax breaks and greater profits.
‘The way God made them’
Nagy says he has long been aware of research indicating biological differences between heterosexual and homosexual individuals can be identified by examining the nucleus of the hypothalamus that corresponds to gender identity.
He says he once was concerned insurance companies would discriminate against gay people, based on their brain scans. He became more willing to discuss it, he says, when a young man confided that as a teenager “he thought that God hated him because he was gay, and that really impacted me.”
People, he says, should understand “this is just the way they were born — the way God made them. That is what we have learned through science.” The information, if taught in sex education classes, “could be valuable to the understanding of sexuality.”
Nagy says he’s enlisted two Southern Nevada hospitals – Sunrise and Mountain View – to assist in “creating a protocol to measure the size of the nucleus, and so we’re hoping by this time next year we can start a study to actively pursue that.”
Gender reassignment therapy should not be allowed until imaging demonstrates the area of the brain associated with gender identity “corresponds to the gender preference expressed by the minor,” says the White Coat Party’s legislative agenda. “Imaging results are not valid until 4 years of age, at which time the size of the nucleus in the brain involved in sexual identity has reached maximum size.”
If elected, he’s hoping to cut through the “racism and bigotry” displayed in Trump’s anti-gay agenda and enlighten the Religious Right, which he suggests may have co-opted Trump, who he notes was previously more supportive of LGBTQ+ rights.
Warp Speed? Not so fast.
Nagy, in the White Coat Party’s legislative agenda, cites research that found fragments of DNA in the Covid vaccines. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the double-helix shaped molecule that carries genetic data that informs the development and reproduction of living things, including viruses.
“There’s a chance that DNA can jump into your own genome,” Nagy told the Current. A “misfolded” protein, he says, could cause an autoimmune reaction, while a protein that malfunctions could make it more difficult to suppress cancers.
Nagy says he wrote to Lombardo, “telling him we need to ban the use of this vaccine until we get these questions answered,” but has not heard back. The governor did not respond to a request for comment.
Nagy’s warning is a reprise of Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s earlier call for a ban of the vaccine nationwide. The theory cited by Lapado and repeated by Nagy has been discredited by a variety of authorities as faulty science.
Nagy says he is unaware of Ladapo’s recent announcement that Florida will end mandates for childhood vaccines.
“I thought it was just for Covid,” he said, adding he would look into it.
He supports revisiting the schedule at which childhood vaccines are administered, and says he appreciates Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s willingness to disrupt the status quo, even though Kennedy’s words and acts have “raised some red flags. I don’t think he’s been 100% accurate on everything he said, but I do appreciate the focus that he’s drawn to these issues. I think he’s going to fund science that’s going to help us to find out the truth on these issues.”
Last week, House Republicans rejected Trump’s effort to slash funding for the National Institutes of Health by 40% and voted to keep funding flat.
Among other initiatives supported by Nagy, some of which place him at odds with Trump’s, are:
Requiring nurse-to-patient ratios that support patient health and the well-being of nurses. In June, Lombardo vetoed a measure supported by nurse unions that would have imposed ratios;
Implementing a 2% room tax to help pay for Medicaid, which is expected to be cut under Trump; and
Removing barriers to parents providing healthy meals by marshaling the resources of the hospitality and sports industries, as well as local growers via the Nevada Nutrition Coalition, which Nagy formed in the interest of improving mental and physical health. Meanwhile, Trump cut grants that provide locally grown foods to schools and food banks, and will require states to fund SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Nevada is anticipating a $19 million SNAP shortfall beginning next year.