Is the Surgical World Ready for Adolescent Gender Surgery?

This is absolute insanity. How can other medical professionals stand by and let this happen?

I only watched half of it. It's quite horrifying. "Their daughter with a penis.." GIRLS DONT HAVE A PENIS!!

How do we stop this madness?

It is super creepy and also it’s possibly the worst type of abusive lying to kids that I can think of. Humans can’t transition to the opposite sex. That is physically impossible.
Everyone should be able to dress like and ‘be’ who they are if that’s what they need to do and if they are still unhappy about it seek professional help. But they shouldn’t be sold a lie.

That’s one of the creepiest, nastiest things I’ve ever viewed.

It is truly horrifying. And this person is a doctor, allowed to work with vulnerable children.

I've no idea how to do what you suggest, FannyCann, but I'd also like to put together the several times she says 'a girl with a penis', in that oddly triumphant but robotic way, with the weird hand gestures.

That’s one of the creepiest, nastiest things I’ve ever viewed.

Slight derail but I wish I had computer skills to make a small clip of her talking 6.06 - 6.22 when she talks about "Avery's testes have never developed, in fact she does not make any sperm" and "her reproductive capability to be a biological parent has been eliminated".
I would like that short clip to spread everywhere. A bit like the notorious clip of a certain person laughing at her child's undeveloped genitalia which required more imaginative surgery than the usual.

Also 11.25 - 11.55 where she talks about surgeons thinking of the new techniques required to deal with undeveloped genital tissue and lack of working material as "creations". It doesn't get more horrifying or mad than that. It needs a Posie style campaign of projecting those clips at high volume in public spaces like outside the Tavistock clinic.

Anyone with the skills our there or point me to the app I need?

Thank you OhHolyJesus

I am listening it to it now. It’s absolutely shocking. This doctor is arguing that under 18 year olds should be able to have sex reassignment surgery based on the number of years that they have lived ‘as’ the opposite sex.

Never mind how this could ever work in practice given the subjective question of what on earth ‘living as’ the opposite sex actually means anyway.... but where does the child’s capacity and consent fit into this? or the consent of their parents? What about where the best interests of the child (eg not to have their genitals removed or remodelled and removing their natural functionality) trump consent?
(Consent of either the parents or the consent of the child with sufficient capacity to give consent for themselves)

What about the child’s right to have an open future and not to close off their fundamental future options and physical capabilities?

And obviously in the case of children, for how many years they have been dressed as the opposite sex by their parents is completely in the hands of their parents, not in the hands of the child, so this would be a highly subjective criteria and wide open to abuse.

What about that case in the UK where a mum seemed to be leading the transing of her child to the extent the courts ordered the child to live with his other parent? metro.co.uk/2017/10/08/charity-advised-mum-to-force-her-son-7-to-live-as-a-girl-6984649/

A child in a situation where parents are determined to have ‘a trans child’ where are the safeguards for the child? How much worse would the ability to have early surgery aged under 18 make this for the child?

(By the way- ‘trans child’ is not a label or concept I believe in, because this is an adult description placed on the child. We don’t talk about ‘communist children’ or ‘fascist children’ do we? I think be more accurate to treat it more like eg ‘child being raised with Christian beliefs’ or ‘by Christian parents’ rather than eg like saying a child themselves is ‘a Christian child’ because these are external adult ideas being absorbed by a child). But anyway.

Even when you have a child who is utterly convinced that they do want surgery at an age under 18, where are the safeguards for the child? When we know that human brains don’t fully mature until 25 (when natural puberty has not been blocked).

I couldn't even watch beyond 30 secs.

Thanks Chatty I'll send an email to the select committee.

Also: regarding the House of Commons Health Select Committee Enquiry that we will need to look into all this as a first step to convincing MPs in general that they may need to legislate on this. We can contact them to ask that they look at this. The really great thing about a Select committee is that it will look at the evidence from all sides:

Here’s how the Commons Health and Social care Select committee works:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/role/

Sarah Wollaston MP (she’s in the new Independent party) is the committee Chair, she is a GP herself. Good start. www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/membership/

Select committees need some evidence to start their enquiries- whether evidence of concerning issues or evidence of public concern. We have loads of both of that on FWR threads. TRAs have no evidence, that is why it’s always all #nodebate

So if parents like us just email the committee a few points that we think are important to the committee- copying in our own MPs - and whether or not we are gender critical or we think that affirmation-only is the way to go, then it can all be heard and looked at in the open. Nobody can argue against that and it’s completely unacceptable that all these questions have been raised and have not been looked into by an impartial body.

I am really concerned at the reports about the UK transitioning children and I also want mental health support to be much better for young people in general with shorter waiting lists, including those with gender dysphoria and those who are confused or exploring gender (if they are also in distress). Evidence and political attention (like this committee) is how any issue gets to be prioritised in Parliament. So let’s just start contacting people asking them to look at this.

Anyone can email the Chair, any member MP (especially if it’s your own MP) and the secretariat of the committee directly who may pass these things on to the Chair to consider. Contact details below:

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/contact-us/

Also worth a mention if you are writing: The Times cover splash also makes current NHS pilots such as this one in Manchester look very concerning: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3549494-Plans-for-radical-trans-health-service-model-to-be-rolled-out-across-England

The aim here in Manchester seems to be to take services for trans people out of the very specialist professional setting (gender identity clinics) and into much more general primary care level (GP care) in community settings. and services to be delivered by trans people themselves wherever possible.

This isn’t positive for adult patients at all. Because some adults over 25 are vulnerable and they still absolutely need neutrality, specialist expertise and experience in their medical and psychological care.

Why would these patients benefit from being offered treatments by generalists who don’t have the experience to scratch the surface of what is going on for the patient first?

Why would they benefit from the involvement of people who want to validate their own choices?

I think that competent adults can of course make their own choices including around long term blockers use, taking hormones and having surgery, but the system for adults needs a lot of tightening up too, to ensure that adults with underlying psychological needs are helped with those, rather than ‘affirmed’ as first approach.

Details of the Times front page in case anyone missed that: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3553935-Times-article-calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children?pg=1&order=

Some threads referencing healthcare expert Professors like Susan Bewley and other medical colleagues publishing in medical journals on children and the permanent, unevidenced treatments being given to transition them:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3339177-Excellent-BMJ-Article-Responding-to-Previous-One-Featuring-ATH

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3410257-BMJ-article-We-need-research-to-explore-the-interplays-between-gender-identity-mental-health-and-neurodevelopmental-problems-sexual-orientation-autogynephilia-and-unpalatable-gender-roles

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3552430-Posible-answer-to-why-arent-more-doctors-speaking-up

Also evidence based medicine specialist Professor Carl Heneghan: speaking out via BBC interview: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3518188-BMJ-Prof-Carl-Heneghan-Evidence-Based-Medicine-Oxford-Panorama-Trans-Kids-Gender-affirming-hormone-in-children-and-adolescents-Evidence-review-concludes-There-are-significant-problems

And regarding the stepping up that the UK Parliament needs to do to protect children and young people, (again sorry to recycle my posts from previous) but:

We need Parliament to have a Commons Health Select Committee Inquiry to look at this properly. After examining this properly surely to keep children and young people safe they will HAVE to recommend a statutory regulated system, with licensing, case by case application and frequent regulatory inspection of clinical work in this area.

Clearly this would need to be based on evidence, but you can imagine just from things anecdotally posted on here on FWR threads, that at a minimum to safeguard patients:

-Parliament should make it illegal for anyone but a licensed doctor (whether NHS or private) to give a specific child or person aged under 25 years old, blockers or hormones or surgery except under licensed conditions after a case by case review process. This should be overseen by a regulator with statutory powers (ie legal powers given to them to licence, refuse or revoke a licence)

-Same for surgical egg retrieval and surgical sperm storage and storing of prepubescent children’s and young people’s ovarian or testicular tissue (in hopes that one day mature viable eggs or sperm might be able to be derived from these.)

The law should also require that:

-There should be a duty for the clinicians who do this work to collect and share their outcomes data for all these patients from medical records so it can be properly researched.

Binders should be classed as a prescription-only medical product and again only possible to provide legally under clinical supervision.

Talking therapy must be made more available and there should be statutory maximum of the waiting times any young person should be expected to wait until they can speak to a proper professional about these issues. (And for all other issues while we are at it)

There should be proper government data collection in this space so we know the full picture of what is being provided in both public and private sector.

Criminal sanctions for those who break these laws.

Then a separate campaign to get research funders to fund appropriate professional researchers to properly investigate patient outcomes and to run studies to follow up patients in anonymised ways via medical records.

And also to fund sociological research (like I think James Caspian wanted to do) interviewing de-transitioned people, medically, hormonally and surgically transitioned people, those currently transitioning via services, and young people and children who are having talking therapies only. There’s probably other relevant groups I haven’t thought of.

Research should also be funded to talk to family members so they can talk about their experiences of caring for children and young people in this space.

Also research needs to be funded for the clinical service providers to talk about their professional experience of doing this work.

I’m sure others can think of relevant helpful things to include. My thoughts might not be right either, I am no expert in any of this but this seemed like a good place to start from the things people are worried about on here and might go some way to curbing the TRA lobby trying to inappropriately influence medical services.

Groups with power in this area should all be taking a stand and calling for an inquiry into this NOW. So that would include.

All of the medical and psychological professional societies and royal colleges, the BMA (the doctors’ trade union) and the regulators of medical or psychological practice like the General Medical Council,

Plus any organisation who supports research and evidence based medicine, especially in the NHS- like NICE, the NHS in each UK nation, but also the government departments in health, the medical and scientific research funders,
Plus any childrens’ and young people’s paediatric medical groups and bodies.

Sorry not watched video yet so I am responding to comments on the thread (and am banging same drum as I have done previously so apologies for that) but here goes:

YY to this is why we can never give up.

YY to I find this really disturbing - I had always naively assumed that these people had at least some training in ethics, and that new procedures would require some sort of ethics committee approval.

I think many people assume this is the case. I did too. You’d expect that a new treatment is required to be evidenced by research as safe and effective before a doctor can give it as a treatment. But no. This is not the case.

This is why I think we need both ethical wake up- the medical ethics community in the UK need to be speaking up about this. (Honourable mention goes to add Prof Susan Bewley and colleagues, not ethicists but clinicians but publishing to correct bullshit and ask questions in the medical literature-previous FWR threads have covered these.)

And we need the UK Parliament to wake up and make new laws requiring licensing approval to be given before you can permanently trans a child- covering blockers, hormones and surgery- because clinicians are able to do this transing and they are being lobbied to do so.

So let’s take as an example of an ethics guidance that needs to be made- the British Medical Association, which is like the trade union for doctors and which offers UK doctors ethical advice and support and which has a medical ethics committee to approve the BMA’s new ethical guidance.

BMA MEC here: www.bma.org.uk/collective-voice/committees/medical-ethics-committee
Ethics Toolkits they provide for doctors to use are here:
www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/ethics

I think the BMA ethics committee should urgently either

A) provide an ethics toolkit to endorse the current UK NHS practice of medically, surgically, hormonally transitioning children and young people under 25 years old (which is apparently when the brain reaches adult maturity, assuming natural puberty has been allowed to happen..) and stating when and why they think this approach is appropriate. (Good luck with making that case because the evidence of benefit does not seem to be there to support this from what I understand- but I am not a doctor)

Or

B) the BMA MEC should provide an Ethics toolkit to say that the appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria in children and young people is psychological support (as with other forms of body dysmorphia), and an exploration of whether there are other underlying or surrounding co-morbid issues.

Either way the ethics committee should note that UK doctors should never begin with a generalised starting point of ‘affirmation’, in terms of providing medical, surgical or hormonal treatments as the default- as they are no doubt being put under under pressure to do by the TRA lobby and the influence it has on patients, the coaching that has been reported and waiting outside in the corridor etc.

This is an inappropriate politicisation of the doctor- patient relationship beyond normal clinical care and this could be very harmful to the patient given what we know about the likelihood of detranisitioning.

There are multiple other sources of academic medical ethical advice including via published medical journals and ethics academic journals and via teaching to students in medical schools, the medical regulatory bodies including the GMC which licenses doctors to practice- and all should be stepping up- but BMA MEC seems particularly relevant because it ethically advises currently practising doctors so is where they will already be looking to to get ethical advice so they will be very influential if they comment on this. You really do have to wonder given front page of the Times lately with Tavistock revelations why the BMA MEC have not done so already.

It's absolutely awful, especially that it was applauded so much, but you have all given amazing analysis of the reality, thank you

If Joseph Mengelegave gave TED talks...
this is what he would sound like.

Yep Erythronium exactly that.

Trying to think of how that works for any other condition: my patients found noise distressing, upsetting, and felt suicidal, I administered medication to damage their hearing. Now their ears don't work, they're redundant body parts. Let's work together to ensure you can resolve my initial treatment with ear removal

my patients found breast development distressing, upsetting, and felt suicidal with the onset of puberty, due to societal expectations layered onto women. So I administered medication to damage their breast growth. Now they view their remaining body parts as redundant. Let's work together...oh, hang on, we already are, great!

Well she's lying when she claims she's willing to take this journey with the families. She'll go as far as suits herself, till her pockets are appropriately lined no doubt, then throw up her hands in mock innocence when it all goes tits up. Nothing to do with her, the patients all knew what they were doing. Just appalling.

Is the surgical world ready to get sued multiple times in the near future?

I think she is AncientLights:

"My surgical colleagues are going to have to come up with new techniques. They are going to have to think of these surgeries not as reconstructions but creations."

".......The surgical world needs to be prepared for the changes and expectations that are to come from my treatment, commitment and advocacy. I am willing to take this journey with these families. Are you?"

She's even admitting she's causing these issues that surgeons have to find solutions to isn't she PomBear? It's absolutely horrifying.

Is she really addressing surgeons? It's so utterly patronising, if so. All that careful explanation of what an endocrinologist is & what happens at puberty in simple lay terms. So robotic. And comparing removal of sex organs with appendicectomy - the appendix is now only removed when causing trouble, so if child-size testes aren't diseased, why amputate?

Her point about removal of the age restriction being replaced by how long the child has lived 'in role' is worrying in the extreme. One of the cornerstones of self ID is that adult trans won't have to live in role at all - it seems to be part of the 'degrading and humiliating' treatment the trans Taliban speak of. It will be a mere hop, skip and a jump to apply that to kids then, I fear. Your kid could 'change sex' in the blink of an eye.

Scary scary stuff.

Just watched the whole thing.
What really struck me was her main motivation for these huge surgeries was to avoid "psychological distress".
Which strikes me somewhat as a parent giving in to a toddler to have whatever they want to avoid a tantrum. Instead of keeping the boundaries and supporting your toddler through their anger and upset so they can learn some emotional self regulation.
Part of growing up is all about learning to deal with emotions. And part of adolescent is learning how to deal with angst and distress and disappointment. It's common to us all to a greater or lesser extent. How damaging bit is though doesn't depend on the extent of the trauma but how well supported we are to deal with it, and the skills we learn / are taught in how to deal with it.
I know we need to move away from the medical profession being seen as a benign patriarchal type thing where the "doctors know best", but fuck it sometimes they should bloody know best where to draw the line and say no!

We're living in a Franken'world.

I work on a female surgical ward/emergency gynae clinic. I would quit my job if it meant having to care for young people who had been mutilated like this

How can they talk so frankly about it? What the fuck is wrong with people?

Will we look back on this in horror in the future, or is this agenda so strong that we will have been long drowned out?

Erythronium

Spot on, I was about to post similar thoughts. It's a bit like the Susie Green conundrum: once you've taken actions, you need others to affirm your actions, otherwise you've created new problems..

As a 'progressive' endrocrinologist, you have prescribed medication that has resulted in the lack of growth and development of a child's body through puberty.

Which then means that child's body will no longer be developed enough to be suitable for the current surgical techniques carried out on fully-grown adults to create fascimile genitals of the other sex (particularly relevant for biological boys).

You've just created a new problem.

So you really do need the buy-in from those who'll help out to solve that problem.

As an aside, as an argument point for pre-18 surgery, Tandy suggests removing testes is no big deal, as medical practitioners are really familiar in removing redundant body parts like the appendix.

'm not sure if I'm behind the times, but I don't think doctors routinely remove all appendixes and other bits from us just because they're redundant - only those ones that go a bit wrong.

And Tandy's example of Avery's testes are only 'redundant' because Tandy's actions has rendered them so.

This is why we can never give up. No matter how awful things get, no matter how dismissive or threatening politicians and celebrities and the woke are - this is a direct assault on children, their safety and their futures.

Never give up.

The interesting thing is that she's addressing surgeons in this talk. It's not in her power as an endocrinologist to offer trans children surgery, that's up to another group of doctors who she has to persuade. Obviously there's still some gatekeeping going on as children currently aren't be allowed to "consent" to body mutilations when they are underage. By administering puberty blockers and hormones she's kick-starting the process (rendering body parts "non-functional") but she needs the help of the cosmetic surgeons to complete the full destruction of her patients' bodies, I wonder if it brings her up against her cognitive dissonance when she encounters doctors who say no to her patients' or their parents' requests for bodily harm, so she has to find a way to stop those doctors doing that.

All those words though and what she couldn't bring herself to say was "I advocate castrating children".

Christ on a bike, that is awful.