NEW: Grounds in support of intervention in the Bell v Tavistock JR appeal published

It’s probably in the public interest that Stonewall et al get to intervene even if the only thing they have to add is ideology. At least then people can’t say it isn’t a fair judgment because only one side of the argument was heard.

Hopefully nocure but even with the extra interveners, I just find the whole thing a real mess from the Tavistock side. I assume because of the importance of the case, they will allow but I pity the Judges

I can't say more but I think there are more applications to intervene - from at least one person with a very different perspective.

Here's an article from 2012 which quotes Margaret Griffiths of Mermaids.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/23/nhs-puberty-delay-drugs-children-gender-identity-disorder_n_1223166.html

Until now, under-16s in Britain seeking treatment for Gender Identity Disorder had the choice of going overseas or waiting until the age of 16 to proceed with gender reassignment surgery.

In the past decade the hormone-blocking drugs have been used increasingly in countries such as the US and the Netherlands.

Margaret Griffiths, liaison officer for Mermaids, a charity that offers support to families and children affected by GIS, also supports the drug trials.

“Most children with GID have suffered for as long as they can remember. But previously they could only seek treatment at 16. By this point boys have already developed facial hair and a deep voice and girls have grown breasts," she told The Huffington Post.

Bernard Reed of GIRES is also quoted in this article: “We have been campaigning since 2005 to bring Britain in line with other countries, such as Belgium and Canada, by offering children the opportunity to suspend the process of puberty while they make a decision.”

So perhaps Griffiths's child was 16 or over when treated by GIDS with puberty blockers, not 14 as implied by the 1997 Sunday Times article, so although that article starts with the headline "Children of 14 get sex change treatment on NHS", it doesn't actually say that any child under 16 had been given puberty blockers on the NHS.

Thanks for that link jj. There are some interesting points in there that I was unaware of.

Margaret Griffiths ran Mermaids before Susie Green, and has a very similar story about her male child who wanted to be a girl. In the article it mentions "the gender identity development service at the Portman clinic in London where Griffiths's son was treated". This must have been before 1997 when the article was published, yet a decade or so later, when Susie Green wanted treatment for her child, she had to go to the US for it.

I'm going to see if I can find evidence that this treatment was actually taking place in under-16s at GIDS before they started their experimental 'study' of early treatment with puberty blockers in 2010. If they'd been doing this routinely before 1997, why was it framed by them as a 'new' experimental treatment in 2010?

This isn't true. Whilst provision was unformalised and patchy, puberty blockers have been used in the UK since at least 1997.

As a teenager in the 90s, I definitely remember reading an article in a teen magazine about a ftm transitioner who was probably about 11 or so at the time. IIRC correctly, the transitioner was born Rebecca but wanted to transition and be known as Fredd.

Puberty blockers were definitely mentioned in the article I read. Fredd wasn't on them yet but wanted to be.

This would have been around 1995 or 1996. I think the article was written following a TV documentary that I didn't see.

I have since tried to look into what happened to Fredd but my cursory Internet searches haven't thrown up anything.

Anyway, I agree that puberty blockers have been around for a while. Strange that there aren't any long term studies into their use.

That article from 1997 is really interesting. Thanks for pointing out that it started so long ago.

The language is much clearer than you see today in explaining what exactly is happening. One mother says 'its better to have a living daughter than a dead son' (early outing if the phrase?) but refers to her male-to-female transitioning child as 'he' and son which was surprising to me.

The portman clinic doctor says that one in four children will change their mind.

The reason it is still viewed as 'experimental' by the high court was because, despite the 24 yrs, no one has bothered to follow up these children and actually show, with empiracle data, that life improved for them as a cohort, compared to children who did not receive the treatment.

It seems 24 years later this treatment is still 'experimental'

Presumably that's because for that whole period of time it has not been studied in a scientific way. No long term data collected, patients not follow up and assessed. Something could be used for 100 years and still be "experimental" if the only data is anecdotal. Personally I think this is one of the biggest scandals because the Tavistock are in the best possible position to study GD and have had years to put together a decent evidence base for what they are doing and they basically came to the court with nothing. Really shocking.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20061214120000/www.pfc.org.uk/pfclists/news-arc/1997/msg00047.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/en/archive/20061214120000/www.pfc.org.uk/pfclists/news-arc/1997/msg00047.htm

Also, litigation is a hard, emotionally draining battle. For a detransitioner, physically and emotionally scarred by the experience and unsure of her rights, I can imagine it's the last thing she would want to do. I find it telling that Keira Bell joined a case already put in motion by Mrs A than starting from scratch.

Detransitioners in the States would need a huge amount of support, both emotionally and legally to take this forward. I get the sense from reading detrans reddit etc. that they blame themselves, not others. Also, a lot of them are trying to focus on the future and not regret transitioning, as it makes them who they are today.

I think the court cases will come, but I also think it will happen a few years down the line when detransitioners are a little bit older and can realise that of course a teenager can't consent to cross-sex hormones and mastectomies.

Partyofpun on Brook Cynically however, I can’t help wondering if they have one eye on Planned Parenthood in the US who are providing hormone treatment (18+)
I hadn't thought if that. It would be impossible and completely out of the picture if the appeal fails.

I suspect that's all correct Michelle. Many years ago I briefly had a job in a niche third sector org. I spent the whole time wondering what on earth was the purpose of much of what we did other than keeping us all employed. Hence why it was a brief foray into that sector for me.

One young person went to the same surgeon for detrans surgery who performed the original transition procedure. Insurance paid this surgeon the first time then the patient paid $$$ of their own money to get it fixed. When you have a model like that it's not going to matter if their patients have regrets because it just means more money for more surgeries

I can't work out why there is not a steady flow of litigation in the US in the cases of regret. Does the "informed consent" process in the US mean that girls are signing away their right to sue when things go wrong?

And suddenly it becomes obvious why Brook are involved....

This seems to be one of the very major problems with many large charities and organisations: that it's a small and extremely incestuous pool of people who all periodically swap jobs.

It would appear from what I've heard from people who have worked in the system, that no one not of the type or group seems to get near top jobs, and those who rock the boat and say things like "Hang on a minute" seem to be quickly made unwelcome and managed out, or quickly vanish to other jobs. As a result it would appear you have a small group who all think the same very extreme end liberal type beliefs although sometimes these are in direct conflict with their core responsibilities (rubber pants man for one), and have no stronger grip on reality that they are completely out of touch with people in the street. These groups seem to liaise together a lot and spend a lot of time reinforcing each other, it can be surprising to see a lack of many basic trained skills you would expect at that level for decision makers, and awareness of things like realistic, practical safeguarding can be much less than those of low paid people at the coal face. Lots of money, trusted names, lots of justifying of expensive posts some of which might be termed as chocolate teapots. I hear it's quite eyebrow raising if you spend a few hours in their offices.

And as periodically they all change seats, the same culture moves through them all. Which of course is not at all helpful to them in ensuring best practice, staying in touch, not losing sight of core brief and falling prey to mission creep and many other things that you'd expect an organisation handling so much public money would take seriously.

Just what I hear.

I remember reading about that poor child in America who had insurance funded ‘top surgery’ age 15, then suffered huge regret and now can’t get insurance funding for any assistance with reconstructive surgery. Unbelievable!

I was reading the detrans subreddit yesterday. I haven't looked at it in about a year. I was quite shocked at how it's grown and the number of people who had treatment and surgeries in their early teens and were now late teens or early twenties wanting to reverse much of it.

A lot of these cases are in the US where there is even less (no?) caution regarding minors. Insurance paid thousands enabling them to transition but when it comes to detransition insurance won't cover even the basics.

One young person went to the same surgeon for detrans surgery who performed the original transition procedure. Insurance paid this surgeon the first time then the patient paid $$$ of their own money to get it fixed. When you have a model like that it's not going to matter if their patients have regrets because it just means more money for more surgeries.

For all the issues we have here I'm grateful we aren't trying to tackle a medical system like the US.

I suspect eventually detransition surgeries will be covered by insurance over there because it's yet another lucrative income stream.

Brook are aimed at supporting young people in relationships so it falls under their remit to discuss this with their service users.

Cynically however, I can’t help wondering if they have one eye on Planned Parenthood in the US who are providing hormone treatment (18+)

May I just say that it's great to see the word Bunting on these pages again.

xx

Well, it's also clear from the documents and statements from Foxy & co. that the aim is some sort of strengthening of parental consent too, so that if the argument that gender dysphoric kids are indigo child savants themselves doesn't work, the parents can be said to always know exactly what is best for their children, no questions asked. This particular prong of the argument is obviously never going to be able to get past The Children Act, but I think the fact that these are the kind of arguments being made show, at best, that this is an amateurish, ill thought-through action that has completely lost sight of the welfare of children. The dissenting interventions on this thread only underline that aspect.

"So why would Brook OF ALL PEOPLE want to muddy the water by publicly apparently believing that the Bell case has anything to do with Gillick?"

Yes this is such an important point. When the scourge of foxes was going on about how Bell undermines Gillick he tried to get abortion charities to say so publicly, and claimed they wouldn't because of the scary gender criticals on twitter. One did tweet something, but they started getting replies from anti-abortion ppl saying - yes you are right. The regret rate for abortion is much higher than for transition - and they deleted.
What do they get out of it? I suppose if the appeal fails they get a ruling from the appeal court saying that this case has no implications for abortion - but they already have that in the high court's rejection of the appeal. Why don't they want that to stand?

If they are successful they will get a ruling that means children can consent even to a controversial and possibly experimental treatment. That quite young children can consent to things to do with their future adult body and sex lives. Maybe they think that entrenches the child's right to consent to abortion and contraception even more?

Now that is disingenuous, statsgeek1 and you know it. IIRC, you transitioned post-puberty, so your situation and that of the children the court decided to protect with this judgment is not comparable

And this? Ffs. I thought stats was speaking from relevant experience. Adult males who have never taken the pathway they are fiercely advocating for children seem to be a prominent feature.

It doesn't matter (well to me anyway) if it is 1, 10 or 1000 young people with regret, that is still too many.
Exactly this. These are people, not just the ‘odd exception’ so pleasantly put by stats. Every ‘wrong diagnosis’ is a child put onto strong medication that makes permanent changes to their body and has a huge potential to damage their long term health.

Every clinician involved in this should be extremely worried about the existence of any detransitioners (let alone the hundreds or possibly thousands around the world).

I remember reading about that poor child in America who had insurance funded ‘top surgery’ age 15, then suffered huge regret and now can’t get insurance funding for any assistance with reconstructive surgery. Unbelievable!

Every detranistioner who has had life changing surgery and body alteration represents a failure in the part of the clinics and people who prescribe the drugs and perform the surgery. This should not be happening at all!!

It is interesting that people who would have been the welcoming ‘glitter family’ for these young people transitioning. However, if they detransition, reject them and their welfare so completely with no concern as to the damage caused but only concern as to how it might affect them.

It seems bizarre that personal bonds in the trans community seem to be so dependant on the trans status of a person.

So they are advocating pathways that suit their own purpose as males but misses many requirements for the teenagers and children today who are in the majority female

This is a point made very clearly by Keira in her recent interview with Kellie-Jay. It's well worth a listen:

Keira Bell interviewed by Kellie-Jay http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4143358-Keira-Bell-interviewed-by-Kellie-Jay

One of the criticisms that the clinic are getting from trans advocates is that they don't seem be be doing this. And it's a fair criticism I think. I would have expected the clinic to start applying to the courts for patients already having the treatment at least, but (unless they are wrong) that isn't happening. Perhaps because they haven't got any good evidence that the child was able to consent when they started the treatment because of the terrible record keeping? Or just because they are reeling from the ruling?

I think the appeal intervenors and other lobby groups are probably trying to persuade that the entire problem was with the clinic. That the treatment & principle is fine, but Gids were a disaster. I assume the endocrine society will be submitting whatever international evidence exists. It will be good to have it all put before a court.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Well what do you know

One of stonewalls trustees is former Chief executive of Brook www.stonewall.org.uk/people/simon-blake-obe

And Laura Russell trustee of Brook
Is former director of campaigns, policy & research at Stonewall

And suddenly it becomes obvious why Brook are involved....