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

I am surprised at all the interveners, and the promise not to repeat evidence or to take up more than an hour of the courts time (if I read that correctly). It seems like they see themselves as the cavalry coming over the hill to save the day.

29th, so Friday. I should think they would be likely to intervene but am stuck as to why? I can see what they're saying but it doesn't look any better than when Stonewall tried to intervene initially.

If they keep screaming and proving themselves how ridiculous they are, surely it can’t be long before the rest of the world wakes up to this idiocy?

Their position on transgender health has a particular focus on making sure US insurance companies will pay out for it

I guess that makes sense, for US endocrinologists? If they're operating in a commercial-type environment, then obviously the amount of work available for correcting endocrine disorders - restoring normal function - is limited, and largely constant.

Having a new, growing market for people who want to change their hormones to be different from normal would be tempting.

I'm normally quite skeptical about this being driven by "big pharma", but if there is one group who really does stand to benefit, it would be endocrinologists in a market-driven health system.

But someone somewhere has to present the evidence base. I think the legal system has defeated more advanced blame-avoiding arguments than "we don't prescribe it, the endocrinologists do" and "we just prescribe it as requested" before. I can't see how this stands up.

(I think many mums have defeated more advanced blame-avoiding arguments than that. Send them both to their rooms.)

Doesn't Ms S Gr*en belong to WPATH? She was IT manager for a CAB branch before running 🧜‍♀️.

Guessing it's like the orange one's evidence of voter fraud in US elections. Exists in the mind rather than reality but because the mind it exists in is special, it's worth burning down the house for.

It's widely suspected that the reasons the evidence they need does exist are that it would have been very difficult to gather evidence ethically, and in any case doing so would have required a complete change in the way they were doing things and their philosophy, and that they didn't want to generate this evidence because they were worried it would show that their clinical approach was harmful.

is based on psychological criteria which endocrinologists are by definition not in a position to assess.

A couple of endocrinologists like Will Malone have given interviews which sound like they've had this stuff imposed from the top.

In this (Stella O'Malley & Sasha Ayad) he talks about going to endocrinology conferences where they'd routinely have debates on new methods of treatment. It was standard practice at these conferences that they literally would have debates - they'd get people up to give the pro- and anti- positions in front of audiences.

Guess which new treatment there was no debate on?

A speaker (from WPATH?) just came in to say "these are the new terms for gender stuff, and this is how you're going to treat these people from now on".

It seems like WPATH is basically the "idea laundering" outfit - a sort of external consultant or think tank that basically says "don't worry about thinking about this stuff - do what we say and then if it goes wrong, you can just say it's our fault".

The Tavistock partially justifies their behaviour on "well, we have to do what WPATH says, cos that's what our NHS commissioning contract says we have to do.". And the NHS commisioners say "well, we just follow international best practice as defined by WPATH".

And WPATH will, when it comes down to it say, "ah well, those 'Standards of Care' were really just guidelines. Obviously, as we're not an actual medical body, we couldn't possibly tell you what to do, and we can't be held responsible for any particular medical treatments going on, it's your responsibility."

Hard to know how many will face consequences in this big circular finger-pointing session.

There is a UK one but it's not them.

twitter.com/MForstater/status/1354050011856822273

Apparently the Endocrinology Society intervening alongside the GLP is not in the UK.

The whole thing is pretty awful really,

Stonewall and Gires seem to be suggesting that gender distressed kids are really savants and indigo kids.

Ridiculous to argue that GD kids can understand consequences better than non GD kids, when the Bell of the Bell v Tavistock is living proof that even kids who feel very sure can end up regretting their choices and that the Tavistock (nor any other gender service) can reliably sort the future desisters and detransitioners from the persisters.

Will the judges be allowed to see the CQC report and the crappy Tavi puberty blockers study, the one that was mysteriously published immediate after the Bell ruling, despite GIDS insistence that none of the data was available during the actual hearing?

There's some very tortuous language in the first few paras which seems to be aiming at GIDS distancing themselves from responsibility by emphasising that the endocrinologists make the prescribing decisions.

That's very weaselly because, despite obviously being true on one level, the endocrinologists are making prescribing decisions based on purely medical factors - the actual driving factor for the prescription is the recommendation of GIDS and is based on psychological criteria which endocrinologists are by definition not in a position to assess.

Which again pushes the responsibility back onto the children.

I really hope this gets laughed out of court. That is a ridiculous, evidence-free argument.

Especially since the CQC report mentions that some GIDS kids don’t verbally communicate.

Anyway, more sunlight. Bring it on!

I thought 16.4 was interesting. Sorry can't work out how to copy.

They are right to say the court should have heard evidence on the comparison between the welbeing of children who do and don't take pbs. That they should have considered evidence about children for whom things did improve. It will be interesting to find out what evidence they supply. Will it be anecdotes? Or do they know if studies the court were not shown.

My understanding was that Gids could not or did not provide evidence that the treatment had a positive effect and that was one of the reasons the court described it as experimental. The empiracle evidence was not there. So they are right that the court should have heard evidence, except the reason they didn't was because there was no evidence to hear.

Will the ibtervenors have to supply a list of the evidence they plan to provide to illustrate this?

Besides, I thought you couldn't introduce new evidence in an appeal?

There's no absolute bar:

further evidence would be admitted on the hearing of an appeal only in the following circumstances:

if it is shown that the evidence could not have been obtained with reasonable diligence for use at the trial;

if the further evidence is such that, if given, it would probably have an important influence on the result of the case, although it need not be decisive; and

if the evidence is such as is presumably to be believed.

www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Litigation/United-Kingdom/Herbert-Smith/Admissibility-of-New-Evidence-on-Appeal

This is subject to Rule 52.21 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR): www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part52#52.21

Besides, I thought you couldn't introduce new evidence in an appeal

I thought so to, and all they had befire was sone 12 year olds having sex being abused and asexuality.

The report basically confirmed blockers were in deed a first step and not a stop gap.

They just got found to be inadequate including consent firms improperly completed

So what new evidence could there even be?

They're also trying to get around the fact that Stonewall et al were refused permission to intervene before by making it a joint intervention with the Endocrine Society who appear to be the only ones approaching a useful addition to the evidence base, and even that looks rather thin. Rather sneaky, all things considered.

It's interesting that Brook is there - because they think the Jr's result has negative consequences for their work that relies on gillick? But the high court made clear that it doesn't. Brook obviously doesn't believe that.

Good law proj are just funding the intervention. They seem to have assembled this consortium. Mermaids not included.

As I understand it the court did not consider parental consent because it didn't arise. That was because Gids always took the view that they needed the patient's consent, so did not base treatment on parental consent. I expect informally parent consent was needed because the children wouldn't have been there without it, but their process was to refer the child for pb based on the child's consent. So the intervention is asking the court to force Gids to change this process? I think?

The CQC report found that consent forms were often not even completed so this will be interesting.

Interesting. I thought that i) is irrelevant because there were testimonies (?) from affected children in the original case (I can’t see why JM keeps claiming they didn’t - were they the wrong sort? ii) I thought the judgement found that parental consent would not override the fact that the child cannot consent (and informed consent may not be possible because there is no actual information on which to base a decision?) and iii) the judge was very clear that this doesn’t impact Gillick - so what possible impact could it have on other (well researched, non health/fertility destroying procedures?

It's my understanding that the Intervenors must provide evidence of their grounds for intervention. Which is why Stonewall and mermaids were thrown out last time and Transgendertrend wasn't.

Where is the evidence?

The Tavistock themselves said they thought some of the children were being coached what to say.

Which is not exactly a secret. Anywhere online shows that.