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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Dr Michael Webberley

366 replies

DomesticatedZombie · 11/03/2022 13:39

  • haven't had a chance to keep an eye on his tribunal, but from what I'm reading:

'Dr Michael Webberley applied for voluntary erasure from the GMC register. The Tribunal say it is "unfortunate" that was not determined prior to the hearing today.

MW had two requests for postponement declined & has now provided new medical evidence for an adjournment'

twitter.com/tribunaltweets2

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tabbycatstripy · 30/03/2022 14:08

‘It’s like the patient just says “I have gender dysphoria” and MW just agrees.”

(Professional endocrinologist - 2022)

DomesticatedZombie · 30/03/2022 13:51

this is a vulnerable person was a difficult stage in his life and instead of help he gets banged full of hormones

Sad
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AnnaMagnani · 30/03/2022 13:49

Medicine can be well paid but it absolutely depends on what specialty you pick in the first place (I made a massive mistake there!).

Specialties that do elective procedures you can pick up extra work by doing waiting list initiatives in the NHS. Or the big money is in private work.

However not everyone is going to do private work even in the specialties that can. Someone like a salaried GP - not actually that well paid given the difficulty of the job. Equally doing the on-call gastro rota - rubbish money for always being available at a moment's notice. They must have thought they had found the golden ticket.

tabbycatstripy · 30/03/2022 13:46

He’s getting eviscerated here.

Imnotavetbut · 30/03/2022 13:45

I can't C&P it all but I would absolutely recommend giving the twitter thread a read. This endo sounds absolutely outraged and is not holding back at all.

RQ: it's almost exploitative, this is a vulnerable person was a difficult stage in his life and instead of help he gets banged full of hormones. There's no indication for it based on history and blood tests

^ this is still in relation to testosterone for men with hypogonadism (which they didn't have).

I wonder if this is why MW isn't there. How do you defend that? The whole thing is utterly appalling. This is about Doctors doing what they damn well want to make money regardless of the consequences.

Imnotavetbut · 30/03/2022 13:29

Followed by:

RQ: Growth hormones should only be prescribed by consultant Endo..it is not something that should remotely appear on a shopping list for the general population

RQ: ...the assumption is the testes were normal to start with and fertile...what on earth are you doing giving testosterone, this will lower sperm count and fertility.

RQ: estrogen is important to men as well as women, for bone density and libido, but if too must T you can overload system and more of that T gets metabolised into estrogen which will cause breast development.

RQ: we know that T treatment in excess causes fluid retention and some of his writings he's using the drugs to mitigate fluid retention.
SJ: when you say he?
RQ: Dr Webberley, he's causing a problem with one drug and using another drug to try to resolve it..

RQ:.. and that could drop the bone density. I mean, Wow that is balancing, a tightrope act and trying to fool the human body. I'm not a betting men but I know who will win on that.

Imnotavetbut · 30/03/2022 13:24

From Tribunal Tweets this morning. RQ is an endocrinologist who has been asked to give expert evidence by the GMC. He's currently talking about the testosterone for hypogonadism issue and he's straight in there with an observation:

SJ: We can see patient summary and a health questionnaire repeated for all patients. We see personal info at the top, questions about GP and box 'please indicate services interested in'. We see some boxes for men and women (lists)

SJ: can you go through them and the difference
RQ: first I will say I feel it's terrifying without a diagnosis made and there's already a shopping list of treatments the patient can decide from..

Ereshkigalangcleg · 30/03/2022 09:02

I vaguely remember that they started off providing Clomid to anyone who wanted it, no questions asked

They did, there are old threads on the conception board where Oxford Online Pharmacy was recommended.

Lovelyricepudding · 30/03/2022 08:45

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

It's all relative, I suppose. I've always thought of medicine as a well paid profession, but I used to know a very senior consultant with a large and lucrative income stream from doing court reports in addition to his NHS job, and his view was that medicine was badly paid in comparison with a job in the City. My view is that jobs in the City of London are obscenely overpaid and if I ruled the world that would be dealt with. Maybe the Ws were of the same mind as my chum and felt entitled to a lot more money than their NHS jobs could bring in.
I remember reading about a manager in one of those city jobs - was a while ago so no idea if still the same. They are gambling with huge sums of money but many employees would reach a plateau where they felt they had enough income not to take more risks. So as manager he would set about upping their expectations of spending - recommending bespoke tailors, expensive holidays, nights out with thousands spent on drinks...
OnlyTheTitosaurusOfTheIceberg · 30/03/2022 07:11

Honestly, regardless of where you fall on the trans women are women spectrum, you should want this bunch of grasping reckless snake oil salesmen closing down and striking off the register.

The daughter of a former friend of mine was a patient of the Webberleys. She was under 16 when they started prescribing testosterone to her - I think she’d been on PBs since 13/14.

When HW was struck off, my former friend went on a raging FB rant about “fucking T**Fs” and her primary concern was where was she going to get her daughter’s drugs from now? There was literally no recognition that there was a problem with HW or that her daughter was entitled to expect a higher quality of care. It was all the evil radfems’ fault for persecuting her daughter’s saviour, apparently.

(That’s a big part of why we’re no longer friends.)

Redshoeblueshoe · 29/03/2022 21:08

I absolutely think it was all about the money

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 29/03/2022 20:48

It's all relative, I suppose. I've always thought of medicine as a well paid profession, but I used to know a very senior consultant with a large and lucrative income stream from doing court reports in addition to his NHS job, and his view was that medicine was badly paid in comparison with a job in the City. My view is that jobs in the City of London are obscenely overpaid and if I ruled the world that would be dealt with. Maybe the Ws were of the same mind as my chum and felt entitled to a lot more money than their NHS jobs could bring in.

OldCrone · 29/03/2022 20:44

I'd be more convinced about that if they hadn't already had a go at tapping into unmet demand from several other quite different groups

There's some discussion about their previous activities on these threads from 2019.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3588654-dr-mike-webberley-suspended

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3598778-Dr-Helen-and-Dr-Mike-Webberley-matters-of-public-record

Helen Webberley was previously involved in something called shadow prescribing which allowed Americans to take advantage of the lower drug costs in the UK.

It does seem to be all about the money, which seems odd for two people who must have had a pretty decent income already.

Imnotavetbut · 29/03/2022 20:38

Agreed Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. I'm utterly intrigued by the testosterone for men with a 'diagnosis' of hypogonadism. It appears that they have tapped into any stream that they can and the MO is always the same: quick phone call, type up some shitty notes inadequately, grab the cash and chuck them some drugs. I'm aware that not everything will be presented at the tribunal, they will only select charges that have the potential to stick. I wonder what other potential avenues they pursued.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 29/03/2022 20:24

@tabbycatstripy

I don’t think it’s just the money. I think it’s a genuine (if catastrophically mistaken) belief that the most important thing is for the child to experience the ‘right’ puberty.
I'd be more convinced about that if they hadn't already had a go at tapping into unmet demand from several other quite different groups, e.g. bodybuilders.
DomesticatedZombie · 29/03/2022 20:23

Apologies! that was my mistake - I found the post - the comments are on an older post from 2020. And still there.

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KittenKong · 29/03/2022 20:22

So they are definitely all a little the patients then if they have completely gone radio silent.

DomesticatedZombie · 29/03/2022 20:16

@DomesticatedZombie

There are people posting on GenderGP's facebook that nobody is responding to emails/messages.

'We paid the startup fee after this and have since had no communication for 7 weeks, despite us trying to contact them multiple times. I'm starting to get concerned as our money has been taken yet we've now been left completely in the dark with no support.'

But they're still posting adverts on Twitter for cut price, discounted meds. Hmm

Oh, gosh, just checked their Facebook and all recent posts have been deleted, unfortunately deleting the several comments saying that Gender GP are not responding to emails/messages.

I have screenshots.

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tabbycatstripy · 29/03/2022 20:09

I don’t think it’s just the money. I think it’s a genuine (if catastrophically mistaken) belief that the most important thing is for the child to experience the ‘right’ puberty.

KittenKong · 29/03/2022 20:07

Sounds a lot easier to me - quick online consultation, drugs sold to the patients on a subscription basis, no checks and balances or regulations by the looks of it.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 29/03/2022 18:48

What I don't understand is why. Dr MW. was a consultant gastroenterologist in the NHS, IIRC. Dr HW was a GP in the NHS. Was it really all about the money? Was working in the NHS so awful or incompatible with family life that they turned to this online way of working instead?

Redshoeblueshoe · 29/03/2022 18:32

Absolutely change.

Changechangychange · 28/03/2022 23:18

@Imnotavetbut

I'll be dipping in and out of this today. More on the murky world of Gender GP. MW is not in attendance and they've gone straight in on the usual allegations: prescribing without seeing patients, poor record keeping, failure to respond to lab results and failure to review. There seems to be a lot around the prescription of testosterone for men that he's diagnosed with hypergonadism and that he was prescribing it at very high quantities - the amount usually seen used by body builders. I'm sure it'll all become clearer as it progresses but it's all very strange at the moment.
I vaguely remember that they started off providing Clomid to anyone who wanted it, no questions asked, and only moved into prescribing sex hormones when they realised there was more money in it.

Honestly, regardless of where you fall on the trans women are women spectrum, you should want this bunch of grasping reckless snake oil salesmen closing down and striking off the register.

Changechangychange · 28/03/2022 23:14

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

It is alleged that Dr Webberley’s failings related variously to consultation, history taking, examination, diagnosis, prescribing, communication, follow up, informed consent, assessment, working with colleagues, working within the limits of his expertise and working within guidance.

Many thanks for information and links. As a layperson, looking at the charges here, is there any aspect of being a doctor they think he was doing adequately?

Billing? Sounds like they managed that part quite well Hmm
Imnotavetbut · 28/03/2022 21:04

Oh no, I'm sure they weren't involved when W was 4 years old, it was just a sentence that stuck out to me that's all. Sorry, not a useful exercise to extract a short piece from a tweet which is information being given several times removed from the original source. Potentially there may be further expansion later in the hearing.

The lack of due diligence with regards to his job is bloody awful. The things he has allegedly not done are the very fundamental basics, as pp said earlier, was there much he was doing right?

Interesting about the fb page, sounds like things aren't all rainbows and unicorns at GenderGP...