US woman sues after 'gender affirming' double mastectomy

The below videos are about the for profit surgery industry. These examples don't touch on gender surgeries but all the same questions are being asked re ethics.

At some point these MSM shows will go there with the investigation of gender surgeons also. It's just a question of time I reckon.

Warning: graphic content in places.

I think the issue lies with the decline of medical ethics as medicine and surgery become transactional - more about 'big business' or simply 'business' and less about curing people. This ties in with a (neo)liberal obsession with rights and liberty over the person at the expense of all else. "I want therefore I pay and I get".

Isn't it funny how lack of sharing of information and unwillingness of professionals to take responsibility in multi agency working is one of the biggest and most infamous bottom lines in pretty much every safeguarding disaster?

Odd how these patterns get replicated and the failures just keep on stacking higher.

Call me cynical, but it will be the American insurers over there who stop the trans surgery shitshow and the NHS over here, when the bill gets too high. A transman or woman who has undergone full surgery and hormones are on a cocktail of drugs for life. I think that even if they detransition, they still need medical support to counteract the damage done (e.g. osteoporosis in a transman).

It's a moneypit and I've heard it being referred to as a 'medical leash'. Imagine if one of the detrans children sues for medical malpractice for lifelong costs to cover their continued treatment? Or a class action suit? If they win, no insurer will agree to cover a doctor for that form of treatment again.

I agree with you. These are often young adults or teenagers who are giving themselves a label that can’t be explained in an objective way that all medical professionals would understand.

Your parallel with people who feel as if they wish to end their lives is bleak but very apt; we could also apply the self labelling (self diagnosed from TikTok etc) and subsequent affirmation by so-called medics and parents of teenagers who say:

I’m addicted to junk food and will only eat McDonald’s every day - do we let them do this?

I’m a porn addict so take away those Internet parental controls - are we happy about this?

I’m a gambler so I’m off to Vegas with all my pocket money - do we allow this?!

I’m an alcoholic and will fill my bedroom with vodka bottles - do we go along with this?

Hell would freeze over before any responsible parent who cared deeply for their child would “affirm” in these scenarios (exaggerated of course) and go along with what the child demanded.

So why in the context of “the trans child” have so many parents and other adults in trusted positions of responsibility and with years of education and training behind them taken leave of their senses (thinking of the repulsive grinning Irish “surgeon” in LA who gives teenage girls mastectomies) and allowed the child/young person to take control? What is WRONG with the adults who have affirmed a child’s self diagnosis?

@OldCrone I think for some medics it's between the devil and deep blue sea. Don't agree to do it and the threats then emerge
: get struck off for hateful/discrimination

• be temp suspended while complaint investigated
• be doxxed and have your clinic/home attacked by 'activists'

Just look at the hate and behaviour towards JKR.

Isn't that an issue with the cuerent process? No HCP seems to have/take responsibility. Therapist refers to endocrinologist, they refer to surgeon, surgeon cuts the body parts off. With whom does the buck stop?

Yes, but I'm having difficulty understanding why a medically trained person would just believe in people being 'really trans' and treating them as though they are 'really trans' without an objective diagnosis that they are 'really trans'. Is there a way of making such a diagnosis? Because with the number of detransitioners rising, it seems that the diagnoses are not always accurate.

Or are surgeons now just amputating body parts from healthy people because they share that person's belief that people can be 'really trans' if the person who believes themself to be 'really trans' says they are?

Trying to imagine what a conversation would be like between a gender-dysphoric patient and a doctor that actually followed that model of informed consent.

This is what gets me really angry. Informed consent is not optional, it is absolutely required. I would suspect that there are a small number of trans people who have been able to give proper consent to surgery - this is the group I think of when people talk about “genuinely trans” people. But I don’t think there are many, and very few indeed in recent years.

Informed consent to cut off body parts which are perfectly healthy is incredibly difficult to get. The benefits have to be crystal clear, as do the risks. Even for things like transplants where there is no inherent MH concern. The consent stuff for even low-risk transplants (eg bone marrow donation) is huge, and every single HCP involved in the process is obsessed with it!

You've used to cutting up clothes/not wanting to wear a skirt as the reason why your DH thought they were the opposite sex?

Obviously that's not a reason, people can cut up clothes or not wear them for all sorts of reasons.

So presumably, you mean it's a symptom.

Can you actually explain, what you, or your DH, or their mother thought was the actual reason why they were the opposite sex?

Because it can't just be 'cutting up clothes'.

I've been reading about this for about 6 years now and I have yet to see a convincing argument that anyone is 'genuinely trans'.

Agreed. I feel massively sceptical about the whole thing. But my argument is that even if you think some people are genuinely trans, you'd want to make sure of that before you cut off healthy body parts.

If I asked for this surgery and the risks, rehab are presented to me then surely it's my choice to have it?

Yes. Provided you are of sound mind, appropriate age, understand the actual risks, likely outcomes and potential benefits of the surgery.

However, if you are mentally ill, don’t get the risks properly explained, OR have a false idea of the “benefits” then you shouldn’t be allowed it. And doctors which acquiesce to such requests deserve to be sued and struck off. IMO, that should include the ones who complete the surgery, the ones who failed to properly explain the risks, the ones who mislead the patient regarding “benefits”, AND the ones who failed to recognise capacity to consent being limited by mental illness.

And no child should be allowed elective cosmetic surgery. They aren’t even legally permitted to consent to tattoos in the UK, and in many US states those under 18 can’t consent to sex either.

Poor woman.

This is the problem at hand. It is not supposed to be a mental health issue - to say so is offensive, and I'm sure at the height of her dysphoria, this woman would have passionately agreed - but the concurrence of mental health and trauma and abuse in those suffering dysphoria is heavily evidenced. As is people who are Autistic and/or homosexual and are experiencing challenges with societal expectations of gender and confusing information around gendered expectations and being born in the wrong body.

Under these circumstances, to do something so permanent, drastic and damaging to a person as this kind of irreversible surgery risks that the person may come to find that they a) now regret those decisions b) do not feel that they had the ability or capacity at the time due to their other unmet needs to have been able to make this decision and to have allowed them to was irresponsible of those who carried out the treatment (to put it mildly compared to how I have heard detransitioners voice these feelings) and c) that they were encouraged and hurried towards these drastic solutions with a lot of affirmation and encouragement, which makes those parties involved and responsible.

There is not a way to fix this. Miranda Yardley has described in great detail the need to do the next thing on the list in chasing the dragon of feeling better, of the distress being ended, and the awful realisation when everything is finally done that it has not been the solution after all, and the distress is still there. Yes, some end up happy and fine with their choices; the number of those who are not, who are permanently harmed, is building. Some of the children currently on the experiment of blockers and hormones may end up adults too ill to earn a living or without the capacity to ever have an adult relationship as well as having lost fertility.

In essence: this is one of the reasons why capital punishment was ended. However small the risk of wrongly permanently destroying a life is in the big picture, the process of investigation and trial is not sufficient to justify the harm caused. It is not reversible if it's later found to be, despite everyone's best and sincere efforts, wrong.

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl

So children can feel that they aren't comfortable with the societal expectations put upon them because of their sex. I agree. Does that change the reality of their sexed body? No. Is it kind to go along with their belief that they are the opposite sex? No again

I feel huge sympathy for this woman, and also commend her for bringing this lawsuit. I hope she wins big, and it stops this from happening again unless proper consent and safeguarding is happening (and no, I don't know what that would entail, perhaps a long waiting period? Plus referrals to clinicians who can fully explain the numerous downsides of such surgeries...'your body will never be the same, they don't grow back, you will never feed a baby' etc...)

I have agree with the scepticism of 'genuinely trans', I think it's a shorthand for someone who is so determined to mu alter themselves that they will not be dissuaded. I fail to see a difference between this and any other BIID. Even if the patient will not be dissuaded, I can't see that it's an excuse for a HCP to participate in a delusion.

There are some people someway along the criminal justice pathway for carrying out ca amateur surgery on consenting adults. If it's wrong for them, a medical qualification shouldn't make any difference imo.

Someone quoted me upthread, iirc that the Doctors are following clinical guidelines and not doing anything outside what any Doctor would do in similar circumstances. The guidelines are wrong and there's plenty of blame to go around.

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl.

Can you explain how these clothing choices make someone 'trans'? Many girls and women hate wearing skirts and dresses without being trans. If a 5-year-old child says that they're a cat or a dog do you think this is also an important statement about their identity? Why is declaring that they're the opposite sex different?

Yes, this is the paradox.

The poor woman.

@GiantKitten
I agree
She was 30 not a child, she asked for this.

If I asked for this surgery and the risks, rehab are presented to me then surely it's my choice to have it?

To those doubting children can be trans - dn knew he was different as soon as he can remember, cut up dresses, refused to wear skirt, he didn't know the name 20 years ago, he told his mum at 5 he was a boy not a girl.