The Hannah Barnes book

Article in the Times today "No one kept data on Tavistock children — it’s a monumental scandal":

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/094d3696-c587-11ed-bd5d-fb821bb192f5?shareToken=2f2adddd1de1792ea79c7fd381381185

I think downstairs was exclusively women only wasn't it?

I remember there being lots of little flyers and cards or posters up for whatever women’s events or meetings were going on.

It blows my mind how much the internet giveth, and taketh away..

Me too. One of those numerous women only places there used to be (with the occasional male to be found).

I remember it!

God, the discussion on this thread makes me pine for the old Silver Moon bookshop.

It wasn't in my local independent bookshop, nor Hags by Victoria Smith.

I've listened to it on Audible but would be happy to have a physical copy too - it has so much information and is so well referenced, it would be good to have it to dip in and out of which is hard when listening.

This book is absolutely fascinating. It is so completely fact based and contains such a clear timeline. Absolutely jaw dropping.

Two copies in my local Waterstones (well, only one left now 😉)

My local independent bookshop? Sorry, we've sold out. Hmm, sold out or "sold out"?

And yet they apparently had a well resourced research team that worked in GIDS full-time.

I know, @Xiaoxiong ! It wasn’t revealed until the last 1/3 of the book and it was the most jaw-dropping moment for me. They had their own research team, unbefuckinglievable!!

Yes, that would be fascinating, MadameCholet although I doubt publishers produce that kind of detailed information for reasons of embarrassment commercial confidentiality.

You can get a rough comparison from Amazon, although for digital sales only.

Bergdorf's book is currently ranked "12,184 in Kindle Store" and has 22 customer reviews, with an overall rating of 4.3 out of 5, broken down as:
5* - 63% (14 reviews) - (figures don't total to 22 due to rounding)
4* - 18% ( 4 reviews)
3* - 6% ( 1 review)
2* - 6% ( 1 review)
1* - 6% ( 1 review)

Hannah Barnes' book is ranked "3,310 in Kindle Store" and has 97 customer reviews, with an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5, broken down as:
5* - 88% (85 reviews)
4* - 7%. ( 7 reviews)
3* - 3%. ( 3 reviews)
2* - 0%. ( 0 reviews)
1* - 2%. ( 2 reviews)

(The ranking and star ratings appear below the Product Details section on each book's Amazon page for the Kindle edition. I calculated the number of reviews per star rating myself.)

Yes there are various ones out there that provide services to the publishing and bookselling industry like Nielsen BookScan, but you have to subscribe to their service. They provide the data to the Sunday Times bestseller lists and other similar lists.

Is there a specific website for book sales figures? Obvs I can see the ‘number x in this category’ on sales sites, but I don’t know
how useful that is overall (is it just that seller, that week?)

I’d love to know if the authors with the massive advance & deals made via bidding wars ever get anywhere near the point where the publishers recoup those advances.

I’d also love to compare and contrast how books from TRA authors and terfy authors released around the same time sell (despite the asymmetry in production/promotion/availability).

eg Shon Faye and Helen Joyce both put out books around the same time, one with the full backing of the industry and one without.

@MavisMcMinty "The iconic, stand-alone, national GIDS did barely any research at all! There was no curiosity, no data-collecting culture.

And yet they apparently had a well resourced research team that worked in GIDS full-time.

p. 278 of the book, "There was a research team and that was well staffed and funded," the clinician explains. It looked as though GIDS was collecting as much information as it could. Briefings would be given at regular away days, they say. "It wasn't obvious that no meaningful data was being collected."

I don't work in the NHS, but FGS what was this research team doing? What was in these briefings they were regularly giving? If the clinicians were writing all the data down in the notes and thought it was being collected somewhere, surely it's all still there to be collected and analysed? Or are we talking a massive paper-shredding exercise somewhere?

I found it actually displayed on a table in the Trafalgar Square Waterstones yesterday for the first time - there were only 2 copies left so I bought one for a friend. Hags was available but on the shelf downstairs - a shame it wasn't out on a table given how recently it was published and how it's been promoted on the Waterstones and Blackwells websites as a "most anticipated" book this year.

I'm so happy that they're finally making it into stores, just such a shame it's more than a month after all the rave reviews in the papers.

Anyway I finished it this morning - what a read. I agree that it's a healthcare and governance story, but it is also a trans story because there was such a strong sense of mission and purpose driven by the kudos they got and the money they were bringing in that enabled the top brass to turn a blind eye when clinicians were jumping up and down to be heard. It seems like lots of people spoke up over and over again - at one point something like half of the entire clinical team were making complaints in various directions - but because everything was discussed people felt that action would be taken and then somehow it never was.

It had a lot of similarities with other procedural downfall books I've read over the years like about Enron, Theranos, Lehman Brothers etc but this is so much worse because literally thousands of hugely distressed children were involved.

Every page was a jaw dropper but the two that really stood out for me were a) that little to no actual talking therapy was going on - only in the context of assessment for the single "treatment" was available, puberty blockers, and that led in 99% of the cases to cross sex hormones so it wasn't a "time to think" at all. and b) that the entire evidence base for puberty blockers rests on the Dutch studies which aren't even applicable to what they were doing and have methodological problems of their own (switching the surveys given to children before and after etc). On this shaky foundation, thousands of physically healthy children may have (or may not! Because no data was collected!) become life-long medical patients and many will now be infertile.

It is a healthcare story and having been a nurse for 35 years it’s incomprehensible to me how they were allowed to get away with such an unevidenced treatment when every department I ever worked in had audits and data analyses and research as part of our bloody job description! The iconic, stand-alone, national GIDS did barely any research at all! There was no curiosity, no data-collecting culture.

I suspect part of the problem is the NHS climate makes clinicians - CAMHS, GPs, etc. - assume that because their complex patient is now on the caseload of the world-renowned Tavistock, they will have all their issues addressed there, and don’t need their local or other services any more. We know now of course that GIDS didn’t address anything other than their trans identities, and apparently sometimes/often in a pretty perfunctory way, it was like a conveyor belt.

I felt the same relief, the same lightening of my load when I e.g. referred a patient to community palliative care, in the knowledge/expectation all their needs would be addressed.

My books arrived today! Hags and Time to think. Weirdly enough Foyles had issue so was sent by Waterstones. Who were the ones in Bristol originally refusing to order it for me 🤷‍♀️

And yes @peanutbutter789 there is so much that anyone working in health care can reflect on and learn from this.

I've heard the author interviewed where she says "this is not a trans story but a health care story' and I think that's a very important point.

I'm currently listening on Audible - absolutely fascinating book.

Really interesting to hear how Susie Green attempted to/did work to change practice and how those in the NHS recognised they were being pressured and lobbied but still couldn't 'hold the line'

I ordered mine directly through my local bookshop - I wonder if they will be brave enough to stock it on the shelf (might go in to have a look today). I'm about 2/3rds of the way through and what an excellent piece of investigative journalism it is. Thoughtful, considered, objective. What strikes me the most is that, fundamentally, it is not about transgender issues but about the failures of leadership and safeguarding, scapegoating of those that raised concerns, inadequate patient assessment, therapeutic treatment, data collection and follow-up in a service providing an experimental treatment to a vulnerable, complex patient group. The additional layers here are the pressures from groups such as Mermaids and GIRES, and the use of accusations of transphobia to shut down any debate or serious discussion.
I take my hat off to those who raised their concerns in the face of such hostility, knowing it would likely impact on their careers and own mental wellbeing.
Based on what I have read so far, there is so much here that any clinical service could learn from and I think everyone who provides or manages a clinical service should read this book.

It would be interesting to know which branches do and do not reliably stock the books we want to buy.

Mine is the Liverpool branch. So fairly woke central when it comes to all things trans/university city and so on.

Mind you I tend to order my books from 'News From Nowhere' the city's radical women's co-operative bookshop, whenever possible

Berkhamsted - Herts.

Which branch was that?

Read the chapter about Jacob today. I don't know whether to rant with rage or cry with despair for that child. Unbelievably shoddy, failed treatment and zero follow up.

Jacob and mum Michelle sound like lovely people. I wish them well.

I went into my local Waterstones today and was very pleasantly surprised to find two copies actually on the shelf (and a copy of 'Hags' prominently displayed in the window of the independent bookshop down the road).

And yes, I know saying that is pointless as it is not how politics today works, if it ever did.