Judgement in High Court Family Division yesterday

In terms of 'why did doctors fall for it' I listened to a podcast of the medical expert in the Lucy Letby case being interviewed by Raj Persaud.

The most interesting bit is near the end where he suggests doctors are trained to be conformist, follow guidelines and fit in on committees. It did ring very true and explained a lot.

Good man. No doubt some dim Labour MP will pop up on TwitterX soon with a "Protect Trans Kids" mantra in response.

Yes, that does seem likely.

Good man. No doubt some dim Labour MP will pop up on TwitterX soon with a "Protect Trans Kids" mantra in response.

Therapists from GIDS couldn't prescribe the hormone treatment themselves so they referred children to NHS endocrinologists who could prescribe them, but in order to do so they had to accept the recommendation/diagnosis from GIDS.

Yes that was my understanding. Is this how it works in other jurisdictions eg Australia or USA?

I can think of a couple of US endocrinologists/paediatricic endocrinologists who have spoken out about all this but for the most part their governing bodies are captured.

Yet I still wonder, going back to the early days, how this was allowed to take off - psychologists trotting up to endocrinologists and asking them to prescribe hormones to children to block their puberty or "change sex". Why was that never met with a "well you can't (change sex) and puberty is part of normal development so that's a NO".

It's easy to see how psychiatry/psychology took this path. But qualified specialist doctors? Why did they fall for it? As prescribers they should have been responsible for monitoring and follow up but presumably this never happened (as it never happened at GIDS). I find it extraordinary that they cheerfully prescribed drugs that they knew had very serious side effects and which were off label to children at the behest of a few psychiatrists and washed their hands of responsibility.

I've never understood this part of the story.
They could easily have dismissed the psychiatrists as a bunch of mad weirdos and had nothing to do with it. Couldn't they?

Very interesting judgment

Your comment about the role of the endocrinologists in all this: I only know what I read in Hannah Barnes book and it seemed to me to be a process that may not have been porposefully designed to avoid clinical responsibility, but that seemed to be its ultimate effect.

Therapists from GIDS couldn't prescribe the hormone treatment themselves so they referred children to NHS endocrinologists who could prescribe them, but in order to do so they had to accept the recommendation/diagnosis from GIDS.

So the clinicians diagnosing weren't allowed to prescribe, but those prescribing didn't make the diagnosis.

A recipe for disaster and the avoidance of responsibility...

Neil Hanvey MP has raised this case in HoC today.

https://x.com/JNHanvey/status/1785982248098869572

My guess is they knew Cass was around the corner and didn't want to give opinions that might very shortly be debunked.

Possibly some didn't want to be identified as having experience of prescribing in this area due to the imminent need for a reverse ferret.

With all the focus on Gids I have frequently wondered how the endocrinologists who were the ones actually prescribing the medications seemed to have avoided censure. Surely as physicians doing the prescribing they are responsible for things like assessing patients physically, blood testing and follow up?

I suspect the capture of endocrinology by transactivism will feature highly in all the court cases to come. They are the key medical enablers of all this.
(idly hoping that many of these court cases will be criminal charges, not just those seeking compensation).

I would love to say I'm not surprised but I carry on being shocked and surprised by what I read. Of all the shocking things about this case, the bit in the telegraph article where the court couldn't get a UK endocrinologist to testify shocks me the most. They got an Australian who condemed gender GP. Why isn't this addressed by our own homegrown? Is the speciality 100% in favour of hormonal treatment of so called gender dysphory in teens?

This reminds me a bit of the article written by a psychologist a few years ago where she talked about being relieved that her daughter's distress was only gender dysphoria rather than anorexia as she feared, because we can fix this. (Note, paraphrase not direct quotes).

You can read the article in the post timestamped 21/09/2021 16:57 on this thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4354711-times-scotland-article-16-and-17-year-olds-referred-for-surgery?flipped=1

The Webberleys should be in jail.

Holy fuck.

That is astonishing. And frankly terrifying.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/01/autistic-trans-teenager-must-not-be-prescribed-hormones/

She was detained under mental health act until June 2022 and by October 2022 her mother was taking her to GenderGP.

Surely there should have been NHS mental health follow up ongoing during that short window of time after she had been discharged following a lengthy stay in a mental health facility?

With all the focus on GenderGp (rightly obv) could not be that other groups involved in her care also either failed to properly safeguard her or facilitated/supported the referral to Gender Gp?

As soon as often happens, some parties manage to stay under the radar and avoid close scrutiny.

A sixteen year old who had been hospitalised for nine months because of extremely low weight due to anorexia. I wonder what she weighed on her release from hospital a few months before being injected with that huge amount of testosterone Her weight would have been what, half that of an adult male?

( I am saying she because I think it is important to remember that this was pre transition, so a sixteen year old anorexic adolescent girl, not a sixteen year old boy who would in all probability already been through male puberty)

That poor, poor child.

Interesting that the court was unable to find an endocrinologist in the UK prepared to accept instruction as an expert in the proceedings. They had to get one from Melbourne.

I suppose with the Cass report due at any time UK endocrinologists were wary of making any pronouncements that could be leave them open to criticism later on.

Archive version of The Times article. https://ghostarchive.org/archive/uWnZB

Pleased to see this reported in the Times - including the comments from the paediatric haematologist at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, who advised that her testosterone results were effectively normal when compared with reference points relevant to an adult male. A 16 year old girl compared to an adult male??

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teen-prescribed-dangerously-high-hormone-dose-by-online-clinic-7j9v2kq36

The Cass review hasn't been ignored at all - the judge makes the point that the hearings took place in February and the judgment was released only days after the Cass review was published.

What the judge is trying to say is had the Cass review been available during the hearing it may well have been relied on very heavily by the father's legal team and in the future similar cases will most likely make good use of Cass as will the judges in those cases.

On this occasion though the judge can't draw from it as it was too new and not in the evidence at the hearing - the judge has made a specific point of aknowledging this.

This is like that negligence of using the question set for the opposite sex after ‘transition’ to evaluate the success of treatment. Instead of using the same set of questions and using the first set of answers as the base.

Using an adult male level for a teenaged female seems like significant negligence to me.

One way or another i predict this poor lamb is going to die, fairly soon from what is happening to her. Anorexia on its own causes bone density issues add in a shed load of testosterone she is going to be fucked physically.

Not to mention severe loss of nutrients and vitamins from her young body, adding to her problems and addling her brain further.

Anorexia in severe cases blocks puberty development.

The only adult in the room appears to be the dad.

Noted the judge ignored the Cass review.

I do not by any means relish a poor outcome for her.

But that is what is going to take sadly.

There will be a body count at the end of the day, of this madness.

As a mother and grandmother i am fucking raging.

Gender GP should be stopped from operating as should any future companies they set up. No pharmacy should fill prescriptions from them

But ultimately I think the only thing that will stop them will be prosecutions