Up to 150 youngsters treated with puberty-blocking jabs 'might not even be transgender'

[hungryhippie]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5978515/Up-150-youngsters-treated-puberty-blocking-jabs-not-transgender.html

Tory MP David Davies said it could be a scandal and 'the NHS needs to fully investigate'

Lets hope so! Its scandalous
Im an autistic woman myself and my eldest son is also.

Tory MP David Davies said: ‘The NHS needs to fully investigate this. It would be an absolute scandal if, 20 years from now, we discovered a load of people who are not transgender at all had been stuck on to a medical pathway because NHS personnel were told not to challenge young people who said they were transgender.’

This is a ticking time bomb. There are so many autistic people being absorbed by this cult. It's terrifying. Scientists are being silenced.

Some of us have been predicting this for years. I do think this is going to blow up in a few years.

I hope this actually results in policy change and doesn't just become another story that people forget about in a few months.

The 'thalidomide' of our generation.
It is entirely predictable as to how this will play out over the next 10-20 years.

What happened to watch & wait?
I hope this wakes people up & pushes changes to the school guidance.

The only thing is, this article reads like the Tavistock aren’t acting responsibly, whearaa they seem to be doing their best. And are keeping records. Whearas some other groups not so much.
There was a Lancet Psychiatry article which had two thirds of autistic adults with suicidial ideation. Combine that with the anguish of puberty, and the societal pressures on a gay teen, and the trans suicude ideation “stats” do get put into perspective.

The 150 number could be higher, if autistic children/teens are more likely to be insistent about their gender identity that other teens and therefore more likely to go on to transition. They could make up the majority of the 40% of children seen by Tavistock who go on to transition.

Also, if only 40% go on to medically transition doesn't that mean that Tavistock is showing a 60% desistence rate?

Anyway don't have time to read it now, but here is the full report,

adc.bmj.com/content/103/7/631.full?ijkey=HsMwyZDRtsKu83z&keytype=ref

I thought the Tavistock followed a wait and watch policy. Very disappointed that this doesn't appear to be the case, at least with some patients.

I've been saying it's going to be the next big medical scandal for years now.

Yes, my parents did this stuff to me, but everyone's did. They hit you if you didn't do what you were told.
tch and wait policy. Disappointed to hear that they don't, at least with some patients.

Dunno what happened there. I seem to have randomly pasted a quote on the bottom of my post from a Relationships board thread I'd been reading.

Post should have read:

I thought the Tavistock followed a wait and watch policy. Very disappointed that this doesn't appear to be the case, at least with some patients.

I've been saying it's going to be the next big medical scandal for years now.

WTF happened to ‘First do no harm’?

The article in the OP describes professionals in the NHS feeling social/political/professional pressure to respond in a particular way in relation to the treatment of children.

This undermining of clinic freedom jeopardises the health and welfare of children which must be paramount in clinical decision-making and also erodes trust in an effective and safe politically neutral NHS.

There seems to have been an assault by TRA lobbyists on clinical freedom and professionals’ objectivity to treat each individual patient in their best interests.

I wonder what the GMC (the doctors regulator) or BMA (doctors union essentially) or the relevant royal colleges (professional bodies that also set clinical standards) that represent these healthcare professionals have to say about this?

Or what about NICE - the public body there to identify clinical effectiveness and value for money for the NHS to use in commissioning services and doctors to use in offering or not offering services on the basis of consensus evidence?

Or the MHRA- the public body there to ensure patient safety of drugs in the UK including prescription medications/hormones (and also non-doctor-prescribed hormones bought over the internet..)?

It’s very sinister that this pressure is being put on health care providers for non-healthcare reasons.

The only thing is, this article reads like the Tavistock aren’t acting responsibly, whearaa they seem to be doing their best.

It reads to me as though the Tavistock are under a lot of pressure from the trans lobby.

Fortunately lots of articles are now appearing in the main stream media about the harmful effects of trans ideology but most of them become tomorrow's chip wrapping. I think this might be different. I need to read the full paper behind it.

However there is one MAJOR isssue with this piece. It still perpetuates the idea that there is such a thing as a transgender child. And until we dispel that idea the harm will continue.

I suppose it depends to a degree on your definition of transgender but the inference from the article is that it is possible to be 'born in the wrong body'.

I don't deny there are kids with misguided or homophobic parents or who have been brainwashed by the Internet who are very distressed to be one sex when they believe themselves or wish to be the other, but they need therapy, not puberty blockers.

And well done David TC Davies!

It is well documented that autistic young people struggle with their gender identity and their identity in general, and can suffer anxiety and depression as a result. Crucially, this can last several years, but often resolves without transitioning. See Tony Attwood's book Abergers Syndrome.

There was another thread on FWR where some older autistic women spoke very powerfully of their experience as young adults - if given the chance they would have transitioned, but were now content as biological females.

The problem now is that nobody dare deny intervention - and it is a serious and life changing intervention. And so young people are set on train tracks which they can't get off.

There's a multiple whammy with girls with ASD - often it is undiagnosed; they can be gender non-conforming; they can be very clever but emotionally immature.

The Tavistock are not the villains here. I'm very glad to see them publish and disseminate their findings.

Extract from the article:

"Autism expert Dr Sally Powis said that autistic teenagers searching for a reason why they did not fit in could fixate on the idea that they were born into the wrong body. ‘If you know you’ve been different since you were a small child, there’s the possibility you consider it’s your gender that’s the issue, rather than autism,’ she said.

Psychotherapist James Caspian claimed that many clinicians felt unable to question gender beliefs, due in part to a recent Memorandum of Understanding banning ‘conversion therapy’ by the UK Council for Psychotherapy. ‘I have been contacted by psychotherapists who work with adolescents on the autistic spectrum who have expressed concern over the current climate,’ he added.

Psychotherapist Bob Withers, who has treated a number of transgender patients, said: ‘I think the Tavistock is under pressure because the trans lobby has become so dominant and powerful.’

It may be worth considering the various ways that pressure might be brought to the Tavistock as this is not just direct external pressures.
Social media, beliefs within society about sex/gender/puberty blockers, beliefs of parents & children /young people will also be relevent and significant:

see recent thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3294478-Victoria-Derbyshire-show-today-transgender-children-buying-time-by-delaying-puberty

These drugs, which can permanently weaken bones, are often the first step to changing sex.

Not often, always. As far as I'm aware, the number of children who continue to cross sex hormones, after taking puberty blockers is practically 100%.

And you can't change sex.

Puberty blockers prepare the ground for a sex change by making surgery physically easier

What do they mean?

I thought puberty blockers made effective genital surgery almost impossible.

Isn't that what the programme I am Jazz is all about?

Lack of fully matured genitalia means they end up with nothing to work with and no sexual sensation.

Tory MP David Davies said: ‘The NHS needs to fully investigate this. It would be an absolute scandal if, 20 years from now, we discovered a load of people who are not transgender at all had been stuck on to a medical pathway because NHS personnel were told not to challenge young people who said they were transgender.’

Too bloody right. And by 'medical pathway' you mean little to no sexual function, permanent sterility and a lifetime of medication.

The problem now is that nobody dare deny intervention - and it is a serious and life changing intervention. And so young people are set on train tracks which they can't get off.
There's a multiple whammy with girls with ASD - often it is undiagnosed; they can be gender non-conforming; they can be very clever but emotionally immature.

Guardian article May 2018, 'Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children: As more teens come out as trans, experts clash over how schools should help'

(Extract)
"The EHRC is planning to issue guidance of its own next month, something Birkenshaw welcomes. “Schools want to support the transgender young person, but at the same time they’ll be reflecting on how other children may feel, on how staff are going to feel and parents.”

[Stephanie Davies-Arai TransgenderTrend] says her broader concern is that by affirming students’ gender identity, schools may be nudging them down a route that can lead to cross-sex hormones and life-changing surgery without enough time to reflect. Teachers, she says, “are essentially being forced to collude in an experimental approach towards children with gender dysphoria”. She adds: “You can support children and accept them, without affirming their belief that their body is ‘wrong’.”

Adele Robinson (not her real name), a head of year at a secondary school, shares Davies-Arai’s worries. The school has had 12 children, all girls, come out as transgender in the past 18 months. The majority, she says, have autism, and some have experienced sexual abuse.

When they come out, she says, they have brought in information sourced from Tumblr blogs and YouTube videos. Although her team does its best to “support every child in a loving, kind and compassionate way”, she feels that staff are too frightened to challenge what she sees as harmful practices: “We have chest binders worn in school, which is horrible. If a child was cutting, they would be straight in with a counsellor. Yet damaging developing breast tissue goes unquestioned. It’s a gross failure in terms of child protection.”

[Susie Green Mermaids] disagrees, and argues for a biological underpinning to transgender identity: “If a child or young person consistently, insistently and persistently states their feelings, to ignore, punish or repress their gender identity would effectively be reparative therapy.” (continues)

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding

@ChattyLion wrote:
"I am worried that people considering a surgical approach to dysphoria and the general public may not be being given really accurate health information because the TRA dogma must always be appeased.

So if you consider what is a vagina and what is a penis. What these organs are and what they can normally do. The physical systems that they are part of, which contribute to why they do what they can do. Keep that reasonable expectation and understanding in your mind.

Then if you look at the NHS Choices pages on gender dysphoria:
www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

Then scroll right down to the section about biologically male adults having surgery, it says: eg

The vagina is usually created and lined with skin from the penis, with tissue from the scrotum (the sack that holds the testes) used to create the labia. The urethra (urine tube) is shortened and repositioned. In some cases, a piece of bowel may be used during a vaginoplasty if hormone therapy has caused the penis and scrotum to shrink a significant amount.

It continues that:

The aim of this type of surgery is to create a functioning vagina with an acceptable appearance and retained sexual sensation.

It also says a ‘functioning penis’ can be made out of surgically altering a biologically female person’s body.

Note: this is my use of quotation marks, not that of the NHS. They don’t use quote marks to imply any ‘simulation of’ they say you will get a functioning penis or vagina via these surgeries. That is simply not medically possible to aspire to.

These shouldn’t be described as ‘functioning’ organs post-surgery because the results of surgeries aren’t these organs as they occur naturally in the opposite sex, nor do they ever function like naturally-occurring sex organs.

As an example, the only ‘functioning’ the described surgically-created ‘vagina’ is capable of, that might be similar to a real vagina, is a capability of being penetrated. But without any of the vaginal musculature, natural lubrication and protective flora or similar level of physical sensation involved.

Is a capacity for penetration the only necessary activity or definitive ‘function’ of vaginas? Apparently so.

It’s all so reductive about what female sex organs are for and can do. It is also misleading people about what sex organs they will get and end up with, after hugely invasive surgeries.

These surgeries can never achieve a ‘functioning penis’ or a ‘functioning vagina’ in the way it’s implied, yet this is how it is described. Why are people (of any age) contemplating future surgery not being told the truth?

Second point: in the section (same NHS link as above) about children and young people. they mention Gnrh analogues (commonly known as ‘puberty blockers’) but not the dangers and the unknowns of taking these for kids.

The effects of treatment with GnRH analogues are considered to be fully reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time after a discussion between you, your child and your MDT

They also don’t warn against buying these online for ‘self-medication’ which we all know happens.

It’s not a small number of kids being prescribed these via the NHS. in 2017, 800, with 230 kids on puberty blockers under the age of 14. Some reportedly as young as 10.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4743036/800-children-young-10-puberty-blockers.html

Never reaching normal sexual (and hormonal and emotional) maturation and never growing normal adult-sized genitalia as a result of taking these drugs is simply not a permanent choice that a ten year old has the mental capacity to make.
The reversibility and safety of these drugs would appear to be highly overstated, and the risks highly understated by this NHS narrative. These drugs could eventually also reduce the possibility or effectiveness of having ‘sex reassignment surgery’ leaving an adult with pemanently immature sex organs. As has been documented (see Jazz Jennings’ situation)

And if you google it these drugs are easily available for purchase online. Usual NHS caveats about fake drugs, ineffectiveness or overdose on a genuine product apply here very clearly. Where are the factual warnings on this NHS choices page against this?

I think NHS health information must be given factually. What they describe on this page, isn’t factually correct and might mislead.

I can see the NHS are trying to be sensitive to people’s feelings which is important but this must never be done at the expense of informed consent. It is not ok for the NHS to be confusing or misleading the people who might be reading this NHS health information, because they are considering treatment. Nor the general public. Everyone needs to know the actual medical effects of treatments to be able to consent to having those treatments. Other body dysmorphias and their NHS treatments are not described in this way.

I also object to the reductive way that sex organs are presented by this account- what is presented is a purely political presentation not a factual or medical presentation.
A genuinely fully functioning vagina is not just a passive cavity in the body that is there to be penetrated. (Which is all that surgery can create)

Also what the hell is a vagina with an ‘acceptable appearance’ such as they say these surgeries are needed to create. Acceptable to whom? What is an ‘unacceptable’ vagina and what does that look like?

If anyone can say that whatever they have in their pants is a vagina anyway, because TW=W, (and including a naturally occurring and fully functioning penis) then why is surgery even at issue? Why does our NHS give out this kind of information? Why not say eg that ‘the safest form of action is always to keep what you naturally have or will achieve through natural puberty’?

What about being sensitive to the feelings of people who disagree with this account of human sex organs?"

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3297073-Biology-Isnt-Bigotry

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3313537-Sex-vs-Gender-in-medicine-and-health-care

However there is one MAJOR isssue with this piece. It still perpetuates the idea that there is such a thing as a transgender child. And until we dispel that idea the harm will continue.

Correct.

Susie Green from Mermaids is propagating some dangerous ideas when she claims " If a child or young person consistently, insistently and persistently states their feelings, to ignore, punish or repress their gender identity would effectively be reparative therapy." She clearly knows little - or chooses to ignore it - about autism and sexual abuse.

James Kirkup article The Spectator May 2018
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/

(extract)
"[Stephen Doughty MP] said. “Do you think the use of the phrase “trans lobby” is an appropriate one?”

As it happens, Dr Carmichael in her lecture said some things that seem relevant here:

“Gender has become amazingly topical and we have to be really careful not to assume that anyone is exploring or questioning their gender is going to want to change their bodies in line with that. The extremes on either side are not helpful. We need to look at the grey areas in between. To do that we need to be able to talk and discuss these issues. All too often stakeholders become lobby groups.”

She did not name any stakeholder. But her words might be relevant to a charity called Mermaids... (continues)

Despite its influence, it is worth noting what Mermaids is not. It is not a research body. Its activities are support (for families) and advocacy: based on its contacts with those families, it argues for what it sees are better policies and practices by the NHS and others. It does not carry out or commission clinical or academic research. Its most recent annual report lists among its charitable activities “campaigning and advocacy” and says: “Mermaids has also become more active in lobbying”.

There is regular dialogue between Mermaids and the GIDS, but the two sides do not always agree. An example is on the time the GIDS team take to give referred children the hormone-blocking drugs that stop their bodies developing the physical characteristics associated with their birth sex.

In evidence to another Commons inquiry in 2015, Mermaids argued that GIDS should make such drugs available much more quickly. The GIDS team has generally resisted that call, more than once saying that “any decision around hormone treatment needs time and considered thought.”

And in evidence to that earlier committee, Dr Bernadette Wren of the GIDS said this:

“I know that Susie and Mermaids would like a fast track so that young people who are already well into puberty and feel that they know that they want to move forward into physical intervention would bypass our assessment process and move straight into physical intervention. We feel that is not an ethical way to practise.”

Here’s another summary. A transgender charity that says it is engaged in lobbying lobbied politicians and doctors to change the way children are treated by doctors. The doctors declined to make that change because it would be not be ethical to do so." (continues)

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/

they can be gender non comforting; they can be very clever but emotionally immature
Me to a T at 16 (no pun intended). And suffering horribly with periods and PMDD. Gosh I’d have transed like a shot. And probably threatened suicide if denied.

Susie Green from Mermaids is propagating some dangerous ideas when she claims " If a child or young person consistently, insistently and persistently states their feelings, to ignore, punish or repress their gender identity would effectively be reparative therapy." She clearly knows little - or chooses to ignore it - about autism and sexual abuse.

Mermaids have launched a campaign for the right to legally self-identify to be extended to under 18's.

Susie Green was interviewed on Sky News this week as part of its many segments and interviews on the GRA consultation.
thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3311038-Sky-News-9-30am-today-re-GRA?pg=5

'When asked how young was too young to self-identify?'
Susie Green said at age 3-5 years a children generally align with their gender, they notice and start to fit as either girl or boy. We only ask those who say their birth gender doesn't fit. If a child is vocalising to you at a very early age, it must mean they feel it strongly'

In discussion about the Govt. consultation on GRA she said they were encouraging people to use Q10 & Q11 to highlight age discrimination against children / young people. 'Mermaid's parents and children feel left out & that human rights should apply from birth'. That children should be covered by this too. Disappointed that children were not covered.

The campaign is #IknowwhoIam

twitter.com/Mermaids_Gender/status/1019652141953224709

It's not just the vagina that gets the nonsense treatment.

How can you call something a fully functioning penis, when, to make it erect, it needs to be filled with saline solution using a pump installed in one of the fake testicles?

I mean really. Who the fuck gets to sign off on this?

One of the very first places someone might go is the NHS, convinced that it is reputable, credible and in one's best interests.

'When asked how young was too young to self-identify?'
Susie Green said at age 3-5 years a children generally align with their gender, they notice and start to fit as either girl or boy. We only ask those who say their birth gender doesn't fit. If a child is vocalising to you at a very early age, it must mean they feel it strongly'

"gender"..."birth gender". This woman is dangerous to children.

My DD was 'persistent, insistent and consistent' for over 3 years from the age of 13 that she was a boy. She also has ASD and mental health issues. In our experience the Tavistock staff were kind and thoughtful professionals but there is no doubt they are under huge pressure from the likes of Mermaids. Blockers were potentially on the table at age 15 for my DD with testosterone at 16, however me and DP refused to let her have treatment until she was 18 (supported her choice of clothes/haircut/name and pronouns). Thank fuck we held out as 2 months ago she decided she isn't trans and now accepts there were other reasons for her dysphoria. This followed a significant improvement in her mental health due to getting the right care from Camhs at last. I feel really strongly that watchful waiting coupled with support and acceptance as far as possible is the right approach for the majority of these children and young people.