OP this is really great that you have this meeting with your MP. Excellent! I’m just going to rehash some old posts if that is ok- sorry in advance for how long this is.
You could talk about the Webberleys and GMC action- lots of posts on FWR about those two.
You could make the point that we really need Commons Health and Social Care Select committee investigation on this area of kids being permanently medically hormonally and surgically transitioned in the absence of an evidence base. The need for more provision of well-funded psychological support needs to be supported by MPs as first option.
We need the UK Parliament to then take the results of that Select committee enquiry (they will be damning) and then for Parliament to make new laws requiring licensing approval from a regulatory body to be given before any person is legally permitted to medically, hormonally or surgically trans a child- by which I mean prescribing or providing blockers, hormones and surgery.
We need it to be illegal to get hormones or blockers these off the web in the UK or overseas or send them from overseas into the UK.
We need a public education campaign about the permanent, harmful effects of medical and hormonal and surgical interventions, while emphasising that children and young people’s mental health issues need to be better supported.
We don’t have the evidence to show that physical body modifications and harmful drugs are the answer to the pain of gender dysphoria that (some of the) kids attending NHS gender identity clinics are grappling with.
It absolutely shouldn’t be legal to allow parents or children to get these drugs off overseas doctors to consume in the UK. Why are the charities for trans kids not putting out proper health warnings?
Details of the Times front page in case anyone missed that: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3553935-Times-article-calls-to-end-transgender-experiment-on-children?pg=1&order=
Some threads referencing healthcare expert Professors like Susan Bewley and other medical colleagues publishing in medical journals on children and the permanent, unevidenced treatments being given to transition them:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3339177-Excellent-BMJ-Article-Responding-to-Previous-One-Featuring-ATH
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3410257-BMJ-article-We-need-research-to-explore-the-interplays-between-gender-identity-mental-health-and-neurodevelopmental-problems-sexual-orientation-autogynephilia-and-unpalatable-gender-roles
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3552430-Posible-answer-to-why-arent-more-doctors-speaking-up
Also evidence based medicine specialist Professor Carl Heneghan: speaking out via BBC interview: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3518188-BMJ-Prof-Carl-Heneghan-Evidence-Based-Medicine-Oxford-Panorama-Trans-Kids-Gender-affirming-hormone-in-children-and-adolescents-Evidence-review-concludes-There-are-significant-problems
We need Parliament to make new law to keep children and young people safe. We need a statutory regulated system, with licensing, case by case application before any child is transitioned medically and frequent regulatory inspection of all the clinical work in this area. Such that eg
-Parliament should make it illegal for anyone but a licensed doctor (whether NHS or private) to give a specific child or person aged under 25 years old, blockers or hormones or surgery except under licensed conditions after an independent case-by-case review process. This should be overseen by a regulator with statutory powers (ie legal powers given to them to licence, refuse or revoke a licence)
-Same for surgical egg retrieval and surgical sperm storage for kids and extracting and storing of prepubescent children’s and young people’s ovarian or testicular tissue where they are too young to have made mature eggs or sperm before their fertility is compromised by this treatment, before any of that is done to a child.
The law should also require that:
-clinicians who do this work must collect and share their outcomes data for all these patients from medical records so it can be properly researched.
-Binders for compressing the chest a. cause serious help problems and should be legally classed as a prescription-only medical product and again only be possible to provide legally under clinical supervision.
-Talking therapy must be made more available and there should be statutory maximum of waiting time for any young person to speak to a proper professional about these issues. (And for all other issues while we are at it- CAMHS in general needs to be properly supported and funded).
There should be proper government data collection so we know the full picture of what is being provided in both the public and private sector of practice.
-Criminal sanctions for those who break these laws.
-research funders should be encouraged to fund appropriate professional researchers to properly investigate patient outcomes and to run studies to follow up patients very long term in anonymised ways via medical records.
-And also to fund sociological research (like I think James Caspian wanted to do) interviewing de-transitioned people, medically, hormonally and surgically transitioned people, those currently transitioning via services, and young people and children who are having talking therapies only for starters.
-Research should also be funded to talk to family members so they can talk about their experiences of caring for children and young people in this situation.
-research with the clinical service providers to talk about their professional experience of doing this work.
A scandal is building here, so MPs should be calling for a select committee inquiry into this NOW. Then they could speak to:
-Young people, parents and detransitioned young people about their experiences.
-all of the medical and psychological professional societies and royal colleges, the BMA (the doctors’ trade union) and the regulators of medical or psychological practice like the General Medical Council (GMC) about what they are seeing happening to children and young people.
-Plus any organisation who supports research and evidence based medicine, especially in the NHS- like NICE, the NHS in each UK nation, but also the government departments in health, the medical and scientific research funders,
-Plus childrens’ and young people’s paediatric medical groups and bodies.
Your MP can contact this committee to ask that they look at this (as can anyone). Select committees look at the evidence from all sides which is very important in such a sensitive area:
Here’s how the Commons Health and Social care Select committee works:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/role/
Sarah Wollaston MP (Independent) is the committee Chair, she is a GP herself outside of Parliament. www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/membership/
This Chair has not accepted to date that this is an issue for her committee and she seems to see it as a lgbt rights issue when actually it’s a children’s health issue.
It’s completely unacceptable that all these questions have been raised in the media and by regulators like the GMC and these have not been looked into properly by an impartial body yet.
Anyone can email the Chair, to ask for an enquiry into this area:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/health-and-social-care-committee/contact-us/
thanks, sorry for the massive post.