Newsnight Tonight - Tavistock Clinic concerns

[rogdmum]

On at 22:45

Tweet: twitter.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1273702696076410882?s=21

Says:

TONIGHT: #Newsnight has seen evidence that staff at England's only children’s NHS gender clinic say their concerns over the care provided were ‘shut down’.

Clinicians reported worries that some patients were referred onto a gender transitioning pathway too quickly.

22:45

t should be mandatory that children have acute mental health issues and trauma assessed and treated before referral to GIDS,

Indeed. A good start would be to stop putting children on puberty blockers, if they are lesbian, autistic, are suffering, or have suffered, from trauma. With immediate effect.

Take them out of the equation. From what the clinicians say, it is obvious, from talking to these children, whether or not they are struggling with autism, homosexuality, or trauma.

Deal with questions about that first. Resolve any conflict with those issues first.

Many clinicians, and Stephanie Davis Arai certainly think that you will reduce the numbers of children transitioning to nearly zero.

I would like to see Susie Green explain why her child had gender dysphoria, without mentioning all the times they were told they were the wrong sex for the toys they wanted to play with (all of which were taken away due to 'being for the opposite sex').

@ValancyRedfern I wasn't seriously anorexic as a teenager but I was very thin and it was clear to me at the time that I was trying to keep my body under control during puberty. My worst fear was to become curvy and booby and an object of male attention. It also meant I didn't start menstruating until I was 15 which was an added bonus for me. Who knows what would have happened if I'd had the option of taking puberty blockers.

It should be mandatory that children have acute mental health issues and trauma assessed and treated before referral to GIDS

GIDS has demonstrated that it is not fit for purpose. It never was.

NHS GIDS Tavistock website:

"GIDS founder: Dr Domenico DiCeglie
Lifetime Honorary Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

"You founded the Gender Identity Development Service. What gave you the idea to do so?

I was inspired to start the Gender Identity Development Service in 1989 by an encounter with a teenager, who was assigned female at birth, who perceived himself to be male. I saw him for exploratory psychotherapy in the mid-80s following three overdoses. In one of the sessions he wondered why his parents had not understood his situation when he was a child and sought professional help and support. This started my thinking about setting up a specialist service for this group of young people, but at the time I would never have imagined the developments which followed."

gids.nhs.uk/who-we-are/domenico-diceglie

(GIDS website is currently unavailable)

I would like to see Susie Green explain why her child had gender dysphoria, without mentioning all the times they were told they were the wrong sex for the toys they wanted to play with (all of which were taken away due to 'being for the opposite sex').

Focus should be on the likes of Norman Spack who diagnosed Susie Green's son as being transgender & provided medical interventions including cross-sex hormones. It seems likely that Spack's clinic provided the necessary supportive assessments to enable the surgery which Susie Green's child had in Thailand aged sixteen.

Spack and his colleagues in 'gender clinics' have diagnosed & medically intervened in the development of many young children.

I read that Susie Green quote posted earlier upthread as her complaining about scrutiny, and that investigation was harmful - does nobody else read this and hear alarm bells ringing so loudly in their head it makes them dizzy? She wrote the 'safeguarding' policy for Mermaids? On what basis, with what experience and what authority? What is it - 'be nice'?

Why are PP being rude about Emily Maitlis?

Newsnight was presented by Kirsty Wark last night, not Maitlis, and Maitlis was the journalist who skewered that quack Polly Carmichael when she last agreed to go on Newsnight and had clearly expected a nice soft ride from the captured BBC. I suspect that Maitlis' robust questioning last time is something to do with the Tavi refusing to give an actual interview in response to this.

Transgender Trend could do with some assistance in the hole they are digging at the moment, should anybody feel like they need to do something with their spade, after watching Newsnight.

So nice of Emma Watson to donate to Mermaids, their going to need It for the upcoming legal battles - How nice for her to have her name forever linked to this organisation. Idiot.

As Safeguarding & Duty of Care failings at children's GIDS service are now being considered publically it is important that people are aware that the adult services have also being identified as unsafe by parents of 17-25 year olds.

3 Nov 2018 Observer

'Gender identity clinic accused of fast-tracking young adults

Tavistock Centre launches review amid parents’ fears over pace of transitioning decisions'

Britain’s only NHS gender identity service for children is reviewing its operations amid claims made by a senior member of staff that it is failing to examine fully the psychological and social reasons behind young people’s desire to change gender.

The views are shared by a group of parents of transgender children, who have raised their own concerns that the Tavistock Centre’s gender identity development service (GIDS) in London is “fast-tracking” young people into life-altering decisions without fully assessing their personal histories.

In a letter to the trust’s board, seen by the Observer, the parents say they fear “the GIDS team is being asked to engage with and assess complex and difficult cases within a highly constrained time frame”.

They continue: “We have specific concerns about the situation of those with gender dysphoria in the age group 17 to 25 who are referred to the [adult] GIC [gender identity clinic], where they do not receive the complex psychosocial assessment offered at GIDS: for these young adults there is little exploration of the family or cultural context of their still developing gender identity.” (continues)

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/03/tavistock-centre-gender-identity-clinic-accused-fast-tracking-young-adults

July 2019 Professor Michael Biggs (Oxford)
'The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty Blockers'
(extract)
"I will argue that the experimental study did not properly inform children and their parents of the risks of triptorelin. I will also demonstrate that the study’s preliminary results were more negative than positive, and that the single published scientific article using data from the study is fatally flawed by a statistical fallacy. My conclusion is that GIDS and their collaborators at UCL have either ignored or suppressed negative evidence. Therefore the NHS had no justification for introducing the Dutch protocol as general policy in 2014." (continues)

GnRHa drugs have never been licensed for treating children suffering from gender dysphoria. The particular drug used in Britain, as in the Netherlands, is triptorelin, which is licensed to treat advanced prostate cancer and sexual deviance in men; endometriosis and uterine fibroids in women (for no longer than six months); and precocious puberty in children (Electronic Medicines Compendium 2019). Using GnRHa to treat gender dysphoria is “a momentous step
in the dark”, for it is “presumptuous to extrapolate observations from an intervention that suppresses pathologically premature puberty to one that suppresses normal puberty” (Richards et al. 2018). Therefore the origins of the Tavistock’s experiment needs some explanation.

The Dutch protocol became well known in Britain before the first scientific article was published. A television documentary showed girls who wished to be boys travelling to meet their peers in the Netherlands, who were taking GnRHa as young as 13 (Channel 4 1996). This inspired Stephen Whittle—who led the transgender campaigning organization Press for Change—to argue for a legal right to access “pubertal suppression”; doctors who failed to provide drugs could be vulnerable to litigation (Downs and Whittle 2000; Wren 2000: 224).
This argument was first advanced at a conference at Oxford in 1998, whose keynote speaker was the head of the Amsterdam Gender Clinic. There was little movement, however, over the next few years. Guidelines issued by the British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes (BSPED) in 2005 still insisted that children had to reach full sexual development (known as Tanner Stage 5)—around the age of 15—before being prescribed GnRHa drugs. A crucial role was played by organizations that campaign for the transgendering of
children: the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) and Mermaids.

GIRES organized a symposium in London in 2005 to develop “guidelines for endocrinological intervention”. Additional funding came from Mermaids, two medical charities—Nuffield Foundation and King’s Fund—and the Servite Sisters Charitable Trust Fund. This brought together the creators of the Dutch protocol, American clinicians like Norman Spack in Boston, and key British figures such as Domenico Di Ceglie, the Director of GIDS, and Polly Carmichael and Russell Viner, both at Great Ormond Street Hospital. (The latter two would lead the 2011 experiment.) Some of the participants vigorously lobbied for the Dutch protocol. Veronica Sharp from Mermaids “described users’ and parents’ views of the available treatments, and the anguish they may experience when hormone blocking is delayed” (GIRES 2005)" (continues)

users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/Biggs_ExperimentPubertyBlockers.pdf

So nice of Emma Watson to donate to Mermaids, their going to need It for the upcoming legal battles

And Eddie Redmayne was on their twitch finder thing or whatever it was called.

Jammela Jamil has tweeted her support before.

We will remember.

We will remember.

A reminder of a key comment from the Newsnight investigation for every MP, celebrity, LGBT+ organisation, trans rights activist / ally, journalist and professional responsible for children's welfare who has promoted unquestioning affirmation, medical intervention & Mermaids charity:

"As well as seeing young people struggling with their sexuality, staff say some parents appeared to prefer their children to be transgender and straight, rather than gay."

Transgender Trend could do with some assistance in the hole they are digging at the moment, should anybody feel like they need to do something with their spade, after watching Newsnight.

Will do^

We as society need to stop celebrating 'trans kids'. So many people, including politicians, journalists and celebrities, are under the illusion that supporting and celebrating the idea of transgender children promotes the acceptance of nonconformity, when in reality it has the opposite effect.

Or is society as a whole still so homophobic that most people subconsciously approve of gay conversion therapy as long as it's covered in rainbow and unicorn stickers?

I really, really despair. Mermaids has a stall at Pride events, FFS.

Does anyone know what's in this for Carmichael? I can't figure her out. Newsnight reinforced/confirmed suspicions that she is aware of harm to children and claims she actively discouraged safe guarding so why would she do it? Money?

The other day I read a long post by a virtual friend in a FB group, where we are all pretty close and some of us have met in real life.

She "came out" as having a transgender child. It was obviously a very
big thing for her to describe in detail what this was like and what she
has gone through. She was extremely positive and described her child
as extrarordinary, brave and strong and admirable.

I felt sick. I knew I could not join in all the congratulatory messages -- heaps of them! and likes. Everyone saying what a fabulous mother she is and how wonderful her child.
It's fortunate that I don't post very often in that group because I would have stood out as being one of the few who said nothing at all. But I just could not. The woman is perfectly lovely and I have met her in rl and I would like nothing more than to support her in whatever challenges she faces but I simply cannot lie and tell her that this is a good thing. It isn't.

I think in all of the discussion, it's the parents of such children I most feel for. They are so desperate, so caring, and how awful for them to
watch a programme like this and feel they have messed up their child
for life -- all with the best intentions.

But what can you say, without lying? Best to say nothing at all and hope they don't think you hate them.

I have at least three such mothers as FB friends and they are all the same: very defensive of their children, very pro-Tavistock, very pro-trans-everything. One of them, mother of a trans-boy in the USA, posted a lengthy defense of trans-girls in sports. It is unbelievable.

I've wondered that before BlueBooby. She seems to have developed a cult mindset, who knows what the underlying motives are.
She is certainly not the first problematic figure in trans healthcare and the related industries.

@BlueBooby

Does anyone know what's in this for Carmichael? I can't figure her out. Newsnight reinforced/confirmed suspicions that she is aware of harm to children and claims she actively discouraged safe guarding so why would she do it? Money?

It seems likely that she progressed within the service under Dominico Di Ceglie, the founder of the service who remains a director. The Safeguarding failures are systemic within this NHS service.

Tavistock & Portman website:
Our Gender Identity Development Service
4 November 2018

As reported in the Observer today, the Trust is currently conducting an internal review into issues raised about the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

The GIDS was founded in 1989 and is one of the longest standing services for gender diverse children and young people in the world. Domenico Di Ceglie, who founded the service, wrote a set of therapeutic aims which we still abide by today. This includes the unconditional acceptance and respect for young people’s gender identity. We do not therefore take a view regarding the outcome of an individual’s gender identity development: rather, our focus is to provide a space for exploration of gender, to ameliorate any negative impacts on general development and to work with young people to think through all the options open to them. These principles remain central to the delivery of the service. (continues)

We recognise that there are strongly held views among patients and families and their representatives including those who wish for physical treatment to be offered earlier or by those who feel that physical treatments should not be offered to young people at all. The service has worked hard, and continues to do so, to maintain a balanced view in which we are fully aware of wider social, cultural, legal and political factors, but maintain a focus on an individual approach to care informed by the particular circumstances of each young person we see. (continues)

We hope any families reading today’s news will feel reassured that their children will be cared for respectfully, comprehensively and mindfully. As a Trust and as a service, we are very alive to the current debates raging publicly about the care of gender diverse children and young people and we aspire to remain a safe place for children, young people and their families to come to to explore their feelings around their gender with the wholehearted support of a dedicated multi-disciplinary team of experts in this highly specialised field."

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/news/stories/our-gender-identity-development-service/

@FloralBunting

Why are PP being rude about Emily Maitlis?

Newsnight was presented by Kirsty Wark last night, not Maitlis, and Maitlis was the journalist who skewered that quack Polly Carmichael when she last agreed to go on Newsnight and had clearly expected a nice soft ride from the captured BBC. I suspect that Maitlis' robust questioning last time is something to do with the Tavi refusing to give an actual interview in response to this.

I agree Floral. I remember the interview and certainly felt that EM was not on the Woke bandwagon.

Newsnight reinforced/confirmed suspicions that she is aware of harm to children and claims she actively discouraged safe guarding so why would she do it?

I think she's fully indoctrinated into the trans cult. It's the same reason parents are taking their children there. They fully believe that these children are born with the opposite sex brain and if they don't change their body "to match" then they will have a traumatic life and end up committing suicide. It's the foundation stone of the whole ideology and, when you're that deep in, it takes a massive mindset shift to realise that it's not true.

Most of my friends, while critical of trans activism, still believe that children can be "born in the wrong body".

Remember Indigo Children?

Same thing.

@BoreOfWhabylon

Remember Indigo Children?

Same thing.

Oh God yes. I remember an acquaintance many years ago telling me DS2 was an indigo child and she could sense from his aura that he was carrying a dark passenger. Apparently she would be able to talk to him and act as his interpreter better than anyone else.

He has ASD.

I knocked that one right on the head.

So much more interesting than bog-standard ordinary children Ova. And, by extension, the parents also considered themselves so much more interesting and enlightened.

They fully believe that these children are born with the opposite sex brain and if they don't change their body "to match" then they will have a traumatic life and end up committing suicide. It's the foundation stone of the whole ideology and, when you're that deep in, it takes a massive mindset shift to realise that it's not true

It's so bizarre isnt it because reasonably intelligent adults are soooo sceptical of everything all the time.

They shop at aldi cos " its exactly the same" and they dont like being ripped off.

They have multiple email addresses because their car insurance renewals are more expensive than becoming a new customer and they want to call up and ask them to match it.

They will pour hours into researching what lap top to buy even of it's just for the kids.

Hours of time given up researching household appliances because they dont like being ripped off and want to get the best price.

They visit schools multiple times and research all the questions they should ask. They work out the best times to go so they dont get the hyped up open evenings with the hand selected kids.

Yet not one of them ever wonders out of all the parts of the body why it's never a wrong arm or a wrong kidney or a wrong eyebrow but a brain. They would tell their kids they were an idiot for buying a can of coke at the spar shop for 80p when tesco Express over the road sells them for 70p. But they dont look at who might benefit and/or profit from this course of treatment.

I dont get it.

It's Sarah Smith who needs to do some apologising...

@TinselAngel

Transgender Trend could do with some assistance in the hole they are digging at the moment, should anybody feel like they need to do something with their spade, after watching Newsnight.

I've dug again. I can't watch the documentary, as I just get myself too worked up.