Tavistock puberty blocker study published

[PaleBlueMoonlight]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55282113

Finds 43/44 (98%) progress from PBS to cross sex hormones

Am 3 pages on and still reeling from that case of a kid staying on PBs because

HOW can that be ethical? There is nothing wrong with that child's body, there is no precocious puberty. They are medicating no condition and they don't know what the outcome of that will be. "First do no harm, unless it's a gender issue, then just do what the person wants"

There is a whiff of Andrew Wakefield around all of this.

@MoleSmokes thank you for your superb and very enlightening post. NHS England has, imo and experience, been thoroughly captured. It will take time to turn the juggernaut around.

There are rumours that Simon Stevens will be leaving soon. Will be interesting to see who next takes the helm and the direction they steer in.

I will do a bit more ‘indexing’ of the board meeting minutes this evening. 2018 should be interesting as that’s when GIDs started publicly acknowledging the skyrocket in referrals and the group of concerned parents wrote to the trust, resulting in this Observer article www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/03/tavistock-centre-gender-identity-clinic-accused-fast-tracking-young-adults

In the meantime, I am reminded of how Marcus Evans was refused permission to read David Bell’s report, despite being on the Governing body, with the justification that he was too new a governor to read it (!)
(Marcus Evans says this in his recent interview with Erin Brewer on YouTube. Will look it up and find a time stamp later)

I wonder if minutes of the governors meetings are available to the public, the way the board meeting minutes are? If not, would they be available via FOI, do you think?

@PlantMam
These minutes?
tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/governance/council-of-governors/meeting-and-papers/

Amazing!

Thanks!

Although the to do list just got a lot longer

How are the Tavistock not in contempt of court for hiding that report and this bone density information?

@mollscroll

How are the Tavistock not in contempt of court for hiding that report and this bone density information?

What would happen if they are?

Does someone have to notify the court and they take action? I'm clueless about everything

What would happen if they are?

As mentioned in previous posts, I think it's more likely a breach of the duty of candour rather than contempt. Given that the case is over, the only consequence that seems relevant for such a breach is a highly adverse award of costs, but given that there is already a costs order in place in favour of Kiera I don't know whether she will see to change it.

In the meantime, I am reminded of how Marcus Evans was refused permission to read David Bell’s report, despite being on the Governing body, with the justification that he was too new a governor to read it

Bloody hell - just when you think things can't get any dodgier.

TBH, I think some of the suggestions about legal action on here are a bit fanciful and not necessarily helpful. For instance, we probably wouldn't want to see prosecutions under criminal law (in the unlikely event of the CPS agreeing to bring charges), with its the higher burden of proof - any acquittal would be used as 'proof' that the Tavi has done nothing wrong.

We don't need anything fancy, legally. We just need a steady drip-drip of personal injury cases.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

TBH, I think some of the suggestions about legal action on here are a bit fanciful and not necessarily helpful. For instance, we probably wouldn't want to see prosecutions under criminal law (in the unlikely event of the CPS agreeing to bring charges), with its the higher burden of proof - any acquittal would be used as 'proof' that the Tavi has done nothing wrong.

We don't need anything fancy, legally. We just need a steady drip-drip of personal injury cases.

I don’t think there is likely to be a criminal prosecution but I am not sure that your medical career can make a comeback from being told you don’t understand Gillick competence by a high court judge. I think that some people will get struck off for this. Lots will get away with it.

It’s not a good outcome for the children involved. They knew this and kept doing it. That’s the big thing for me. No evidence that it helped their mental state. They got no mental health support.

I don't think there will be much professional fall out, unfortunately. They will all hide behind the fact that they had Ethics Committee sign off, and that the NHS stance at the time was that PBs are reversible. The GMC have fully swallowed the Kool-Aid and won't be looking to pursue the Tavi aggressively, as doing so would call attention to their own complicity. Ditto the CQC and NHS England.

Probably the best we can hope for is that someone (who was on the cusp of retirement anyway) resigns as a gesture. It's shit but I don't think we will see restitution, other than through personal injury awards.

It’s not a good outcome for the children involved. They knew this and kept doing it. That’s the big thing for me

Yes, I feel like this too. They knew.

If there was an "outlier" doctor independently pushing this and getting new protocols into place that would be one thing (that person ought to lose their job).

But I get the impression it's been more a case of institutional capture with it getting ever harder to resist. Doctors like you and me going along with the culture.

What would be nice would be recognition of the whistleblowers but sadly I think whistleblowers are often unrewarded or even villified in real life.

London teaching hospitals are absolutely ruthless and will hang some poor bugger out to dry to protect the institution. The Baby P case was a classic example - the paediatrician who examined him last didn't do a good job, but there were loads of extenuating circumstances which GOSH covered up link. She was also conveniently a non-UK trained doctor, so the perfect scapegoat, and was duly hung out to dry by an 'independent' review conducted by her own boss.

Expect something similar from the Tavi. There will be some token sacrificial resignation/sacking, and everyone else will carry on as normal.

Well there's Hilary Cass's review to be done, and whistleblower David Bell has a fundraiser on crowdjustice to try to cover legal costs as the Tavi are threatening action for what? His internal report into the service of a couple of years ago?

@MaudTheInvincible

Well there's Hilary Cass's review to be done, and whistleblower David Bell has a fundraiser on crowdjustice to try to cover legal costs as the Tavi are threatening action for what? His internal report into the service of a couple of years ago?

Hilary Cass' review has been commissioned by NHS England, i.e. the same organisation that commissioned the Tavi. NHS England are the ninjas of blame-deflection. The review is never going to find systemic failings. With luck, we might get a prospective commitment to work differently in the future.

I'm not sure anyone will even be struck off tbh. Similar protocols are being used internationally so at the moment it's England & Wales that are taking a different route because they've been forced to by the high court, but each individual dr was doing what their counterparts all over the world were doing & will continue to do, with the guidence of wpath. I wonder whether any other countries will start to shift without legal battles.

There is a crowd funder by some Canadians to get a proper medical technical translation of the Finnish guidelines to treat gd, which are apparently not quick to the medical route.

I really had high hopes for the cass review. I'm still hopeful.

Hasn't one of the doctors on the Cass review beem very pro TRA on twitter?

Public enquiries, independent reviews etc are not aimed at getting to the truth and exposing wrongdoing, They are about protecting institutions and moving on. I'm not trying to be all clever-clever cynical and Yes Minister about it - that is genuinely why they are commissioned. There are honourable exceptions like the Francis report on Mid-Staffs, but they are few and far between. And even the Francis report didn't change NHS culture, it just led to added layers of bureaucracy.

That's one of reasons why the Keira judgement was so important - it was genuinely independent.

It's the status of WPATH and the weight given to their guidelines that worries me, and how this has been adopted by the NHS. It seems to me that in adult Gender Identity Services here in the UK the emphasis is on facilitating medical intervention rather than "what's the best way to help people suffering from gender dysphoria".

WPATH are a patient group with some clinicians who seem to need a bit of CPD in critical thinking.

Michael Biggs has done a further analysis on TT's website about this report.

It is brutal - the parts that stand out the most: that they didn't split by sex, knowing that girls respond differently to boys as per the Dutch study. They didn't add any others to the study despite have hundreds of additional patients that they didn't anticipate, despite receiving £1.3m to conduct this research. They are giving drugs to kids knowing their bone density is flatlining when it should be going up in a steep curve.

This is utterly negligent. Scientifically, medically, ethically. I don't know how any of the professionals involved sleep at night.

www.transgendertrend.com/the-tavistocks-experiment-with-puberty-blockers-part-5-the-belated-results/ The Tavistock's experiment with puberty blockers, part 5: the belated results - Transgender Trend

Bloody hell. And thank god for Michael Biggs.