Ben Hunte BBC article about puberty blocker ban

[risefromyourgrave]

Not biased at all maybe they’re trying to appease the people upset by big meanie Amol Rajan....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55369784

This article is irresponsible in a number of ways. It hammers the "suicide" point, alongside (and relatedly) repeatedly implying that without puberty blockers, there is mental health help/support for trans youth. Isn't this one of the things the Tavi has repeatedly attempted to refute?

I can't believe the BBC are referencing GenderGp, is that jot the disgraced Webberleys?

Sorry, there is NO mental health support....

Ben has quotes from GenderGP and Adrian Harrop! You are spoiling us!
It does say Tavistock is appealing. I might wait to see if that is true before I write my complaint..

I don't doubt that the children who were expecting appointments and medication will be extremely disappointed having been told this was an essential treatment.
Maybe once the message gets changed to one that more closely resembles the scientific findings - that puberty blockers to completely stop puberty is not a pause, is experimental, has serious long term health problems and especially for girls is pretty pointless as they would be physically better advantaged for adult transition after puberty.
These kids most certainly need better mental health care, either to resolve their dysphoria or support them better to adulthood where they can make adult choices about their bodies.

Another article that fails to mention the side effects. Every. Single. Time. And Hunte quotes Harrop, who is a GP with no expertise in children, and Webberley, disciplined by the GMC. And has an irresponsible suicide scare story. With no opposing opinions.

How is this person employed by the BBC .

Good grief!

So no mention of:

• The fact that the Webberlys are currently suspended by the GMC hence practicing abroad.
• Potential and unknown side effects including drastic drops in bone density.

- The recent article by some of the clinicians from the Tavistock which says that 98% of children on puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones (something they interestingly told the high court judge they didn't know the figures for - even though, given the publication date for the article which came out a week or so after the high court judgement, they must have known and were therefore flat-out lying to the court when they said they didn't have the figures).

• The fact that puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones leads to infertility.

• The fact that testosterone use in female patients leads to vaginal atrophy and the eventual need for a radical hysterectomy.

• The fact that the case was brought by a de-transitioning woman (formerly transman) who was absolutely convinced at the age of 17 that she was a transman - but then realised she wasn't. So the medical principle of "first do no harm" comes into play.

This is a shockingly, appallingly one-sided article.

What's the complaints link for the BBC?

This is an excellent article. It's extremely important to hear the voices of the actual children who are being directly affected, and we only have to look to Keira Bell to know how distressed Emily will be by a testosterone puberty.

This ruling will be over-turned, but in the meantime I will be doing what I can to help.

pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/145/2/e20191725

@CaraDuneRedux

Good grief!

So no mention of:

• The fact that the Webberlys are currently suspended by the GMC hence practicing abroad.
• Potential and unknown side effects including drastic drops in bone density.

- The recent article by some of the clinicians from the Tavistock which says that 98% of children on puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones (something they interestingly told the high court judge they didn't know the figures for - even though, given the publication date for the article which came out a week or so after the high court judgement, they must have known and were therefore flat-out lying to the court when they said they didn't have the figures).

• The fact that puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones leads to infertility.

• The fact that testosterone use in female patients leads to vaginal atrophy and the eventual need for a radical hysterectomy.

• The fact that the case was brought by a de-transitioning woman (formerly transman) who was absolutely convinced at the age of 17 that she was a transman - but then realised she wasn't. So the medical principle of "first do no harm" comes into play.

This is a shockingly, appallingly one-sided article.

What's the complaints link for the BBC?

On the other hand, you do have the voice of Theo, who was so distressed he tried to take his own life and spent time in intensive care. How do you think this ruling will affect the mental health of children like him?

Heartbreaking that the only support seemingly considered a real option for Theo's terrible distress is a potentially damaging drug. The delay for specialises mental health support seems, on the basis of this article, to be the terrible thing here.

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints

I sincerely hope Theo gets much better mental health support than currently is available, and I completely agree that it is a national scandal that adequate mental health care and proper counselling is not available to children in this situation.

By proper counselling, I mean non-proscriptive, open-ended counselling, which explores issues like previous histories of sexual abuse, co-morbidities with conditions such as aspergers, rather than affirmation only followed by handing out untested, off-label drugs with potentially horrendous side effects like they were smarties.

@WorriedForWomen

Heartbreaking that the only support seemingly considered a real option for Theo's terrible distress is a potentially damaging drug. The delay for specialises mental health support seems, on the basis of this article, to be the terrible thing here.

You can't change someone's gender identity with mental health support. Would it work on you - do you think a psychiatrist could completely convince you that you have a male gender identity?

Fortunately suicide among gender confused teens is 'vanishingly rare' according to Polly Carmichael.

www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

Had Theo been given good support instead of fed the line that Theo could change sex and all would be right with the world. Theo and kids like him would be adjusting to puberty and then getting on with their lives. The majority of kids hate puberty. Many kids think about suicide this doesn't mean preventing one harm by medicating and so causing a more long term health damaging harm

We all know where to send complaints to. This ‘journalist’ demonstrates time and time again their bias. Isn’t the BBC supposed to be neutral?

So on one side we have "watch and wait, give children plenty of mental health support, create a less judgemental culture where people can be gender-non-conforming without expectations that certain body types go with certain behaviours, personalities, life choices and choices of dress."

And on the other side we have "give children who are otherwise - due to their age - not considered mature enough to make decisions about having sex, drinking alcohol, getting tattoos, life altering, irreversible drugs or they will kill themselves and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT YOU EVIL, EVIL WOMEN... (conveniently ignoring the advice of mental health charities on not weaponising talk of suicide in this way)"

Hmm, not picking up "right side of history" on this one, really.

The BBC is failing in its duty to report suicide responsibly and without sensationalism in this article. Worth referencing the Samaritans Media Guidelines in any complaint - they should be well known to BBC Journalists. Young people are very susceptible to suicide contagion, it's startling how irresponsible this article is. Not to mention the disgraced GenderGP being granted credibility by the journalist - clearly not a someone who has done their background research.

https://media.samaritans.org/documents/MediaGuidelinessFINALv22TABa8C6.pdf

There's a more balanced article on this topic in Quillette Magazine:
quillette.com/2020/12/18/like-it-or-not-keira-bell-has-opened-up-a-real-conversation-about-gender-dysphoria/?fbclid=IwAR3evs0U-zaMgl_41bZzvY75QONsU5T5zvCVd8E18pn1Hy1Z-3KwpfDKiVM

"As the data belatedly released by Tavistock itself show, blocking puberty is associated with a variety of adverse medical outcomes. This is hardly surprising, since puberty is a critical development period for many parts of the body, from the reproductive organs and skeletal system to the brain. In particular, puberty is a critical period for the development of strong bones that help prevent fractures and osteoporosis in adulthood. From a medical point of view, artificially halting puberty is a dangerous shot in the dark. Yet endocrinologists and other medical experts who’ve raised the alarm about puberty blockers in recent years have routinely been smeared as transphobic. We know of no other area of health policy in which alerting the public to clear and well-established health risks (among children, no less) is stigmatized in this way. "

@CaraDuneRedux
"So on one side we have "watch and wait, give children plenty of mental health support, create a less judgemental culture where people can be gender-non-conforming without expectations that certain body types go with certain behaviours, personalities, life choices and choices of dress.""

No, that's on both sides. However on the this side, we allow the child to express their gender identity (affirmation) because science shows that it helps their mental health:

www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/fulltext

www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(18)30085-5/fulltext

And if their gender identity is insistent, persistent and consistent by the onset of puberty, we can be almost completely sure that it is fixed. At that point, we move, in some cases, to puberty blockers.

I can tell you now how this will play out, because I've seen it many, many times in the past with the BBC - enough times to know that this is deliberate policy on their part, not accident.

Shockingly badly researched and one-sided article by Ben Hunte is published, and splashed with link near the top of the News front page.

Complaints flood in about factual innacuracies, breaking of guidelines on reporting suicide, bias.

Article gets toned down, a few caveats get put in.

But the BBC don't actually care because 90% plus of people who read an article will do so within the first few hours of it being on the website, and will take away the inital impression from the biased article.

They do this over and over again - with women's sport and trans inclusion, with over-medicalisation of trans-identifying teens, with trans-identifying prisoners being placed in women's prisons. Sensationalist, heart-string-tugging pile of shite published first, then they're forced to fact-check and issue a toned down, marginally more balanced version - but do so in the knowledge that from a propaganda perspective the later correction doesn't reach nearly as many people.

(BTW, please can someone archive this original version for side-by-side comparison after the toned-down version has been issued?)

Regardless of your views on affirmation and puberty blockers, it’s just not ok to tell teenagers “you must feel suicidal”.