What you all said was coming

[Pippinbird]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10947483/Anguish-young-man-sex-organs-removed-NHS-regretted-day-SUES-NHS

The lack of sympathy towards him (as evidenced in this thread) as opposed to someone like Kiera Bell is stark.

I think that is down to age.
KB was 16 when her journey began and she ended up on a path she didn't believe she could leave. This man was 25 plus so as an adult is deemed to be more responsible for his choices. I think what many are missing is despite his age he was vulnerable and ended up on the same path if lies KB did.

@MishyJDI

How do you propose to prevent future cases like this man?

What steps should the NHS take to ensure this does not happen again, and that only people who would benefit from surgery get it?

Yes, in your fairy land. Do you think this surgery was for free?

NHS explains and has patients to sign the form stating which side effect the patients could get from a particular treatment. I doubt the guy was not informed, he might not have comprehended well.
I think NHS turns into a bunch of German nazi doctors who were trying experimental treatments on prisoners of war during WW2.
I would feel sorry if it was about a child who got mutilated with parents' concern.
At 25 he was an adult himself. I feel sorry he had no friends or family to warn him against the surgery.
I do not expect him to win. It took decades to thalidomide victims to get small compensation.

Fair enough.

But in this case the doctors know too. The doctors know better than anyone else, in fact.

He asked for the surgery, consented to the surgery and surely researched the surgery. He put it off for 2 years so surely in this time would have researched and made up his mind fully before going through with it. He should not be able to sue. What a waste of money the surgery was on the NHS.

Surgery regret however is extremely low for trans people, so the furore over one case should not be taken out of perspective.

We hear this a lot, but where's the recent evidence? I don't think anybody is doing the counting. The detransitioners subreddit has about 30,000 members.

If the NHS performed breast reduction surgery and the patient still felt negative thoughts about their body afterwards so sued I’d feel exactly the same.

If a man requested a vasectomy afterwards, then decided he wanted children and sued, I’d feel the same there too.

My husband was offered ligament repair surgery that could lose him the feeling in his foot. Had he gone ahead with that and sued for a numb foot, I’d have felt the same there too.

As far as I am aware, it's a very out of date statistic.

Quite. If Advanced Search weren't quite so broken, I'd normally recommend that people look for previous threads that address this topic/research but, in this case, yes, looking at more recent figures, and certainly post the discussion around ROGD plus various social phenomena, would be helpful.

@EdgeOfACoin Not up to me to advise the NHS. Given regrets are extremely low, I'm not sure there is anything for them to do here. Like all surgeries, they have regret rates. I'm sure the NHS applies the same analysis they do to other surgeries around regret rates.

No system is fail safe. There will always be sub optimal outcomes for some people. That is sad.

People suggesting NHS is affirmative only care are dead wrong. Anyone going through that system is assessed and challenged by psychs over a number of years. Two separate psychs have to agree a person is able to consent and psychologically fit for surgery.

It is far from an easy process, and is life-saving for those who undergo it. Not something anyone does lightly, as it is pretty intensive surgery, and not without risks.

@MishyJDI Do you think the number of regretters will remain low, given the 4000% increase in young women identifying as transgender and the move towards an affirmation only treatment policy?

People suggesting NHS is affirmative only care are dead wrong. Anyone going through that system is assessed and challenged by psychs over a number of years. Two separate psychs have to agree a person is able to consent and psychologically fit for surgery.

Plenty of detransitioners say they weren't challenged in any meaningful way. Have a look for Sinead Watson on Youtube.

Unfortunately this case will be just one of many over the next few years/ decades. Mental or pyschological issues are being 'treated' with permanent physical changes. It is and will be a future crisis.

Seems uncessarily aggressive @xogossipgirlxo

Nope, clearly I don't think surgery is free and I'm sure other people don't either.

But the old cries that someone shouldn't get surgery for XYZ because another surgery is considered more worthy is a very simplistic understanding of how the NHS works.

Sometimes the NHS gives you the positives and negatives and you decide. As an example my husband has a very painful back condition. I don't mean he has backache I mean sometimes he screams with the pain, sometimes he's bedridden not because being in bed is comfortable but because he can't move. His specialist told him he could do surgery which would probably reduce or even remove the pain but it would also mean he was likely to be paralysed from the waist down, be incontinent, impotent. It was his decision once he was presented with the information. Neither option seemed very appealing but he decided against surgery. He lives with the pain, it was his decision.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread yet but isn't that whole article based on a tweet? It might not even be true.

I haven't read the whole thread but I agree with this. I simply don't understand why gender dysphoria has been singled out for an affirmation-based approach when comparable conditions are (correctly, imo) recognised as having their roots in mental illness or neurodiversity, and managed and treated accordingly.

Not up to me to advise the NHS. Given regrets are extremely low, I'm not sure there is anything for them to do here. Like all surgeries, they have regret rates. I'm sure the NHS applies the same analysis they do to other surgeries around regret rates.

No system is fail safe. There will always be sub optimal outcomes for some people. That is sad.

In other words: it sucks to be a detransitioner. Oh well, what can you do.

I understand the comments saying he was an adult and made the choice. But I believe that he was mentally unwell and in the grip of a social contagion when he made this decision. And - more importantly - he shouldn't have been allowed to make this choice. The doctors and surgeons have a clear ethical duty to "do no harm". This is harm: clear and lasting, irreversible harm. Everyone involved in this - everyone - bears some responsibility. But only the young man himself is being punished.

Yes, I'm genuinely glad that most people have a positive outcome after this kind of surgery. But these questions really do need to be asked.

Weighing up risks and benefits of all surgeries is actually not black and white. There was a great Panorama about how risks of cancer treatments are presented to patients and the reality behind it. I think actually GRS is on the extreme end of the same spectrum, it's more apparent because the body seems healthy and it's to treat a mental problem in this case. (I'm talking about adults here - children and adolescents are a separate case imo).

FWR have been saying for years now, that the affirmation approach will lead to tragedies and that people who are undergoing any surgery need to understand that there is no way that they can actually change sex, it's just plastic surgery at best.

FWR people have taken to the streets/campaigns to explain that the NHS is just giving surgeries to people without the adequate mental health exploration and they are being sold a lie. To try and get people to listen to what is going on - right now - in the NHS.

FWR often mention the dichotomy that the NHS won't take action for women who are desperate for medical reasons to have operations that they give to 'gender disphoric' people with no medical reason whatsoever.

FWR are continuously monitored and if the monitors deem that we have overstepped or committed wrong think are so powerful that they can get people banned for life from here, for pointing this all out.

This was always going to be the culmination, someone was always going to be the first case to take the NHS to court for what they are doing and lo and behold - the people that are spending all their time telling us to 'be nice' are sticking the knife into this man that he knew what he was getting into.

Honestly, some of the responses on here have been so utterly vile I just cannot get my head around them.

I have no doubt he was warned about the affects of surgery and the fact he was seeing a psychiatrist indicates he was having therapy about his gender issues. He had been taking hormones and living as a female. He wasn't an impressionable teen and I am sympathetic to the situation he is in, but hope the suit fails. I hope though it's a lesson to the NHS not to follow the craziness of gender reassignment without far more research and I'm angry about the shite in the media about gender 'dysphoria'

Absolutely, but that approach is predicated on the principle that the patient has sufficient capacity to make that choice.

Someone who is severely mentally unwell does not have that capacity, and needs to be protected from making poor choices that cause profound and long-lasting damage. In exactly the same way that we intervene with other conditions that cause someone to self harm.

Yes, he's a victim of society and his upbringing, but not of the NHS.