Tavistock clinic to be sued by 1000 families

[WarriorN]

Times article I've just seen...

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tavistock-gender-clinic-to-be-sued-by-1-000-families-lbsw6k8zd

I'm afraid I don't have access but the headline alone...

I'm assuming it's for overly enthusiastic affirmative care and not the opposite?

Anyone who thinks Gillick competency was achieved here, well I'd be concerned about their critical thinking skills.

'The right or wrong of gender reassignment is not something a court would entertain, purely look at negligence and causality.'

Maybe a court should look at the right and wrong of gender reassignment. Maybe there should be legal scrutiny of messaging from Stonewall and particularly Mermaids on this issue and how that has contributed to a social contagion.

We always talk of 'harms' being done. Cass talks of 'harms'. We know that there are a huge number of detransitioners, it's not good enough to shrug our shoulders and say oh well, it would be hard to prove:

It is not hard to prove that Susie Green took her child to Thailand for a sex change at aged 16.

It is not hard to prove that Susie Green kept pushing false information on suicide statistics.

It is not hard to get hold of mermaids materials stating there are male and female brains and you can be born in the wrong body; if you like wearing trousers and cut your hair short you must be a boy; a child knows their own gender identity from a very early age.

It is not hard to prove that there are certain people who have pushed very hard and aggressivly to get any kind of exploratory therapy banned as 'conversion therapy'.

If we all agree that children HAVE been harmed, but it's hard to prove medical negligence or malpractice, then where has this harm come from and why can't they be held accountable?

Yes. What do people mean when they talk about a child being 'genuinely trans'?

Up until a few years ago, the word 'transsexual' was used to describe someone who wanted to modify their body to look like the opposite sex. We never used to hear about 'transsexual children' then, but that's what is meant by 'trans children'.

There is no such thing as a trans (transsexual) child.

OldCrone My daughter’s school doesn’t even appear to believe gender dysphoria is a thing or maybe that gender dysphoria in “trans” children doesn’t count? Who knows. They appear to only believe in “the trans child”. Where do you even begin with people with such batshit positions?

Attached is the last paragraph in the school’s guidance for transgender pupils. The link is to: www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Current-Evidence-in-the-Treatment-of-Gender-Dysphoric-Children-and-Young-People.pdf

Former school! It’s her former school now! I keep forgetting to add “former”. 😁

This fits in with the practice the Tavistock took of no longer treating gender dysphoria as a mental health illness. It was straight to trans affirmation approach without any investigation into what else was going on. The link I posted earlier was from an account of Sue Evans a senior nurse who tried to raise concerns back in the early 2000s. Schools are going to have a difficult time undoing the policies they put in place under the guidance of the likes of Stonewall and Mermaids.

@Lovelyricepudding The consent form says an assessment was carried out prior to consent being given. What was or wasn't said in that assessment neither you or I know, but your rather hysterical list may or may not have been discussed. There are people who have transitioned who are actually happy with their gender reassignment. It will depend entirely what the investigation reveals and what harms were done. They will also consider that many of the patients already had significant mental health problems prior to any treatment.

What was seriously wrong was these were attributed to gender dysphoria and this gender dysphoria was not seen as a mental health issue but as a problem which needed by a change to their physical appearance. This is obviously crazy to most people but was embraced by these practitioners for some obscure reasons. It's as crazy as operating multiple times on a hypochondriac in the hope of solving the 'problem'.

@NotBadConsidering Please don't tell me what I can or cannot say. What is your empirical evidence that puberty blockers are never reversible? The evidence is not clear as there is no long term data. It's not unreasonable to assume a drug given to delay puberty if give for a short time and stopped would be reversed and normal puberty resumed. Puberty blockers are given to children with precocious puberty and these children go on to develop normally.

I'm talking simply about puberty blockers not cross hormones, or surgery. Side effects are simply side effects, and do not affect all patients.

I totally agree the whole thing was never thought through and an ideology followed for whatever reasons, I'm just saying legal action is not as simple as what harm was or wasn't done but must follow legal rules. The most important of which is what harm was done.

hewouldwouldnthe

LovelyRicePudding said "Getting a child to tick a box to say 'I understand' shows absolutely nothing about their level of understanding." and then gave a list of potential outcomes that were omitted from the NHS guidance.

Could you describe why you regard that list as hysterical?

Particularly in the light of the Cass report and her recommendation to shut the clinic down.

I did quite a long Twitter thread at the time about the consent forms, but one of the things that struck me was the lack of detailing the impact of going from PBs to CSH. Even Dr Olsen-Kennedy’s emphasised this way back in 2016 (and my views of Olsen-Kennedy would get me quickly banned from Mumsnet), saying:

“If your child starts puberty blockers in the earliest stages of puberty, and then goes on to gender affirming hormones, they will not develop sperm or eggs. This means that they will not be able to have biological children. This is an important aspect of blocking puberty and progressing to hormones that you should understand prior to moving forward with puberty suppression. If your child discontinues the use of blockers, and does not go on gender affirming hormones, they will continue their pubertal development about 6-12 months after stopping the medication, and fertility would be maintained.”

The U.K. fact sheet says PBs could affect your ability to have a baby, but it makes no mention of what happens if you then go onto CSH and with the overwhelming majority of children on PBs then going onto CSH, I think this is quite an omission.

twitter.com/rogdmum/status/1330611668427165696?s=21&t=3EJ6p2A9K80X0jC1bzKniw

@NotBadConsidering Please don't tell me what I can or cannot say. What is your empirical evidence that puberty blockers are never reversible?

In the judicial review Bell/Mrs A vs Tavistock, Dr Annelou de Vries, one of the pioneering Dutch doctors who commenced the medical affirmative model, testified to the High Court that fewer than 1.9% of patients stopped puberty blockers, more than 98% did not reverse them and went on to wrong sex hormones. This was accepted by both sides and the judges.

This is backed up by Dr Norman Spack, Boston paediatrician who said all of his patients at his Boston clinic never stopped puberty blockers.

You can say what you want, but you’re not saying the truth. Puberty blockers are almost never reversed for gender incongruence. It is not akin to precocious puberty. They are entirely different. The whole aim of using them for CPP is to restart puberty at an appropriate time. The whole aim for using them in gender incongruence is to make sure a child never experiences the puberty of their sex. They are not used to “give kids time to think”. This is a lie.

All patients who are puberty blocked at Tanner Stage 2 and progress to wrong sex hormones will be infertile and sexually dysfunctional. That is an objective fact. Easily proven.

If you were a medical student starting to think about what to specialise in, why would you be tempted by an area that's morally/politically contested, is subject to a major ethics review, currently so badly run its main outlet has been closed, and in which you may end up being sued? When you could go into something relatively straightforwad like dermatology or infectious disease?

your rather hysterical list

hysterical?

@NotBadConsidering I say quite clearly the PB on their own appear reversible, but time factors and unknown long term effects need to be considered. I've also said this is not the case with cross gender hormones or surgery. If patients go on after PB and suffer harm, then the whole consent, informed consent, competency, assessment etc will have to be examined. Cancer patients have chemotherapy knowing the risks but it doesn't mean they don't take the treatment.

I've seen a few TV programmes about so called TG children, and their understanding and determination coupled with that often of parents, is very compelling. Not to say it's right, it obviously isn't, but one child was threatening suicide if their voice broke, and another was distraught at the thought of breasts. These children and their issues have never before come to the forefront of modern medicine in these numbers and it really was a whole new ball game (excuse pun). With hindsight the doctors embraced this ideology with little real evidence or thought and took the wrong path. On a negligence issue you can't use hindsight to alter the perception of treatment at that time. What would have been done differently by doctors in a similar time and with the evidence at hand would be the legal issue, not what is considered correct now. That's what the case will hinge on along with harm caused by the treatment.

I am not at all supporting what the clinic did just saying that medical negligence isn't as simple as people are assuming. I don't want people to endure a long legal battle and end up worse off because of the trauma and greedy lawyers. If there is a real legal case then good, it will prove the facts.

Puberty blockers are reversible assuming that their use is discontinued before they make permanent irreversible changes. Which they will do if given to children for a sufficient period of time.

This narrow context was then broadened in a blanket and deceptive way in the medical establishments in the UK and elsewhere, in the media, and in activist communities to state categorically that puberty blockers are reversible.

If you were a medical student starting to think about what to specialise in, why would you be tempted by an area that's morally/politically contested, is subject to a major ethics review, currently so badly run its main outlet has been closed, and in which you may end up being sued?

Most would not. It's the ones who would that we need to worry about. Gender identity practice is a Wild West and it's precisely this that attracts some practitioners, they have a great deal of freedom to carry out new and experimental procedures (look at the "enthusiasm" of Dr Sidhbh Gallagher), and they'll be pioneers who have a reasonable chance of establishing themselves among the foremost experts in the world.

Yes, almost all claims to "reversibility" are deceptive - they're deployed to conceal the true statement "puberty blockers cause irreversible changes".

Puberty blockers are both reversible and cause irreversible changes. If every statement about reversibility also noted that they cause irreversible changes, then we'd be fine.

Even when used for precocious puberty, they cause irreversible changes - and that's the point! To irreversibly change the development pathway to avoid the early development, and that's a permanent effect.

Parents and children were still being told that puberty blockers would be just like a breathing space, until very recently. Surgeons, endocrinologists and doctors on this site have been trying to raise the alarm for at least the seven years since I've been reading it.

It's not new.

With hindsight the doctors embraced this ideology with little real evidence or thought and took the wrong path.

Doctors prescribing off licence drugs, because they are embracing an ideology without any evidence? Which has led to children in a permanent state of immaturity, unable to have a sex life or children?

You don't think that could form the basis of a court case?

They are not used to “give kids time to think”. This is a lie

The question that has never really been answered is why this " extra time " is needed.

If these kids know from as young as 2 who and what they are then there had what 7/9/10 years to think about it.

Which surely proves they are the first step in medical transition not the pause button as claimed.

For someone's who's allegedly only interested in preventing this vulnerable group of children from being harmed by taking a case of medical negligence hewouldwouldnthe you're taking up an in ordinate amount of space on this thread discussing your personal views about puberty blockers, despite your initial pronciouncements demonstrating that you weren't even up to date with basic NHS changes about their potential harm
Ignoring the use of "hysterical" which is usually a give away as to a poster's intentions on a feminist board, I wonder whether you have a personal or professional interest in stopping these young adults pursuing the clinicians who have rendered such harm to them?

pronciouncements of course self identifies as pronouncements... 😑

The question that has never really been answered is why this " extra time " is needed.

Something the Bell judges noted - they couldn't get a logically consistent answer of what the puberty blockers were for, just a set of mutually contradictory statements.
^^

Quiet. It's long been noted that actually going through puberty is often what makes the child in question resolve their fear of it.

Putting a child on puberty blockers is arresting any kind of maturation which could be brought to bear on the ultimate decision.

With the suggestion that the blockers could also cause a significant drop in IQ, what starts off as a 10-year-old on blockers will end up six years later as a 10-year-old (with potentially even less reasoning ability), still on blockers.

Can you post the link to that please? I believe that you are misrepresenting the facts, as per my memory of the pages.

Not to also mention the fact that one particular surgeon has already come out and admitted that the blockers do infact cause issues when it comes to grs surgery. Particularly in males. Amd we all saw the outcome of the one we know they performed on a puberty suppressed child. And who has admitted again on camera that there's a chance children really couldn't consent to that.

I wish someone in the legal field would ask the question over the implications of children over the age of consent stuck with a body of a pre pubescent child.

I'm still wondering if hewouldwouldnthe is able to answer why those potential outcomes could be regarded as 'hysterical'.