Judgement in High Court Family Division yesterday

[BettyBooper]

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere...

A young person was prescribed testosterone by Gender GP without various important checks being carried out. The young person's father is attempting to prevent further treatment.

I haven't read the whole judgement yet, but it includes a lot of 'assigned at birth's and a eyebrow raising definition of gender dysphoria in young people. The young person is so clearly very vulnerable and Gender GP is outrageous.

I'm not adding a link because all parties are anonymous, but I'm sure anyone interested will be able to find it.

Thank you - I'll have a look.

I am interested but clearly incompetent as I cannot find it. Can you give me some search terms?

That poor kid.

recent judgements can be found on Bailii.org.

bailii.org
Case Law Search
Exact Phrase: Gender GP

Sorry maybe I was too cryptic. If you look up courts and tribunals judiciary, judgements you'll find it. Really sad reading.

"on the experience in these proceedings thus far, I would urge any other court faced with a case involving Gender GP to proceed with extreme caution before exercising any power to approve or endorse treatment that that clinic may prescribe."

That judgement is incredible.

Gender GP prescribed a huge dose of testosterone on the basis of one conversation with a counsellor - no medical checks, no blood tests, nothing.

The Australian endocrinologist appearing as expert witness described the dose as negligent:

Dr H advised that the level of testosterone in the blood was 'dangerously high' and that, apart from the potential for adverse long-term consequences of such a level, J was 'presently at risk of sudden death due to thromboembolic disease', meaning the potential for the hormone to cause thickening of the blood.

And yet an NHS paediatric consultant looked at.the bloods and decided they were fine, using the adult male reference as a norm:

Subsequently, J's blood was assessed by Dr K, a consultant paediatric haematologist at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool, who advised that the results were effectively normal when compared to reference points relevant to an adult male (which Dr Keenan considered was the appropriate comparison in this case).

WTF? How is comparing the normal range for an adult male of any use, when judging the risk for an anorexic 16 year old girl? Christ on a bike the NHS is captured.

An autistic female who was so anorexic she was hospitalised for 9 months for severe malnutrition at the age of 12/13.

Less than two years later, she was prescribed unsafe amounts of testosterone after a single virtual counselling session via Gender GP.

She was then injected with the unsafe amounts of testosterone by an NHS GP.

'J's guardian, Sarah Gwynne, has acted in that role for nearly one year. Whilst, rightly, leaving the issue of capacity and consent to the court, the guardian is clear that it is in J's best interests to access further hormone treatment for gender dysphoria.'

Fucking. Hell. This poor child.

"I would urge any other court faced with a case involving Gender GP to proceed with extreme caution before exercising any power to approve or endorse treatment that that clinic may prescribe."

Every time someone waves you away with "oh but no-one is claiming they actually change sex", point them to this paragraph. It is simply breathtaking to see it written down like this in a court judgement - and I've been reading TRA bullshit for years!

What an appalling case. Anorexic, autistic, self harming, has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and in the claws of the charlatans at Gender GP.

How have we got to such a stage where we are allowing this to happen to mentally vulnerable children? At least that Judge was uncompromising with his warnings about gender GP.

Thank you for the hints to find the judgement.

All you can say is WTF are Gender GP doing. Clearly first do no harm has gone out of the window.

The Dad has done the best he can and thankfully the Mum has recognised that a cautious way forward with Gender Plus and a pause in testosterone is the right approach. I hope the child gets through this without long term damage.

Since the court mentioned the DSM in relation to clarifying the term 'gender dysphoria':

Why can’t you link it? It’s anonymised so you’re hardly breaching anyone’s privacy by linking to it, especially if it’s been published on Bailii

I can link it, I choose not to. If you want to read it, find it. I'm not providing it as clickbait.

Right but you will start a thread about it. Makes a lot of sense. All family court judgments involving children are anonymised by the way - it’s not out of the ordinary or anything.

For anyone who wants to read a public judgment that doesn’t identify the parties and doesn’t want to go through quite a cumbersome search process to find it:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2024/922.html&query=(Gender)+AND+(gp)

Wow. Unsafe, money grabbing practice laid bare. 1) Get a non-clinical idealist to conduct an assessment 2) ask someone in another country to issue a prescription. 3) sit back and count the money.

Would love to know what the insurers of the GP who gave the testosterone think. Surely it wouldn't be covered by NHS indemnity?

Is a court guardian a social worker? Because we know the social work as a profession is captured.

It is terrifying to see it laid out, how evidence from a captured guardian and a captured doctor becomes relied on in court when making decisions about the welfare and health of a teenager who has been clearly struggling.

Yes, I know that very well.

But having sat with multiple children over the years who have had reports like this in the public arena, I was very hesitant about posting at all.

It doesn't tend to matter so much that it's anonymous when it's your life laid bare.

I was hoping that it would be treated sensitively, but you are giving me the distinct impression that it is not.

'40. Although the risk of immediate harm as a result of changes to his blood was no longer seen as a pressing factor, Dr Hewitt continued to express surprise that, as the months have gone by, the level of testosterone recorded in J's system has remained very high. In her evidence to the court in February 2024 she explained that after a dose of testosterone, the level would be elevated for a time but then fall to a 'trough level' of 10-15 nanomoles/litre after 10 to 14 weeks. For J the readings had been in the mid 20's nm/L throughout the autumn and up to mid-January 2024. For Dr Hewitt this was an 'unusual' and 'unexpected' picture which initially caused her to question whether there had been any further (surreptitious) top-up dose administered. A test in early February 2024 recorded a fall to 15.7 nm/L.
41. Having reviewed the literature, during a break in her evidence, Dr Hewitt observed that as she had never before (in her 20 years in the field) seen such a 'massive dose' of testosterone administered to a young person, her settled view was that the prolonged record of high levels of testosterone seen here could have been caused by the series of high overdosing that had taken place so that there had been an accumulation of the hormone in the body, with the baseline trough level never being reached before the next dose was given.'

My bold.

You started a thread about it but refused to link what you were actually talking about (telling people to go and search for it, potentially meaning they would be discussing the wrong thing). I have now linked it for you as people were already talking about the facts of the case, as I am sure you knew they would when you began the thread.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with discussing a case in the public domain but the whole “I’m just thinking about the people involved” thing doesn’t wash when you’re the one who started the thread and described the facts.
I have said nothing insensitive about the case.

“Highly abnormal and frankly negligent”, that poor child, let down by so many people who should have been safeguarding and protecting not dealing with sellers of snake oil who quite clearly do not give a toss that they are providing hugely dangerous doses of medication to a vulnerable child.

I doubt if much can be done about an online company registered in Romania, but I would really like to see the child’s gp taken to task for accepting their “report” at face value knowing full well all the details of the child’s previous mental and physical health issues and then administering the testosterone in such a cavalier fashion.

I look forward to the day Gender GP “experts” are thrown in jail.

A child I know has been transed. All of a sudden she changed from a long haired girl to child hiding behind shorter hair that LITERALLY covers her whole face. Her mother proudly posts pics on FB of her and her “son”.

The mother is an ex page 3/FHM etc glamour model. It’s not difficult to understand how a girl might hit puberty, decide that getting her tits out for the lads wasn’t for her and that it might be easier just to “be a boy”.

Did Sinead Watson not have terrible trouble trying to get her testosterone levels down after she detransitioned?

Quite frankly, I don't trust that the work has been done to truly understand the effect of large doses of testosterone on the female body.

This isn't the first time that male reference levels have been used by health professionals when treating a transman, completely neglecting the underlying and immutable physiological differences.