GLP - We’re suing a hospital for trans discrimination

[toyl9876]

https://goodlawproject.org/were-suing-a-hospital-for-trans-discrimination/

“In May 2025, Lisa* was booked in for surgery to have her testes removed due to chronic pain. But a week before the operation was going to take place, the hospital called to say the surgery was cancelled.

The hospital claimed they couldn’t operate because the surgery was classed as gender-affirming care. But surgery for pain has nothing to do with gender-affirming care, and refusing to treat someone just because of their gender identity is discrimination.”

Bring on the court case. Look forward to the evidence showing the statistics. How many men have nhs surgery to remove both testicles each year because of chronic pain? How many of these cases have tried other treatments first? Why is surgery a last resort? What are the long term complications from this drastic surgery?

Shock, horror, a man doesn't get what he wants. Thoughts and prayers, Lisa.

We have no idea what this person is suffering from or their medical history. You most certainly don't know everything about this person's medical history from just a short, anonymous press release and it's very weird to assume you do.

Will be interesting to hear GLP admit that the comparator for hid client's treatment is another man. They've always insisted trans identifying men be compared to women until now.

And if the court case is won, I wonder if anyone here will be honest and humble enough to come back and admit they were wrong. Doubt it.

This in spades

Looking forward to the reddit threads: "What do I say to my doctor to get a diagnosis of chronic testicular pain?"

Well if Lisa is suffering with testicular or prostate cancer, torsion, blunt force trauma, and surgery is the standard course of treatment, then I and most rational people would agree that withholding the option of surgery is medical negligence. But from this article Lisa is attempting to sue the NHS for discrimination.

I’m sure they would have mentioned if he had a condition where it would be reasonable to remove his testes no? Instead all they’ve said is that he has chronic pain.

https://www.mkuh.nhs.uk/patient-information-leaflet/orchidectomy

"Why do I need an Orchidectomy?

It should have been explained by your doctor but it can be performed due to various reasons:

• To remove a diseased testicle
• To remove a testicle because it is causing persistent pain.
• To remove a tumour in the testicle"

https://www.baus.org.uk/_userfiles/pages/files/patients/leaflets/Chronic%20scrotal%20pain.pdf

"What can be done about chronic scrotal pain?...

• Men may choose to have surgical removal of the affected testicle (simple orchidectomy)"

https://onestophospital.co.uk/treatments/keyhole-orchidectomy/

"There are several medical and therapeutic reasons for undergoing a keyhole orchidectomy. It is commonly used as a treatment for testicular cancer... It may also be recommended for severe testicular trauma or chronic testicular pain"

Yes, and it’s very rare that this would be the treatment offered for chronic pain alone. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s extremely common like you said it is. It really isn’t.

Careful, you'll start a fad! Think how much you'll save on haircuts, shampoo and hats!!

Also, presumably as it's keyhole surgery they wouldn't be removing the whole lot, they would take out the inner organ only which I would guess is not what the patient wanted.

I didn't say it was "extremely common". Several posters said it never happens at all, they are provably wrong. I also repeat my point we have no idea if this patient has a history of cancer, non-cancerous tumours, cysts, injury, torsion etc and we can’t assume they don’t just because a short anonymised press release didn’t share every single detail of their personal medical history.

It's also the case that this person had a date for surgery booked in, this means there was a surgeon who was perfectly prepared to carry out the procedure based on the symptoms the patient presented with apparently until they realised the patient was trans. If this was simply not a surgery it was possible to have and/or not indicated by the symptoms, it never would have gotten as far as being scheduled.

Not true again.

I said it wasnt true that surgery was routinely carried out for chronic pain which is what you said. That is what is not true!

Yes, I worked with a guy that had this done as he had testicular tortion which was agonising, sudden onset pain and he was somewhat annoyed at the surgeon wanting to have a conversation before he operated about which size of replacement saline sac he wanted inside his testicle pouch as he didn't care either while it hurt or while he was off his face on drugs. But he had to attempt to stand up and have his testicles measured first.

Only a bloke would come back to the office and go on and on about this in such detail. No one wanted to know.

No way is this fair. I've heard in incredible detail about women's surgery at the office. Some people have no filter and it seems pretty split across the sexes.

About Lisa's testicles there isn't really any way of knowing, I guess the medical detail will come out at trial. He could have torsion, there's no detail that I've seen about it.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, I hope she gets surgery soon. I've had ovarian cancer too and also had to wait for surgery so I fully sympathise. I don't think anyone, including "Lisa", would argue that cancers and other life-threatening conditions shouldn't be given priority on the wait list, but this doesn't have to do with wait times, it has to do with being refused treatment altogether, which is a different issue.

I doubt very much it's a torsion because surely that would be a surgical emergency needing immediate attention.

Presumably Lisa has years’ of evidence of chronic pain, as described.
If the surgery was refused purely on the basis of being trans, then that would be an issue but it sounds like a borderline case- he wasn’t given the surgery before he was trans. He was offered the surgery after he transitioned. He was unhappy about treatment that preserved his hormone profile.

Then they decide Lisa’s treatment would be more appropriate from a gender clinic, which as Lisa doesn’t want to preserve any health aspects of the testes, makes sense. I guess?

It will be interesting to see how it goes, when the evidence is gathered and the case gets to court. Unless the NHS settles for an easy life.

But the doctors do have that info.

And are declining to operate.

How common is it, for instance, that both testes have "chronic pain"? 🤔

Torsion is emergency surgery and would only result in orchidectomy of the twisted one if it had been deprived of blood supply for long enough for tissue death.

Of course we'll have to wait and see, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that based on their current run of form, the likelihood of the GLP winning a court case seems fairly low.