"All children who have been treated for gender dysphoria in the past decade [by the UK Tavistock clinic] will have their medical records scrutinised in an effort to find out whether NHS services are harming vulnerable adolescents." 1/ THREAD thetimes.co.uk/article/gender…
Data - or rather, lack of adequate data - is a recurring theme with youth gender clinics internationally. There are headline figures showing unexplained exponential growth in case numbers but often there is scant detail on patients, treatment patterns & outcomes including regret.
UK health secretary Sajid Javid, who reportedly believes that harm to children is being masked by ideological resistance to open debate, plans to change confidentiality provisions so that experts can check the treatment outcomes for about 9,000 ex-Tavistock patients.
Javid was alarmed by an interim report from Dr Hilary Cass, who is inquiring into NHS care of gender dysphoric youth. She said lack of data meant it was “not possible to accurately track the outcomes & pathways that [minors] take through the [Tavistock]”. genderclinicnews.substack.com/p/strong-drugs…
The Times quotes a health source saying that allowing the Cass review to access this data in a secure way "will help develop a world-leading base of clinical evidence [&] ultimately that will benefit everyone, particularly children who may be questioning their gender identity”.
Dr Cass already has the results of independent systematic reviews of the evidence for puberty blockers & opposite sex-hormones. The evidence base is so weak that Dr Cass says it's not yet possible for her to give "definitive advice" on the safety & outcomes of these treatments.
That decision not to endorse puberty blockers or hormones for minors came under criticism from researchers linked to Australia's biggest gender clinic at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne (RCH).
Australia is worse off when it comes to public data from gender clinics. Our federal system means data is fragmented across jurisdictions. And although the Tavistock has been criticised over data collection, it does publish regular basic data, something no Australian clinic does.
In 2019, in Victoria, the state that is home to the RCH gender clinic, health minister Jenny Mikakos was asked in parliament for clinic data. The minister's reply was that her health department did not "routinely collect" this information; no data was given to parliament.
Also in 2019, the Queensland Children's Hospital gender clinic told a worried member of the public that it kept no data on how many female-born patients on puberty blockers were autistic. In 2021, the clinic reportedly began a new, more accurate data reporting system.
In 2020, after media scrutiny of children's hospital gender clinics, federal health minister Greg Hunt said he would ensure the states came up with a new national approach. He stressed the need for “monitoring of practices, & monitoring of long term health & wellbeing outcomes”.
In 2021, this federal-state project was wound up -- without collecting any patient data -- and was delegated to two states with no publicly known result. Senator Claire Chandler said it seemed "one or more states have killed off the opportunity for openness and transparency".
“There has been a huge increase in children being treated by gender clinics but, either through incompetence or by design, the states’ top health bureaucrats have no data to explain this trend,” said Senator Chandler, who had been pushing for public data and open debate.
I have reported some basic data, obtained under freedom of information law, showing dramatic increases in new patients at Australia's three large children's hospital gender clinics in Melbourne, Perth & Brisbane.
"Puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonist therapies for the treatment of gender dysphoria are prohibited for patients under 18 years of age."
Florida Department of Health petition for the state Board of Medicine to adopt a rule on paediatric transition. @HealthyFla 1/
"Sex reassignment surgery or any other procedure that alters primary or secondary sexual characteristics for the treatment of gender dysphoria is prohibited for patients under 18 years of age." #GenderClinics#Health
The rationale for the proposed rule is "the lack of quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of such treatments for gender dysphoria and in order to provide guidance to the medical community and protect the health, safety, and welfare of Floridians".
“There has been an increase in adjudications regarding reporting on transgender issues [recently],” the Australian Press Council [said]. “… this [likely] reflects growing community awareness of trans issues, & the higher profile of these issues..” /1 theguardian.com/media/2022/jul…
This news report in @GuardianAus mentions the 2019 trans reporting guideline adopted by the press council after months of research & consultation.
Readers aren’t told that this guideline looks like a trans activist script & uses scientifically inaccurate terms such as sex being something “assigned at birth”, as if it’s just a guess. Biological reality is played down to bolster the idea of trans or non-binary identity.
"There's a great irony in that the same people chanting 'protect trans kids' are advocating for [puberty blocker drugs] that could permanently impair [kids'] ability to enjoy sex as adults before they're even able to comprehend what that means." US journo Katie Herzog #AusPol 1/
Herzog, who wrote one of the earliest articles on detransition, used to believe that puberty blockers, which interrupt natural sex hormones, may be beneficial in strictly limited cases. She has changed her mind after an admission by top US transgender doctor Marci Bowers.
Dr Bowers, famous as the surgeon for reality TV star Jazz Jennings, says that if male-born patients begin hormone suppression early in puberty (around age 11 at Tanner stage 2), they may never be exposed to enough testosterone to experience orgasm.
Schools, social media & the wider culture increasingly send impressionable kids the message they can "choose" to be a boy or a girl, or something in between. This adult theory -- with its post-modern denial of biological reality -- used to be confined to the fringes of higher ed.
Gender non-conforming kids, who might otherwise grow up to be gay/bisexual, are now exposed to the idea that unease in their bodies, not fitting in with peers, may mean they are the opposite sex. Autistic kids may be especially vulnerable to this "black & white" thinking.
It's the Oz election campaign & there's confusion among politicians & journos about trans-identifying minors & their access to surgery. Short answer: biological girls under 18 *do* get trans mastectomy in Australia. To say it doesn't happen is wrong. #AusPol#AusVotes#Health
In Australia, 15 is the youngest known age for "top surgery", as it's often called online. See this news report & screenshot. theaustralian.com.au/nation/ignore-…
Family Court has been the only info source on under-18 trans surgery. Until the 2018 case re Matthew, the court had to give the green light, even if docs & parents agreed. This was said to be "discriminatory". Now, judges only hear under-18 surgery cases if there's a dispute.
"There are parents of 7-year-olds asking: When should my daughter get hormones? And when should the ovaries come out?" Munich gender dysphoria expert Dr Alexander Korte speaks about social contagion, puberty blockers that "prevent homosexuality" & law confusing sex & gender. 1/
He rejects the trans-gay analogy pushed by activists.
"Gays & lesbians want one thing above all from doctors and therapists: to be left alone. Transsexuals ... want costly & momentous medical treatment - with irreversible, lifelong consequences." taz.de/Jugendpsychiat…
He says puberty blockers act like "a homosexuality preventer".
Data suggests that blockers are a one-way path to lifelong medicalisation when left-alone, most kids with childhood dysphoria grew out of it & many emerged as gay/bisexual.