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Two of the largest hospitals in the world dealing with transgenderism in children and youths are finally backing off on some of their experimental procedures that may well have caused more harm than good to gender dysphoric children. This is a great step away from the lunacy that has prevailed in this area for several years.
Texas Children's Hospital halts puberty blockers
for gender transition after AG 'child abuse' label
By Ryan Foley,
Christian Post Reporter|
Wednesday, March 09, 2022
Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, announced that it would stop prescribing puberty blockers after Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion labeling them a form of “child abuse.” | Wikimedia Commons/WhisperToMe
The largest pediatric hospital in Texas has announced that it will no longer provide puberty blockers to children after the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote an opinion labeling the practice “child abuse.”
In a statement Friday, the Houston-based Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in both the United States and Texas, announced that it will pause “hormone-related prescription therapies for gender-affirming services.”
The hospital cited the “Attorney General’s and Governor’s Actions” as factors in its decision, referring to Paxton’s assertion in last month’s non-binding Opinion No. KP-0401 that the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of chapter 261 of the Texas Family Code.”
“The mission of Texas Children’s Hospital is to create a healthier future for all children, including transgender children, within the bounds of the law,” the hospital added. “This step was taken to safeguard our health care professionals and impacted families from potential criminal legal ramifications.”
Paxton reacted to the hospital’s decision in a tweet Friday, remarking that he was “glad to hear that today Texas Children’s Hospital halted their child-abuse procedures.”
In his non-binding legal opinion, the attorney general maintained that sterilization of minors by removing their genitalia and the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs can cause “mental or emotional injury to a child that results in an observable and material impairment in the child’s growth, development, or psychological funding.”
“These procedures and treatments can ‘caus[e] or permit[] the child to be in a situation in which the child sustains a mental or emotional injury that results in an observable and material impairment in the child’s growth, development, or psychological funding,’” he added.
Paxton also warned that the procedures can cause a “physical injury that results in substantial harm to the child.”
As Texas Children’s Hospital indicated, Paxton is not the only public official in the state to view puberty-blocking drugs and gender reassignment surgery for minors as a form of child abuse.
Last summer, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services commissioner wrote a letter classifying “genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery” as child abuse in response to a request from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
Last week, President Joe Biden released a statement slamming elected leaders in Texas for launching a “cynical and dangerous campaign targeting transgender children and their parents.”
“Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points,” the statement reads. “These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”
The president insisted that contrary to what Texas officials are proclaiming, “Respected medical organizations have said that access to gender-affirming care for transgender children can benefit mental health, lower suicide rates, and improve other health outcomes.”
I would like to see the science behind these assumptions. Transgenders have a phenomenally higher rate of attempted suicide than mainstream society.
The American Medical Association wrote an open letter to the National Governors’ Association expressing opposition to efforts to interfere in the “health care of transgender children.”
However, the conservative American College of Pediatricians has long voiced its opposition to using puberty-blocking drugs on children with gender dysphoria, calling such treatments "experimental."
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, led by Xavier Becerra, also condemned what he described as “the Texas government’s attacks against transgender youth and those who love and care for them.”
HHS issued guidance “making clear that denials of health care based on gender identity are illegal, as is restricting doctors and health care providers from providing care because of a patient’s gender identity.”
The push to declare gender reassignment surgeries for minors child abuse follows the airing of a “60 Minutes” segment featuring testimony from “detransitioners” who underwent medical procedures to change their gender when they were younger only to regret doing so when they got older. They reverted back to identifying with their biological gender.
Many of those the newsmagazine program spoke with contend(??) they were rushed into “gender-affirming” care and continue to suffer adverse health consequences due to their previous embrace of “gender affirmation.”
The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved the use of puberty-blocking drugs for the sake of gender transition but has approved such medication for children who start puberty at a very young age.
Tavistock gender clinic not safe for children, report finds
England’s only specialist service for young people who identify as transgender
is criticised in an NHS report
Lucy Bannerman, The Times
Thursday March 10 2022, 12.01am GMT
Keira Bell, a former Tavistock patient, began taking puberty blockers at 16 and by 20 had
undergone a double mastectomy. She now regrets the transition and lives as a lesbian woman
BETHANY CLARKE FOR THE TIMES
“Not a safe or viable long-term option”
The Tavistock clinic faces a complete overhaul after a review found that its gender identity services are “not a safe or viable long-term option” for children and young people.
The report has been hailed as a victory for whistleblowers who warned that the gender identity development service (GIDS) clinic in north London was operating outside of typical NHS safeguarding and clinical standards.
Dr Hilary Cass, a retired paediatrician, was commissioned by NHS England to investigate services at the clinic, which has been sending children as young as ten for experimental hormone treatment.
The clinic, run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is England’s only specialist service for children and young people who identify as transgender.
It has been overwhelmed by a sudden increase in referrals from across the country, particularly among young girls who are distressed about their gender and youngsters on the autism spectrum.
Spectacular increase
In 2009 the clinic received about 50 referrals — typically from males who had suffered gender dysphoria from an early age. By 2020 there were 2,500 referrals, mostly from females who started suffering gender identity issues in their early teens, with a further 4,600 young people on the waiting list.
About one third of children and young people referred to GIDS have autism or other types of neurodiversity, while there is also an over-representation of “looked after” children in local authority homes or foster care.
It has also lost many senior staff who have clashed with the leadership over the best way to treat vulnerable young people with complex histories who are requesting experimental hormone therapies to change gender. The long-term outcomes of such therapies in this age group are still unknown.
Critics have accused the clinic of abandoning NHS best practice in its alleged readiness to offer life-changing medical treatments to children who declare themselves transgender.
Cass concluded that a “fundamentally different service model is needed” in an interim report released yesterday.
Her report calls for the end of the clinic’s current monopoly over treatment of young people wishing to change gender.
She recommended that treatment be redistributed to regional hubs across the country, to reduce the burden on the north London clinic and to ensure that young people in crisis are seen more quickly, by a broader range of health professionals.
I think this would be a mistake. It would be better to address the social media issues that are largely responsible for the sky-rocketing number of cases, and then just have one center where procedures can be monitored and statistics kept in an orderly manner.
The clinic in London has experienced a rapid rise in referrals in recent years
ALAMY
Cass said that GIDS’s lack of consistent data collection meant that not enough is known about service users or their outcomes to justify the current approach to treatment.
And so, to spread these treatments across the country would just make data collection and quality worse than ever.
She also found that the treatment of young people identifying as transgender had somehow escaped the “normal quality controls”.
“Because the specialist service has evolved rapidly and organically in response to demand, the clinical approach and overall service design has not been subjected to some of the normal quality controls that are typically applied when new or innovative treatments are introduced,” the review said.
The report concluded: “A fundamentally different service model is needed which is more in line with other paediatric provision, to provide timely and appropriate care for children and young people needing support around their gender identity. This must include support for any other clinical presentations that they may have.
“It is essential that these children and young people can access the same level of psychological and social support as any other child or young person in distress, from their first encounter with the NHS and at every level within the service.”
Cass prefaced her report with a letter to young people. She said: “I have heard that young service users are particularly worried that I will suggest services will be reduced or stopped. I want to assure you this is absolutely not the case — the reverse is true. I think that more services are needed for you, closer to where you live.”
Critics of the clinic have said that rapidly changing social attitudes to transgender identity have led it to operate beyond the usual safeguarding standards that apply to every other part of the health service.
Kate Grimes, a retired hospital manager, said she felt “relief that finally the NHS is looking at this seriously. Relief for the patients currently being harmed. Relief for the staff who have felt unable to speak out. And hopeful that we can now start to get a proper service model in place and that we can reintroduce the basics of quality care for patients — using evidence, gathering data, listening to staff.”
Grimes, who has written publicly of her concerns about GIDS, expressed regret that “it had been left for so long and had got to the point of patients taking legal cases and whistleblowers going to court before the review was finally commissioned to tell us something that the NHS should have known and been looking at for years now”.
Dr Anna Hutchinson, a clinical psychologist who left GIDS amid concerns that young people were being sent for life-changing hormone treatment without adequate investigation of other factors that may be the cause of their identity crises, welcomed the calls for “better standards of care for gender questions and trans-identified young people which we can all agree is necessary.”
The report, she said, “reminds clinicians that supporting young people experiencing distress with their gender is ‘everybody’s business’ not just that of specialist practitioners”.
A GIDS spokeswoman said: “The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust welcomes the focus of Dr Cass and her team on increasing and broadening the care and support available for this group of patients who are currently waiting far too long and on developing the evidence base. We will work with her and NHS England to support her recommendations.”
The Cass review is expected to make formal recommendations at a later date.
Tavistock Timeline
April 2019
The Times speaks to five clinicians who resigned from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic at the Tavistock and Portman. They warn vulnerable children and teenagers are being sent down the path towards transition before experts have time to assess the cause of their gender confusion.
February 2020
The High Court grants permission for a landmark judicial review into whether young people can give properly informed consent to puberty blockers. The case is brought by Keira Bell and the mother of an autistic teenage girl on the waiting list for treatment, and heard in October 2020.
September 2020
The NHS announces that Dr Hilary Cass, former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, will lead an independent review into gender identity services for children and young people.
December 2020
The High Court rules in favour of Bell, with judges saying it is doubtful that teens aged 14 or 15 could understand the “long-term risks and consequences” of taking puberty blockers and hormone therapies, and highly unlikely that under-13s would be considered competent to give consent. The Tavistock immediately suspends all new referrals for puberty blockers.
March 2021
In a separate case, the High Court Family Division rules that parents can consent to puberty blockers on their child’s behalf, in effect partially reversing the earlier ruling.
September 2021
The Court of Appeal overturns the February 2020 ruling, saying it had been “inappropriate” for the High Court to issue its guidance.
When Keira Bell was 14, she says she was “really struggling with puberty and my sexuality”, and “had no one to talk these things through with”.
She told the Woman’s Place UK website: “When I stumbled upon transsexualism, that was me — I was meant to be a boy. It made absolute sense to me and I related so strongly to those women [online] that had started to undergo medical transition. I felt that I needed to start with medical transition as soon as possible in order to achieve my happiness.” She went to the Tavistock and Portman clinic, and was put on a pathway to that end.
She says initial consultations were superficial and did not discuss her sexuality, describing “very general, surface-level stuff. ‘What is your preferred name? Do you want to transition?’”.
At 16 she began taking puberty blockers, and by the age of 20 had undergone a double mastectomy.
But she now regrets that transition and lives as a lesbian woman. Aged 23, she began pursuing a judicial review of the NHS trust. She now argues children going to the clinic should not be treated under an “affirmation model”.
The High Court initially ruled in her favour, deciding that teenagers could not give consent to transition. The Court of Appeal overturned that ruling in September. Bell said at the time that she intended to pursue it further and would seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.
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